The project is expected to take more than a year to complete and
is the second major investment announced by the company this year.
TATA Steel on Wednesday (8) announced a plan to invest more than
£7 million in a new slitting line at its Hartlepool Tube Mill in the North
East.
The new slitter will allow
the site to process coils of steel delivered from its Port Talbot steelmaking
site.
Currently, wide steel slabs
are slit at Port Talbot before being rolled and sent to Hartlepool to be turned
into steel tubes, which are then used in a wide range of products such as
agricultural machinery, sports stadiums, steel-framed buildings and in the
energy sector.
All steel products made at
the Hartlepool site are completely recyclable.
The latest project is
expected to take more than a year to complete and is the second major
investment announced by Tata Steel this year, the project at the Corby site in
Northamptonshire being the other. Both projects are expected to bolster the
giant’s business in the UK, improving services to customers and using the
latest available technology to reduce environmental emissions.
Andrew Ward, works manager of
Tata Steel in Hartlepool, said, “This project will allow us to bring a vital
process on site, which in turn will free up thousands of tonnes of capacity at
the Port Talbot site.
“This will improve our
efficiency and reduce overall CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions from our steel
processing as well as reducing the total costs across the business.”
The investment at the
Hartlepool site, where almost 300 people work producing up to 200,000 tonnes of
steel tubes a year, is predicted to pay for itself in less than three years.
“Above all, safety will be a
key factor in this investment both during the construction phase and when the
new slitter is up and running. It will feature the latest computer-controlled
technology, which reduces the need for our employees to be close to any
hazardous operations and it will be as energy-efficient as possible,” Ward
added.
“The new slitter line will
optimise the UK value chain for our smaller tube product range, allowing steel
coil to flow through the chain and provide flexibility with on-site slitting.
This investment will support the ongoing drive to improve customer delivery
performance and responsiveness which the Hartlepool 20 Mill team pride
themselves upon,” he said.
Tata Steel in the UK has the
ambition to produce net-zero steel by 2050 at the latest and to have reduced 30
per cent of CO2 emissions by 2030.
A majority of the work will
need to happen in South Wales where the company’s largest operational site is
located. Tata Steel is also developing detailed plans for this transition to
future steelmaking based on low CO2 technologies and is close to knowing which
will best help achieve its ambitions.