British Steel: Raw materials secured

“It’s a huge relief that this crucial and overdue shipment of coke has arrived at Immingham this morning. We thank the Prime Minister and Business Secretary for their decisive actions to secure the raw materials required to keep the blast furnaces running.

“Our members lost confidence in Jingye a long time ago, and recent events have proven the Chinese were never a fit and proper owner for a strategically critical business like British Steel. It beggars belief, but we now know Jingye were starving our furnaces of raw materials so they could end steelmaking at Scunthorpe and feed our rolling mills from their operations in China.

“Jingye’s disgraceful actions, if they had succeeded, would have cost us thousands of quality jobs and severely compromised the UK’s economic and national security. The Government’s bold intervention to seize control of British Steel headed off this profound threat to our country, and we look forward to working with the Government, and the newly-installed UK management team, to safeguard jobs and the long-term future of Scunthorpe steelmaking.”