Bosses from Britain’s embattled steelmakers are to confront European officials to demand stronger action to help the industry survive the current crisis.
Steel chiefs, government ministers and unions from across Europe will meet top European Commission officials in Brussels on Monday where they will demand measures to help the industry weather the “perfect storm” created by a flood of subsidised steel from China, global over-capacity and high energy prices.
The UK’s steel industry has been brought to its knees, with the loss of more than 5,000 British steel-making jobs - a quarter of the total - over the past 12 months.
High-profile losses have come at Tata’s Port Talbot and Scunthorpe plants, along with SSI’s Redcar blast furnace, which alone saw more than 2,000 redundancies.
Although billed as a “conference on energy intensive industries”, government and industry sources say it is an unofficial emergency summit on the future of Europe’s steel industry.
Telegraph.co.uk