The raw materials needed to keep the blast furnaces running at British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant will be delivered to the site today, the government has confirmed.
Ministers have been racing against time to secure the coking coal and iron ore needed to keep the furnaces at the UK’s last virgin steel-producing plant operating.
If they cool down too much, the molten iron solidifies and blocks the furnaces, making it extremely difficult and expensive to restart them.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, will visit the port in nearby Immingham as the supplies from two ships are unloaded and transported to the plant.
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) said the materials had been provided by the US and would be enough to keep the furnaces running for weeks, while a third ship with coking coal and iron ore is on its way from Australia after a legal dispute between British Steel and the site’s Chinese owner Jingye was resolved.
The future of the British Steel plant at Scunthorpe had been hanging in the balance after Jingye decided to cancel future orders for the iron ore, coal and other raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running at the beginning of April.
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After talks with the owner broke down, the government summoned MPs who had been away from Westminster for the Easter recess back to parliament to pass an emergency bill on Saturday to take over the facility.
The bill has brought the steelworks into effective government control, with the next step expected to be nationalisation.
Mr Reynolds said: “Thanks to the work of those at British Steel, and in my department, we have moved decisively to secure the raw materials we need to help save British Steel.
“Our industries depend on UK steel and – thanks to our plan for change – demand is set to shoot up: helping build the 1.5 million homes, railways, schools and hospitals we need to usher in a decade of national renewal.”
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Jingye’s decision to cancel future orders of the raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running has led some to question whether the company might have purposefully attempted to shut the blast furnaces down.
While Downing Street said it was not aware of “sabotage” at the plant, it did acknowledge that it had become “clear” the Chinese owners “wanted to shut the blast furnaces” during talks.
Mr Reynolds said “it might not be sabotage, it might be neglect”, while Ms Rayner said there was “no evidence” of corporate sabotage.
However, the episode has sparked a debate about Chinese involvement in UK industries, with Mr Reynolds saying on Sunday that he “wouldn’t personally bring a Chinese company into our steel sector”.
The Chinese company stepped in with a deal to buy British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant out of insolvency five years ago.
Commenting on the situation for the first time on Monday, a Chinese embassy spokesperson urged the British government not to “politicise” the row by “linking it to security issues”, and to act with “fairness, impartiality and non-discrimination… to make sure the legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese company be protected”.
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“It is an objective fact that British steel companies have generally encountered difficulties in recent years,” it added.
UK ministers have faced questions themselves over why they have only just acted on British Steel, given the fact that unions warned earlier this month that Jingye had decided to cancel future orders for the vital raw materials.
The Conservatives accused the government of acting “too late” and implementing a “botched nationalisation” after ignoring warnings about the risk to the steelworks.
Under the new legislation passed at the weekend, ministers now have the power to instruct British Steel to keep the plant in Scunthorpe open, order materials for steelmaking and instruct that workers be paid.
It also authorises a jail sentence of up to two years for anyone who breaches this law.
