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The British government plans to nationalize British Steel, while Sir Keir Starmer promised on Tuesday to do “everything we can to make sure that there is a brilliant future” for the main site of childbirth of the Chinese.
The company strongly losing, which employs 3,500 people on three sites in the United Kingdom, is at risk after the owner Jingye Group and the British government did not accept a set of financial support.
A shortage of raw materials necessary to maintain the last two high-peaks of the UK active on the main site of British Steel in Scanthorpe, Lincolnshire, must be resolved within 48 hours, according to people familiar with the problem.
British officials examine the options to buy the charcoal and iron materials necessary for short -term ovens not yet ordered them, people said.
The restart of the stove highs would be difficult and would take time if they are deactivated and the metal inside can cool. The closure of the SCUTHORPE installation, which provides 95% of the UK railways, would put 2,700 jobs in danger and would leave the United Kingdom without the possibility of making steel from zero.
Starmer said that discussions with Jingye were “underway” and reiterated his position according to which “all the options are on the table”. Affairs Secretary Jonathan Reynolds is expected to meet the company’s leaders on Wednesday.
“We are doing everything we can to make sure there is a brilliant future for Scunthorpe,” said Starmer.
He added that: “I am absolutely attached to the production of steel in this country”, and underlined “the impact” that any “loss of capacity” at the Steelworks factory would have on the workforce, the community and the country.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves told unions during calls during the weekend that she was open to the possibility of putting British steel to public property, according to people familiar with conversations.
However, the Minister of Industry Sarah Jones underlined earlier this week that “the best way to follow is that British Steel continues as a commercially managed company, with private investments and the government acting in support”, rather than a nationalized asset.
The discussions come after the two parties struck an impasse on an agreement of 2 billion pounds sterling to switch to less polluting stele. The government offered 500 million pounds of state aid sterling to the Chinese owner of British Steel, much less than the 1 billion sterling pounds he had asked for.
Ministers do not plan to make a more generous offer of support from the British government in Jingye, a figure of the government said.
British Steel refused to comment.
