“I was with Arrium when it went into administration,” said Buster Todd, a Whyalla resident of 56 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It was certainly a better place to work when it was in administration than it is now.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2016, the “Whyalla wipeout” that former trade minister Craig Emerson had dismissed as a scare campaign<\/a> suddenly seemed not only possible but imminent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the next 18 months, the town’s plight alternated between limbo and turmoil, before a deal to “save” the plant was struck with British industrialist Sanjeev Gupta, owner of the GFG Alliance Liberty Steel Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent weeks and months, however, fresh signs have emerged of a looming groundhog day \u2014 earlier this month, GFG said it was cutting costs, including on maintenance work<\/a>, as it contended with a global slump in steel prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “When Arrium was likely to be going through administration, the feeling then within the community was that, well, it’s not going to close down, somebody will come along,” Whyalla Mayor Phill Stone said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It is vastly different now, the feeling within Whyalla.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The situation is already claiming casualties with 48 jobs axed at the steelworks in August with GFG blaming a prolonged downturn in the steel market<\/a> conditions globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sources have told ABC News that contractors who supply services to Whyalla’s steelworks are owed tens of thousands of dollars by GFG<\/a>, while the plant’s blast furnace remains offline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Thursday, the company confirmed that limestone was “restricting internal slag movement” in the furnace, and that the company was taking “remedial measures to deal with unwanted material which may have crept in”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr Todd, who works for a local engineering company, said that he and 18 colleagues would also lose their full-time jobs because of reduced demand from the steelworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “This is why I’m not scared to speak, but next Friday, I am made redundant. I no longer have a job,” he said earlier this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’ll get some casual work, potentially seven days in a six-week period. That’s not enough.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story of Whyalla has been told and retold, and is often framed as a tale of a town and its steel plant. That is not an inaccurate picture, but nor is it a complete one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While jobs are on the line, and the city’s future is at stake, saving the steelworks isn’t just about protecting a regional population \u2014 what happens in Whyalla could have broader implications for the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Whyalla is a very important strategic city, not just for this state but for the country,” South Australia’s Infrastructure Minister Tom Koutsantonis said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Whyalla steelworks is, according to GFG, the nation’s only Australian-based manufacturer of rail, and the country’s two major political parties are in unison when it comes to the plant’s importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n State Labor MP Eddie Hughes has previously described the plant as an “integral part” of Australia’s “sovereign manufacturing capacity”<\/a>, while federal Liberal MP Rowan Ramsey said it was the nation’s only “manufacturer of the structural steel for bridges, industrial complexes, docks and high quality rail”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/e33a91762fd59ec5e61aabddced25578.jpeg\")
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‘Important strategic city for the country’<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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