Britain's biggest steelmaker was last night seeking a taxpayer bailout of up to £500million.
Tata Steel asked for Government aid after seeing demand crash due to coronavirus.
Indian-owned Tata, which has 8,400 staff at plants in Port Talbot and Newport in South Wales, and Corby, Northants, said bailout talks with UK and Welsh governments were at a preliminary stage.
Aberavon MP Stephen Kinnock revealed Tata needed £500million.
He said: “The £50million cap on loans that are available under the Government support scheme is only 10 per cent of what Tata Steel needs.
“Tata estimates it will take six months to get back to business as usual, and the challenge is cashflow over that period.”
The funding package is believed to involve a commercial loan that would be repayable when demand for steel recovers.
Tata has already slashed output at some of its mills and furloughed around 1,500 workers after carmakers halted production and major building firms closed sites.
But even as factories start to reopen, some economists believe industrial production will be slow to recover with demand remaining weak for some time.
Labour’s Shadow Minister for Business and Consumers, Lucy Powell, joined the call for support and said steel was a “vital sector in the jobs it provides”.
She added: “UK steel is critical to ensuring our economy recovers and to make domestic manufacturing more resilient in future.”
Steelworkers’ trade union Community said the Government must do “everything necessary”.
