Tata Steel UK has now confirmed that the heavily-rumoured job losses in its long products business are happening. The steelmaker tells Kallanish that 1200 jobs are to go as the company ceases plate production in the UK.

“This comes in response to a shift in market conditions caused by a flood of cheap imports, particularly from China, a strong pound and high electricity costs”, Tata says in a statement.

The company says that, as a result, it has been forced to make changes to its Long Products Europe business. The proposed changes would lead to around 1,200 job losses, about 900 in Scunthorpe and 270 in Scotland as well as a small number at other Long Products Europe sites. Plate mills in Scunthorpe, Dalzell and Clydebridge would be mothballed while one of the two coke ovens at the Scunthorpe steelworks would be closed.

“The UK steel industry is struggling for survival in the face of extremely challenging market conditions. This industry has a crucial role to play in rebalancing the UK economy, but we need a fairer system to encourage growth. The European Commission needs to do much more to deal with unfairly traded imports – inaction threatens the future of the entire European steel industry,” says Tata Europe ceo Karl Koehler.

In the past two years, imports of steel plate into Europe have doubled and imports from China have quadrupled, causing steel prices to fall steeply. At the same time, a stronger pound has undermined the competitiveness of the business’s Europe-bound exports, and encouraged more imports, the company says.

This news follows annoucements of job cutbacks in the steemaker's special steel and flat products divisions in the UK made earlier this year (see Kallanish passim).