Britain's biggest steel works to end production after 100 years

Britain's biggest steelworks will end production later on Monday, when the final blast furnace at Port Talbot in Wales will close after more than 100 years of steelmaking, at a cost of almost 3,000 jobs.

The closure of the last blast furnace at Port Talbot, once the largest steel works in Europe, is the culmination of decades of decline in Britain's steel industry, which has struggled to compete with low-cost imports.

Showing the scale of the challenge, India-owned Tata Steel had been losing 1 million pounds a day before it began the process of shutting down its facilities.

The Tata Steel-owned site will now be subject to a three to four year-long decarbonisation plan to build an electric arc furnace which will make steel from scrap, a 1.25 billion pound ($1.68 billion) project backed by 500 million pounds of British government funding.

Britain's transition to net zero is changing the country's industrial landscape.

The switch to electric steelmaking is expected to cut Britain's carbon emissions by 1.5% as Port Talbot's coal-fired plant is the country's biggest single carbon emitter.