For years a debate has rumbled on around the future of workers at Tata’s Port Talbot site, and how best to decarbonise Wales’ most carbon-intensive plant at the centre of one of the country’s most vital industries. It's claimed the continued use of massive cauldron-like blast furnaces, which are creating two tonnes of carbon for every tonne of steel produced in Port Talbot, cannot be an option if the UK and Welsh Governments are serious about their net zero aims.
Tata has long been looking for ways to end the use of blast furnaces at its sites for good, but while the Welsh Conservatives and those in Westminster have hailed the £1.2bn deal (Tata is putting in £700m of that itself and originally asked the UK Government for £1.5bn in funding) as the end of blast furnaces and the saviour of a site which directly employs 4,000 people, the electric arc furnaces could drive out well over half that workforce. While murmurings have been in the air here, staff at the site said they found much of this out first via the press this week, and some have said workers are already leaving in their droves.
No-one knows in reality the real impact the arc furnaces will have at the site at the moment, but talk on Friday centred around minimising job losses and damage limitation for a workforce that is the lifeblood of Port Talbot.