Why can't Tata upgrade and modernise its blast furnace?

Because they can make iron and steel cheaply in India and import it to the UK ostensibly for finishing. In fact I suspect that henceforth most imports will be finished product and small amounts of “production” of recycled steel will be a fig leaf to cover the imports.

TATA is an international company who are just opening the world's largest and new blast furnace steel making in India. . Why would they bother to upgrade UK steelmaking, they dont need it. The Plaid idea of renationalising is a good one, the UK needs steel

What you fail to mention Mr Hedges is that Salzgitter AG is 25% owned by Niedersachsen, the devolved state of Lower Saxony. Your lords and masters down in London won't allow the Welsh Government to make such a public investment. Also, unlike Tata being privately owned, but the private equity in Salzgitter AG is financed as units on the MDAX stock exchange allowing longer term investment calculations, to better to weather fluctuations in steel prices rather than whim of a family of Indian billionaires. Important, as we see the global market price is driven by dumping from China, federal subsidy in the US, and the Tata leverage is not on sales price of finished output but their ownership of profits on upstream commodity, mining and energy. This makes Port Talbot, for them a dispensable site or one that can levy a subsidy on electicity consumption if electric arc.

Tata want UK cash to do the job. I believe I read about their demand of "help " from the UK government to modernise last year. Everyone seems to want to keep extracting cash from the goose (the UK ) that lays the golden eggs. Thats the downside of selling the family jewels be they National utilities,defense companies or supermarkets to off shore buyers.

I acknowledge the politicians argument regarding the cost of a buyout from TATA, however, they all overlook or ignore of paramount importance that without our ability to produce steel from iron ore our national security in this uncertain world comes graphically into play. TATA have built 2 huge virgin making steel plants with deep harbour access on the coast and are no doubt deciding that where they can influence the market to their advantage, in our case changing PT plant to an archfurnace, then they have no hesitation in doing so. Politicians have to look at themselves as they are doing a huge disservice to the nation by falsely claiming there is nothing more they can do? You are responsible for our national security and virgin steel making at Port Talbot is essential to that security! I personally have not worked in the steel industry,that said, I recognise a major failure to grasp the importance of such a decision basically placing our security below compulsory purchase in the national interest!!!

We are potentially facing a war in Europe and we can't rely on importing steel. It needs to be nationalised and cheap imports from India and China banned.

This is such a poorly written article. It offers no coherent analysis or argument. The article is titled "Why can’t Tata upgrade and modernise its blast furnace?", so you would expect an answer to this question would be provided. It's starts with a description of the current role of the Port Talbot steel works. It then goes on to describe the steel making process, similar to what you would read in a secondary school text book. Next the author touches on electric arc furnaces and the high cost of electricity. Nothing so far in this article has begun to answer the question posed at the start. Then the author goes on to describe the grades of steel and carbon content. None of this is related back to the steel at Port Talbot or how it impacts on modernising the site there. Finally there is a minor mention of public ownership, but the majority of the final section talks about a steel plant in Saltzgitter. The worst part of the article is at the end. You expect the question posed at the start to be answered, but it ends with another question "Why can the Salzgitter Group upgrade their blast furnace, run a successful integrated steelworks and TATA cannot?" That's what the author should have answered in the article, but completely failed to do so.

Because they don’t want competition. They have many blast furnaces at their site in India. the million pound a day defence is now worn out. They used that to dump the pension scheme and shortly after that they declare a £365 million profit. Pensioners are now on a non indexed BSPS pension they not care about the workers. Why would they not keep one furnace running until the arc furnace was built and operational. How do they supply the BOS plant and hot mills with supplied with resources to create strip. Is there going to be a furnace. Will one arc furnace support the strip mill. Was TaTa sniffing round south wales for their new battery plant. Seems like they are not the self declare philanthropists but are driven by greed. Dumped Wales for Bridgewater. why was Gething on TV in Port Talbot recently seems he had nothing to say? He does not have the power to do anything much like the author of this article. Time devolution was scrapped and the money saved spent on the NHS