Tata Steel is investing into a new slitter line at its Hartlepool tube mill to process coils of steel delivered from its Port Talbot steelmaking site. Currently, wide steel slabs are slit in Port Talbot before being rolled and sent to Hartlepool to be turned into steel tubes.
The project is expected to take more than a year to complete and is the second major investment announced this year, with Tata Steel also investing into replacing one of the two cold-formed sections mills at its Corby site (see Kallanish passim).
“This project will allow us to bring a vital process on site, which in turn will free up thousands of tonnes of capacity at the Port Talbot site,” says Tata Steel Hartlepool works manager Andrew Ward. “This will improve our efficiency and reduce overall CO2 emissions from our steel processing as well as reducing the total costs across the business.”
The Hartlepool unit has a 200,000 tonnes/year capacity of steel tube used for applications such as agricultural machinery, sports stadiums, steel-framed buildings and the energy sector.
Adam Smith Poland
