The UK government has announced that it will immediately provide funding of £13.5 million to Tata Steel UK, a subsidiary of India-based steelmaker Tata Steel Limited, in order to support the latter’s supply chain and employees affected by the green steel transition at the Port Talbot plant.
Accordingly, this amount is a part of the Port Talbot Transition Board fund, to which the UK government allocated £80 million, and it will support local businesses, who have Tata Steel as their primary customer, enabling them to switch to new markets and customers. Also, the funding will help employees affected by the company’s green steel transition at Port Talbot to find new jobs and access training and gain skills and qualifications in vacant areas.
“The Transition Board plays a very important role in supporting the transformation of our business to low-carbon steelmaking and encouraging regeneration and inward investment to the area, whilst helping to mitigate the impacts those changes may have on our people, our supply chain and our communities,” Rajesh Nair, CEO of Tata Steel UK, stated.
The company has decommissioned the first of its blast furnaces and is on schedule to shut down the second one by September this year, as SteelOrbis reported previously.