BRITISH STEEL STEEL IN
THE SOUL
In June last year this magazine reported on the state of steelmaking in the UK. Britain’s last virgin steel plant faced closure; the future, not only in terms of jobs but of supply chains, for manufacturers and users of steel, was more than uncertain. Since then, there have been major developments: the blast furnaces at Port Talbot have closed; British Steel at Scunthorpe saw an emergency Government take-over, then nationalisation. Is there a future for steelmaking in the UK? Julian Champkin reports.
Port Talbot Steelworks was once the biggest in the world.
W
e live, steelmakers and steel users, in interesting times. Steel is, very crudely, iron with a little carbon and other elements
added into it. There are three ways of making it. The first and major one is by blast furnace. While the process was not invented by any one person, but rather evolved over time to what we recognise now. The industrial method, invented and patented
30 | September 2026 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
by Bessemer in 1856, takes iron ore that is dug out of the ground and coke, also dug out of the ground, and burns them together to make what can be called virgin steel. Since it burns coke,it is of course a hugely carbon-emitting process. Historically around 2% of the UK’s carbon emissions came from blast furnaces. The method used today, evolved from the Bessemer method, Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) or BOF
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