Motherwell’s Dalzell steelworks, which were closed last winter amid an industry-wide crisis, will be formally reopened by Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, on Wednesday.
The international industrial group, Liberty House, which rescued the plant in March, confirmed that at least 70% of those starting work at Dalzell this week are former employees.
The event will officially mark the restart of the plant following its mothballing in December 2015 after Tata Steel confirmed it was cutting 1,200 jobs at its plants in Scunthorpe, Motherwell and Clydebridge in Cambuslang.
Tata, which owned the remnants of the former British Steel, blamed cheap Chinese imports, the strong pound and high electricity costs for its decision to stop production of steel plate.
Sturgeon described Dalzell’s revival as “a very positive signal that the steel and engineering industries still have a future here in Scotland”.
Liberty House said it had spent the last five months rebuilding the workforce and recommissioning equipment at the site, which includes the UK’s largest and most versatile plate mill.
Liberty has already recruited about 120 staff for Dalzell, including a majority of returning employees, with the aim of increasing to more than 200 within 18 months as production rises.
Liberty aims to initially produce 150,000 tonnes of plate a year at Dalzell, with the longer-term aim of building up to previous levels of output as the market allows.
The executive chairman of the Liberty House Group, Sanjeev Gupta, thanked the Scottish government and Scottish Enterprise for assisting the rescue package: “There is an impressive spirit of partnership here and a determination to give the Scottish steel industry a real future. From our side we promised we would get this important plant open again by the autumn and today we are proud to be fulfilling that promise.”
He added that the neighbouring Clydebridge works would come back on stream “in due course as market conditions allowed”.
Callum Munro of Community union welcomed the reopening, but warned that there still remained huge gaps in the Scottish government’s industrial strategy to support steel and other manufacturing interests. He added that it was crucial to invest in building skills to ensure that when large construction opportunities, such as the new Forth Road Bridge, presented themselves the workforce was equipped.
