{"id":206967,"date":"2025-04-28T17:30:01","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T07:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldcargonews.com\/?p=75582"},"modified":"2025-04-28T17:30:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T07:30:01","slug":"for-british-steel-wagons-roll-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=206967","title":{"rendered":"For British Steel, wagons roll again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Saved from extinction, British Steel at Scunthorpe is making the most of its new lease on life. In contrast to the muted communications of the previous managerial regime, the new UK government-installed team has been eager to celebrate every move from the site. To date, these have principally been raw materials movements from the nearby port of Immingham.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span id=\"more-75582\"><\/span>After a series of video releases, featuring bulk deliveries of ore feed stocks and coal fuel, British Steel has released images of finished products leaving the plant at Scunthorpe. They\u2019re good news for the rail industry. The \u201clong products\u201d in question are fresh supplies of rails for the tracks of Britain\u2019s network, with some export orders in the pipeline.<\/p>\n<h2>Clear signals, mixed metaphors<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cMore deliveries of raw materials are being made to our iron and steel making operations in Scunthorpe,\u201d said a statement from British Steel. The UK Government took the company back into public ownership earlier in April, after the Chinese owners (Jingye Corporation) threatened to close the blast furnaces. The furnaces are the last two left in the UK, and the only means of making virgin steel.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-container\" style=\"box-sizing:border-box;height:0;overflow:hidden;padding-bottom:56.25%;position:relative;width:100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-embed\" style=\"bottom:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;right:0;top:0;width:100%;\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" src=\"https:\/\/youtube.com\/embed\/qipHS6_RbEc?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;mute=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; fullscreen; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>\u201cHot on the heels of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldcargonews.com\/bulk\/2025\/04\/amstel-tiger-delivers-salvation-for-scunthorpe-steelworks\/\"  rel=\"noopener\">shipment of coke into Immingham Bulk Terminal<\/a>, we\u2019ve taken a delivery of injection coal,\u201d said an unintentionally mixed metaphor, as British Steel took a further bulk load late last week. \u201cInjection coals are used to reduce the purchased coke proportion in the blast furnace burden for efficiencies and cost reduction,\u201d they explained. \u201cThese are a different type of coal to that our former coke oven plant processed (known as carbonising coal). The aged coke ovens, which were no longer financially viable, would turn millions of tonnes of carbonising coal into coke to help fuel our blast furnaces. Now, we buy coke &#8211; and much smaller volumes of coal.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Coils and rails produced<\/h2>\n<p>The management says they now have secured enough raw materials to keep both blast furnaces running at Scunthorpe. They have also ended a redundancy consultation initiated by the previous management. \u201cThe work done to secure the raw materials we need for both our Queen Anne and Queen Bess blast furnaces means we are able to run both continuously,\u201d they said. \u201cThis means the previously planned \u2018Salamander Tap\u2019 [a hot draining of residual metal] of Queen Bess will no longer go ahead and all operations at British Steel are being maintained, including Scunthorpe Rod Mill.<\/p>\n<p>As well as coiled products for the automotive industry, Scunthorpe has also been rolling out a product that has made UK industry nervous. The first run of steel rails left the plant since the nationalisation (that the UK Government <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/government-acts-to-save-british-steel-production\"  rel=\"noopener\">claims is not a nationalisation<\/a>). The flat-bottom rails will be stored at Scunthorpe until needed, or transported to a facility at Eastleigh near Southampton, managed by the infrastructure agency Network Rail. The wider logistics and port sectors will also be relieved that they don\u2019t have to look abroad for replacement crane rail either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saved from extinction, British Steel at Scunthorpe is making the most of its new lease on life. The new UK government-installed team has been eager to celebrate every move from the site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16235,12380,16414,3758,9618,333],"tags":[12159],"class_list":["post-206967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-steel","category-bulk","category-rails","category-scunthorpe","category-steel","category-uk-government","tag-world-cargo-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207623,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206967\/revisions\/207623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}