Steel News 2024

9 July 2024: The Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, alongside Secretary of State for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband, have today announced the new National Wealth Fund. The plans will align key institutions that will boost growth and unlock investment.

4 July 2024: New UK Steel analysis, featured in The Guardian, shows that over the past three months, the UK’s electricity wholesale price is more than double the cost of French and Spanish electricity. The data shows an alarming new trend in industrial electricity costs, and it is critical that the next government resolves the problem regardless of the outcome of the General Election.

26 June 2024: The Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Kemi Badenoch, has given the go ahead to extend the UK’s steel safeguards for all 15 product categories until June 2026. The trade remedy tool can only be applied until June 2026 according to World Trade Organisation rules. With global steelmaking capacity only on the rise, the problems faced by the steel sector will not go away any time soon and UK Steel is now working on new models for future remedies.

24 June 2024: New analysis by UK Steel, featured in The Times, has found that current government infrastructure projects may spend over £1.5 billion on steel bought from abroad. Over the next decade, existing government figures show a steel order book spend worth an estimated £4.3 billion. However, the latest data confirms that only 66% of this steel is purchased from UK steelmakers.

10 June 2024: UK Steel’s election manifesto sets out a comprehensive strategy to secure the sector for the good of the country and to put steel front and centre of the political conversation.

31 May 2024: The UK Steel Key Statistics Guide 2024 provides up to date, at-a-glance information illustrating the scale of the economic contribution of the steel sector to the UK's economy.

The UK steel industry wants to make a significant contribution to national supply chain resilience, bringing the procurement of key materials closer to home and reducing the UK’s dependence on foreign companies. It is crucial that we get this relationship right for the long-term requirements of the country’s defence industry – from specialist-grade steels to the defence estate.

18 April 2024: In its new report, UK Steel sets out twelve crucial design principles for guaranteeing a robust policy with minimal risk of circumvention, strong carbon leakage protection, and simplicity of administration for governments and industry alike.

28 March 2024: The culture in the UK is changing towards actively considering purchasing domestically produced steel, resulting in a year-on-year increase in UK steel companies supplying major infrastructure projects, with a total value of £299mn.

19 March 2024: South Yorkshire is home to a proud history of steelmaking, with the earliest record dating to 1642. Today, almost 400 years later, the South Yorkshire Metro Mayor, Oliver Coppard, the South Yorkshire Metro Combined Authority, and the newly founded regional Business Advisory Board will sign the UK Steel Charter. They will also visit the iconic, Sheffield Forgemasters, showing support for and celebrating the importance of the local steel industry.

12 March 2024: The Government has today formally abandoned the Green Power Pools policy proposal in its Review of Electricity Market Arrangements.

21 February 2024: Today the Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) has recommended the extension of the UK’s steel safeguards for all 15 product categories currently covered by the measure until June 2026.