Tata Steel invests to cut Port Talbot energy costs, expand Clydebridge
5 May 2011
Port Talbot, UK – Tata Steel has recently launched a £53-million investment at its Port Talbot works with a target of reducing the site’s external power requirements by about 15%. The company is also expanding at its Clydebridge plant in Cambuslang, Glasgow.
The Welsh investment centres on a new evaporative cooling system in the basic oxygen steelmaking (BOS) plant that will produce steam, allowing electricity to be generated and saving 10MW of energy, Tata Steel said. The move is part of company plans to make the Welsh facility self-sufficient in energy.
The main project work will be carried out in the second half of 2012, in parallel with a £185 million rebuilding of Port Talbot’s No 4 blast furnace announced eight months ago. The investment also follows a £60-million BOS plant energy recovery project to recycle and reuse process gases, completed in mid-2010.
The latest project will replace the BOS plant’s existing off-gas water-cooling system with an evaporative system that will produce steam. This steam will be converted through a turbine into electrical power, improving the energy balance of the steel melt shop and the process safety of the plant.
The UK strip products business reacted “in determined fashion” to the recession and has earned the investments committed to it in recent months, according to Karl-Ulrich Kohler, the MD and CEO of Tata Steel in Europe.
“Steel is a capital-intensive and highly competitive industry that requires long-term planning,” said Kohler. “It is vital that the steel industry in Europe and the UK is not faced with a regulatory environment that reduces its international competitiveness and makes similar investments in the future unviable.”
Tata Steel’a Clydebridge plant carries out quenching and tempering processes to strengthen steel plate. An £8-million investment - which includes expanding the plant’s two furnaces, and installing two new gas-cutting machines and a new stamping and marking machine - will increase the plant’s output by up to 50% – to 3,200 tonnes per week – and create about 26 new jobs.
The Clydebridge plant specialises in producing difficult-to-make high-strength steels used in some of the most challenging environments around the world, according to Jon Bolton, director of Tata Steel’s long products unit.
“Increasing our capability at Clydebridge will help us to maximise the value of the steel plate we make in the UK and make this business more competitive and sustainable,” said Bolton.
“Steel demand is not back to what it was before the recession - different sectors have recovered at different rates. But we will continue to invest to enhance our capability in manufacturing specialist and highly technical steel products,” he added.
Last August, Tata Steel announced an £8 million investment in a new heavy-duty press and other equipment at its nearby Dalzell plate rolling mill, in Motherwell, and the recruitment of 60 new workers across the two Scottish plants
The quenching and tempering processes involve heating the steel plate to up to 1,000°C before cooling it, either rapidly using water, or gradually. These processes alter the microstructure of the steel to improve its strength.
Quenched and tempered steel plate is typically used in the mining and energy exploration sectors, in products such as underground mining structures, on offshore oil and gas platforms and in “yellow goods” - cranes, excavators and dumper trucks. The majority of Clydebridge’s products are exported.
Steel processed at Clydebridge is manufactured in Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, before being rolled at one of Tata Steel’s two UK plate mills – Scunthorpe or Dalzell. The recruitment at Clydebridge will start next spring prior to the expanded capacity coming on line in summer 2012. About 100 people are currently employed in Clydebridge, with a further 230 in Dalzell.
