Can Port Talbot survive change?
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On Monday the last blast furnace was shut down in Port Talbot
Eleven years ago, a senior Tata manager claimed investment in Port Talbot would secure steelmaking for the next 100 years.
That was the day the £185m blast furnace number four was switched on.
This week it has been turned off.
None of us knew it would be shut after just half its production life, or that it would mark the end of more than 100 years of traditional steel making at the UK’s biggest plant.
There may still be many years of steelmaking left at Port Talbot.
But it will be done differently.
The change has been dramatic and painful for those losing well-paid jobs.
No steel will be made from scratch for at least the next five years.
Slabs will be shipped from the Netherlands or India to be rolled and treated in Port Talbot before being sent to customers.
When a new electric arc furnace is completed, with £500m of taxpayers’ cash, and production returns, it will be without coal, iron ore or limestone.
There has not been change like this at the works since the 1980s.
Louise Miskell grew up in the town and said the town was shaped around the steelworks
Swansea University history expert Prof Louise Miskell, from Port Talbot, said: “Blast furnace steelmaking dates right back to the industrial revolution and the Victorian period, and the whole reason steelmaking and metal smelting takes place in Wales is because of coal.
“If that comes to an end, it raises much more fundamental questions over the future, and whether it can become a centre for green technology and green production in future.
“Steel is everything to Port Talbot. The entire town has been shaped around the needs of the steel industry.”
She added that there were grounds for optimism.
“Port Talbot has such good infrastructure which has all been built up around the steel industry,” she said.
“It’s a very well connected place, it has got the big docks, it has a skilled population, there are lots of reasons why this would be a good place to invest in the future.”
The Welsh steel industry has faced a stream of challenges and existential questions for more than 20 years.
The final plume of steam on Monday signalled the end of virgin steelmaking in Port Talbot
On Monday, as the blast furnaces were being shut down for the last time, Tata steelworker Cassius Walker-Hunt labelled the moment as the “the dragon’s final breath”.
“Let’s remember the legacy it leaves behind,” he said.
Fellow worker Adam Beechey said he hoped there was a future for steel work in Port Talbot.
“It’s not nice. When I took this job it was a job for life in my head,” said Mr Beechey, whose family – going back to his great-grandfather – worked in steelmaking.
However, not everyone in Port Talbot was unhappy to see the steelworks close.
One woman, who did not want her name used, told BBC Wales she is “glad” to see the site close because of “all the dust we’ve been living with”.
Another woman, Charlotte Rodgerson, said the “terrible” dust has meant her children have been in and out of hospital with chest problems since moving to the town.
“It’s just awful and the smell is disgusting,” she added.
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Hundreds of people took the streets to protest at the proposed loss of thousands of steel jobs in February
In 2002, the Ebbw Vale plant was shut by then owners Corus.
Then in 2012 nearly 600 jobs were lost, mostly in Port Talbot, in what at the time was the biggest round of cutbacks in 20 years.
The size of the site, workforce and losses during tough times was unlike other workplaces.
This year the company claimed it was haemorrhaging almost £2m a day.
Alan Coombs, a Community union representative, is in no doubt responsibility for the plant’s state lies with Tata.
He said: “They have not put the effort and what is needed into this plant to make it a success.
“At the moment I cannot get past the anger of it.
“I talk to a lot of people on site and they are very angry at the way things have been dealt with.
Alan Coombs said people were angry at the how things had been handled
Mr Coombs added: “You can say about your parents working here and the history of it all, but at the end of the day it should not be happening and nobody can understand why it is happening. People cannot get their heads around it.”
Tata has always defended its record on investment in Port Talbot.
Earlier this year Tata boss TV Narendran said the company had invested about £5bn over the last 15 years to keep the site going.
He claimed it was time to switch off the blast furnaces and build an electric arc furnace if there was to be a future for steel in Port Talbot.
Can Port Talbot bounce back?
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