this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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Britain plots state control of a flailing steelmaker. Here’s why. (www.politico.eu)
submitted 2 weeks ago by mc900ftJesus@lemy.lol to c/world@quokk.au
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Lawmakers will on Saturday debate emergency legislation that would give the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, the power to keep the S****horpe British Steel site running as the government tries to find a buyer to co-invest in the steelmaker.

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[–] monkeyman69@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

UK government go "brrrrr" to bail out failing, Chinese owned, massively polluting steel co.

Massively failing, hugely polluting UK water companies, pumping shit into our waterways, UK government go "....... Let the market sort it out".

The entire system is fucked.

[–] notabot@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago

The current situation is slightly more nuanced than that. The Chinese owners want to shut down the blast furnaces at the site, possibly as early as next week. Once the furnaces are shut down they cannot be restarted, so that would be the end of the site as a steel production factory, and it's the only one the UK has that can process iron ore, so it's considered critical.

The government's long term plan is to take the site into public ownership, then try to find private sector interest to take on part of it, but short term just to keep it alive long enough to be able to keep it running, with the happy side effect that a large number of jobs are not lost.

None of this is to say the situation with with the water companies is acceptable. Frankly they should already be publicly owned.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago

I presume "co-invest" means the steel maker becomes partially state owned. Which is only a good thing, or at least a move towards a good thing.
I mean, I'm super happy with both Scottish Water and ScotRail - both (now) state owned companies.

Sounds like it's difficult to make steel these days (financially speaking), and the Chinese owners have kinda run the plant into the ground...

The government has told the company's UK management to keep the site operational, and the emergency law will ensure that any employees who are sacked by the Chinese owners can be reinstated.

This intervention stops short of nationalisation - when a government takes ownership and control of a company - but Sir Keir said the government would do "everything possible" to "protect" the UK's steel industry.

The numbers are interesting for how much the steel is actually worth to UK industry & economics (it's in the article), but it's about 1% of both. And about 0.3% of the world total of steel production.

But in these times, steel is important. And being able to locally/domestically produce good quality stuff is important to economical/military stability.
So, perhaps the monetary value is only 1%, but the intrinsic value of reliable domestic steel production might mean it's worth a lot more.

Perhaps nationalisation with a big renovation to greener steel production is a good investment?
I have no idea, but it's certainly something I would support. Keeps jobs, creates new jobs, reduces carbon of an existing high-carbon industr, and secured domestic steel production.
Seems like a lot of wins.