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UK Steel Industry & Media Reporting

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railman Wed 22-May-19 12:40:43

Watched with sadness the reports on BBC News about the eminent collapse of the UK steel industry.

The reporter stated that China has produced more steel in the past 2 years than the UK has in 149 years!!

Aside from the scant attention to detail, this hyperbolae does little justice to the innovators in the UK and Europe, who invented and developed the modern steelmaking processes.

I don't think the BBC had a true grasp of how important the UK's works at Scunthorpe, Sheffield and many others, have been to this global industry. In particular, the work done in Germany and at Barrow-in-Furness - where the works was the model used by Andrew Carnegie in the USA - production today is largely based on the technology we developed.

The BBC News reporter was clearly unaware of the history, and as a shout out to Barrow-in-Furness - most of the world's railways from Sweden to Australia and the USA, have had rails rolled in that town.

Still - I guess you can't show shiny graphics that demonstrate the 'puny' output of the UK compared to China, with that sort of data.

AIBU to assume that the bulletin was just the UK Government once again using apples and oranges comparisons to justify the loss of industry, and total lack of support for innovation.

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GabriellaG54 Sat 25-May-19 14:38:15

Further to railman's comments re BS and coke being available in the UK so no need to import coal from abroad.
I'm afraid that won't help as Cumbria Mining have only just got the go ahead from CCC to show their plans meet their criteria and implement any changes, which Cumbria Mining believe will be completed by end of 2019.
Their proposals look good, very high tech and it's a brilliant website with interactive elements, so even lay persons can get to grips with the basics.
They are also recruiting more staff.
This is a slick operation but no product will be available until 2023 which doesn't help BS.
No doubt, when CM started out 5 years ago, they had BS in mind as one of their customers. Now, sadly, it will have to rely on steelworks in Wales and abroad.
Maybe some job losses can be absorbed by CM if applicants have the right qualifications but it will still leave far too many in limbo.
Meanwhile, metallurgical coal will still be imported.

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M0nica Sun 26-May-19 18:35:09

The main reason coal is imported into the UK is because air quality legislation means that to meet them the coal has to be sulphur free.

Unfortunately most coal mined in Britain has a high sulphur content so cannot be used for most industrial purposes. Foreign coal comes mainly from countries that can produce low sulphur coal far more cheaply than the UK, even with the cost of transport.

The Cunbrian mine will produce low sulphur coal, but I wonder about the economics. Looking at the geological column submitted with the planning application, none of the seams they plan to mine are very thick, compared with their competitors, many of whom use opencast methods, inherently a much cheaper way of exploiting coal measures.

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