With all the furore about the COVID cash handouts, how the country can’t afford them and that they have driven up inflation – at least one company has paid taxpayers’ money back and created hundreds of jobs in the process.
The government gave Celsa Steel – the British arm of a Spanish company – £30 million in July 2020 to help the company keep trading through the COVID pandemic to save 1500 jobs..
Three years later, the company based in a corner of Cardiff in Wales, has repaid the emergency loan and created 300 jobs in the process, according to Reuters.
All this at a time when the British government is questioning the future of the steel industry in the country. British Steel has recently cut 260 jobs saying that steelmaking in the country is uncompetitive.
The government has pledged to protect UK steel from unfair competition and has extended anti-dumping measures on Chinese reinforcement steel.
The British operation of Celsa produces around 1.2 million tonnes of steel from scrap metal, according to the company website. In the 19th century, Britain was the world’s biggest steelmaker, according to records at the House of Commons Library.
At its peak in 1970, the country was producing more than 28 million tonnes of steel a year. By 2010 that figure was down to 9.7 million tonnes. By 2016, China was producing half of the world’s steel.
