As the new slitter passes 10,000 tonnes of coil processed, Works Manager, Andrew Ward, speaks with pride as he explains the rationale for the £7 million investment in Hartlepool, the recent visit by new MP Jonathan Brash, and the collaboration and support with its sister tube-making site in Corby.

Andrew said: "To produce the hot rolled coil as a substrate for our smaller diameter pipes, we've traditionally had to cut the slab in half lengthways in Port Talbot and roll a narrow slab on the hot mill. That impacts speed of work and the mill's capacity, which was the main reason for the investment here."

The Port Talbot Hot Mill is the UK's bottleneck unit, limited to rolling around 3 to 3.5 million tonnes of slab a year.

The smaller size range makes up 50-60k tonnes of Hartlepool's order book.

Andrew continued: "Being able to slit wider coil here allows the Port Talbot Hot Strip Mill to increase its capacity by around 50kt - the benefit is in the £millions. There are additional yield and quality benefits and potential reductions in energy with an increased ability to hot connect (roll slabs that have retained much of their heat from being cast rather than heat up from cold). 

"We've designed it to be one of the widest, thickest slitting lines in the UK"

"It has been a big learning curve as we've installed the machine ourselves. We have spent time at Corby where they have multiple slitting lines - their experience has been invaluable. There has been some really good sharing and learning: we've been there, they have visited here and we've seen real improvements. Since summer shutdown we've seen a real step change in performance," he said.

"Cleaning up the quality of the edge really makes a difference on the fracture toughness performance and mechanical properties of the weld line in our High Frequency weld process.

"Now we have to carefully manage the transition over the next few years, but this investment has become critical as many overseas suppliers don't want to supply coil less than 1000mm wide.

Customers are driving us to demonstrate that we are reducing our CO₂ impact

"We've designed it to be one of the widest, thickest slitting lines in the UK, so its massively important until the EAF comes online.

"We have customers specifying low CO₂ 'green' steels from us on particular jobs. They are driving us to demonstrate that we are reducing our CO₂ impact- some are prepared to pay more for that demonstration of green steel capability. If we don't do something we'll get left behind.

"I'm excited about the future here - we're a multi-functional, multi-operational multi-product business, which enables us to ride different waves of demands. We've worked hard to develop new products, and the mill is busy. We've had support to improve and invest in quality, safety and productivity."