Steel Coil and Slab for Llanwern - geograph

Llanwern steelworks is located in

Llanwern Llanwern is a community in the eastern part of the City of Newport, South East Wales. Llanwern is bounded by the M4 and Langstone to the north, Ringland, Lliswerry and the River Usk to the west, the River Severn to the south and the city bo ...

, east of the City of Newport,

South Wales South Wales ( cy, De Cymru) is a loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, south Wales extends westwards ...

History

Built for Richard Thomas & Baldwins Ltd, the works was originally referred to locally as "The RTB", before being called Spencer Works and later Llanwern under

British Steel Corporation British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

. The steelworks site is alongside the

South Wales Main Line The South Wales Main Line ( cy, Prif Linell De Cymru), originally known as the London, Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway or simply as the Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway, is a branch of the Great Western Main Line in Great Britain. ...

east of Newport, offering excellent rail transport for the works. It was the first oxygen-blown integrated steelworks in Britain when it opened in 1962. The hot strip mill pioneered the first successful use of a computer for complete mill control. The steelworks were built on grassland and wetland that local schoolchildren used to roam through on their way to the sea, and which provided a varied habitat for reptiles, amphibians, insects, mammals and birds. Having won an open internal competition in the 1990s with the

Ravenscraig steelworks The Ravenscraig steelworks, operated by Colvilles and from 1967 by British Steel Corporation, consisted of an integrated iron and steel works and a hot strip steel mill. They were located in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. Motherwell ...

to become British Steel's leading hot strip mill, in the efforts to increase group and site efficiency in 2001

steelmaking Steelmaking is the process of producing steel from iron ore and carbon/or scrap. In steelmaking, impurities such as nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and excess carbon (the most important impurity) are removed from the sourced iron, and all ...

ceased at the site with the loss of 1300 jobs. With hot steel slab now imported by rail from the sister

Port Talbot steelworks Port Talbot Steelworks is an integrated steel production plant in Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, Wales, capable of producing nearly 5 million tonnes of steel slab per annum. This makes it the larger of the two major steel plants in the UK and one o ...

, the mothballed "heavy end" of the Llanwern works was resultantly demolished in 2004. In January 2009, Corus announced that it was mothballing the hot strip mill, with the loss of over 500 jobs. In August 2009 Corus announced that the hot strip mill would resume operations. Subsequent problems caused by the eurozone crisis forced the company to once again mothball the Hot Strip Mill commencing 24 November 2011 with plans to re-open during late 2012. This stance was released to the press on 2 December 2011.

Present

Tata's operations at Llanwern include a hot strip mill, two pickle lines, a cold strip mill and a hot dip galvanising line. The works rolls 1.5 million tonnes of steel coil per annum for automotive, construction and general engineering applications.

Regeneration

A £115m renewal project called

Glan Llyn Glan Llyn is the name of a mixed-use community development, to the south-east of Newport, South Wales, at the western end of the former Llanwern steelworks, on the A4810 road at the edge of the Caldicot Levels. Background The steel product ...

, led by St. Modwen Properties PLC, is currently transforming the former steel-producing part of the Llanwern steelworks site. Started in 2004, the masterplan envisages 1.5m sq ft of employment-generating accommodation hosting 6,000 jobs, 4,000 new dwellings, community facilities and open space including 3 new lakes. Full completion is anticipated by 2026–28. In 2017 it was announced that the Spanish railway rolling stock construction company

Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (Grupo CAF, literally "Construction and Other Railway Services") is a Spanish publicly listed company which manufactures railway vehicles and equipment and buses through its Solaris Bus & Coach subsidia ...

(CAF) would open a

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. T ...

at Celtic Business Park (near the steelworks) to build trains primarily for the UK market, including Transport for Wales.

References

Literature

*, includes description of works c.1964

External links

{{City of Newport Buildings and structures in Newport, Wales Landmarks in Newport, Wales Tata Steel Europe Ironworks and steelworks in Wales History of Newport, Wales