UK steelmaking complex may be permanently idled

An integrated steelmaking complex in Middlesbrough, United Kingdom, with a long history that was temporarily idled in late September may soon be shuttered forever.

SSI UK, a subsidiary of Thailand-based Sahaviriya Steel Industries, has laid off 1,700 workers at the complex, according to an article in the Financial Times. Furnaces at the mill have been kept headed for several days while the Thai company and the British government have explored options to keep the mill open, but the article indicates those options are dwindling.

Because of debts owed by the steelmaking company to its coal supplier, the furnaces may not stay lit for much longer, according to the report. If the coal supply is cut off, the mill’s remaining 500 employees are likely to be laid off and it may prove difficult to resume operations.

SSI has owned the complex only since 2011, when it purchased it from India’s Tata Steel, but the idling of the mill on the 1,800-acre complex in northeast England would end a steelmaking tradition at the site that dates back to the early 20^th century.

An article in the Belfast Telegraph indicates structural steel made at the mill can be found in nations around the world reaching back to an era when Britain’s empire had global reach.

The Telegraph article indicates a number of companies combined in the 1920s to make the Middlesbrough complex one of England’s largest. Shortly thereafter, “one of the first commissions they got was the Sydney Harbour Bridge [in Australia] in the early 1920s,” according to the Telegraph.