The brief

Analyst view

• Building a 3.2 Mt/yr electric arc furnace at Port Talbot: £1.25B, of which £500M is a UK government grant.
• Grid connection delays pushed start-up from early 2028 to late 2028 or early 2029 (Sep 2026); the original target was end-2027.
• Has asked the UK government for more money; reports put the request in the hundreds of millions of pounds.

Technical approach

As reported

Scrap

Melting scrap instead of smelting ore

An electric arc furnace melts recycled steel with electricity, skipping the coke ovens and blast furnaces that burn coal to strip oxygen from iron ore.

Emissions

Most CO2 comes from the ironmaking step

Dropping blast furnaces cuts Port Talbot's direct emissions by about 90%, and the UK's total industrial emissions by about 8%.

Bridge

Rolling bought-in steel meanwhile

Until the furnace runs, Port Talbot keeps rolling imported steel slab for customers, so its finishing mills and customer base stay alive.