Against all the odds — financial losses, ownership uncertainty, and a decade of declining output — British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant has secured one of its most significant international contracts in years. The eight-figure deal with ERG International Group to supply 36,000 tonnes of rail for Turkey’s new 599km Ankara–İzmir high-speed railway is a testament to the resilience and capability of the plant and its workforce.
Defying the challenges, British Steel has created 23 new jobs and restarted 24-hour production — something the site had not done for over a decade. UK Export Finance played a crucial supporting role, helping the plant compete against international rivals who benefit from lower energy costs and state subsidies. The Ankara–İzmir railway, designed to cut travel times and reduce carbon emissions, is one of Turkey’s flagship infrastructure projects.
UK Steel has praised the deal as “essential to underpinning a sustainable turnaround” and called on the government to follow through with structural reforms. The industry body’s director general highlighted rail as a “strategically vital, high-value product” central to British Steel’s long-term plan, while warning that contracts alone cannot fix the underlying structural challenges.
British Steel’s recent history reads like a cautionary tale of industrial decline: sold in 2016, collapsed in 2019, bought by a Chinese firm in 2020, and taken under government control when that firm tried to close the site. But the Turkish contract is a reminder that this is also a story of resilience — of a plant and a workforce that have refused to give up.
The financial challenges remain — £1.2 million a day in losses, £359 million in total government costs — and they cannot be ignored. But perhaps what this moment shows is that British Steel has not yet run out of reasons to believe in its future.