British Steel expected to announce 300 job losses in Scunthorpe

theguardian.com:

British Steel is expected to announce imminently the closure of the coking ovens at its Scunthorpe works with the loss of 300 jobs, as the UK industry struggles amid high energy prices and the need to invest heavily in lower-carbon technologies.

The Chinese-owned group has called a meeting of workers for Wednesday morning to inform them of the plans, which would be subject to a consultation. The closure could take place by the end of this year, although the exact timing is so far unclear, a source with knowledge of the situation said.

The redundancies will probably raise pressure in talks between the UK government and British Steel and Tata Steel, the operators of Britain’s blastfurnaces, over funding worth £300m apiece to help them upgrade from more polluting blastfurnaces to electric arc furnaces, which could use zero-emissions electricity.

Both companies have indicated that those subsidies would not meet the costs of upgrades, which could run into billions of pounds.

However, the companies are also struggling with shorter-term issues – British Steel in particular – including energy prices that the lobby group UK Steel says are higher than those paid by subsidised rivals in countries such as Germany and France. Several leading economies, including the UK, are also facing the prospect of recession or slow growth.

British Steel, which was bought by the Chinese steel group Jingye in 2020, has previously told unions that job cuts at the steelworks in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, could be significantly larger. A further 600 to 900 jobs are thought to be under threat across the company’s broader operations as it looks for further cost savings.

Steelworks’ coking ovens are used to bake coal at 1,100C for 18 hours to produce coke, the