Newport
Liberty Newport
GFG Liberty Steel Newport plant, also known as MIR Steel Newport (predecessor) and Alpha Steel (predecessor), is a 1000 thousand tonnes per annum (TTPA) electric arc furnace (EAF) idled steel plant in Newport, Wales, United Kingdom.
LIBERTY Steel Newport Manufactures & suppliers of quality Hot Rolled Coil (HRC) for the domestic and export markets. Supporting industrial applications such as construction, automotive, pipes & tubes, SHS, highways & others.
Equipment & Facilities
Capacity 1 million tonnes
Production unit size – 800 metres x 100 metres
100 acre facility
180 employees
Niche manufacturing through high volume mass production
Captive Port with cargo handling capabilities.
Liberty Steel restructuring puts 440 jobs at risk
Liberty Steel has put 440 jobs at risk under plans to mothball three factories and cut production at another.
The company announced plants in West Bromwich, Newport and Tredegar would be made idle as part of a restructuring of its business.
Meanwhile, production at Rotherham will be scaled back due to high energy costs and foreign imports, which Liberty said had made its operations "unviable".
*https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64251594
Image photography
By Viktor Macha in 2005.
Plant facts and figures
The plant have an annual capacity of 1000000 tons.
The following processes are conducted in the plant:
- Steel making
This plant produces the following type of products:
- Coils
Full description
Not very well known and surprisingly the second most modern hot strip mill in Europe is located in Newport, a seaside town in south east Wales.
The mini-mill with two electric arc furnaces and a rolling mill was put into operation in 1974 by the Greek-Swiss company called Alphasteel.
But the first troubles showed up pretty soon. The verdict of the European Steel Plan from early 80´s was clear – to reduce the production capacity of hot rolled strip in the UK, namely in Ravenscraig and Newport.
Thus, Alphasteel sold its rights to British Steel and the hot strip mill was shutdown in 1985. However not for good.
The greek owner of Alphasteel, Theodore Angelopoulos, did not want to let his hot mill go so easily just after 10 years of operation and decided to relocate to Indiana in the United States. A new company called Betasteel was founded and the hot strip mill started running in 1991.
Meanwhile, the fuss around the steel production capacities regulation in Europe was almost over, and Angelopoulos decided to built an identical hot strip mill in the derelicted site in Newport. The brand new copy of the old mill was launched 2000. But this action caught the attention of the media and former creditors soon after and as the result the Alphasteel was taken over by swiss company Satico Ltd. in 2003.
After the bankrupcy in 2007 a russian oligarch Vadim Varshavsky bought the entire production site. Nevertheless his newly established company Mir Steel wasn´t going well either and the site closed down again.
Finally the works were bought by Sanjeev Gupta in 2013 and after several upgrades the plant is running well since 2015 under the flag of Liberty Steel.