Tata Steel is to invest more than £7 million in the North East to cut CO2, improve capacity and reduce costs.

Tata announced it is investing in a new slitting line at its Hartlepool Tube Mill.

The new slitter will allow the site to process coils of steel delivered from its Port Talbot steelmaking site, itself.

Currently, wide steel slabs are slit in Port Talbot before being rolled and sent to Hartlepool to be turned into steel tubes, which are then used in a wide range of products such as agricultural machinery, sports stadiums, steel-framed buildings and the energy sector.

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All of the steel products made at the Hartlepool site are 100% recyclable.

The project is expected to take more than a year to complete and is the second major investment announced this year, with Tata Steel also investing at its Corby site. Both projects will further strengthen the UK business, improving services to customers and using the latest available technology to reduce environmental emissions.

Andrew Ward, Works Manager of Tata Steel in Hartlepool, said: “This project will allow us to bring a vital process on site, which in turn will free up thousands of tonnes of capacity at the Port Talbot site.

“This will improve our efficiency and reduce overall CO2 emissions from our steel processing as well as reducing the total costs across the business.”

The investment at the Hartlepool site, where almost 300 people work producing up to 200,000 tonnes of steel tubes a year, is predicted to pay for itself in less than three years.

Andrew added: “Above all, safety will be a key factor in this investment both during the construction phase and when the new slitter is up and running. It will feature the latest computer controlled technology, which reduces the need for our employees to be close to any hazardous operations and it will be as energy-efficient as possible.

“The new slitter line will optimise the UK value chain for our smaller tube product range, allowing steel coil to flow through the chain and provide flexibility with on-site slitting . This investment will support the ongoing drive to improve customer delivery performance and responsiveness which the Hartlepool 20” Mill team pride themselves upon.”

Tata Steel in the UK has the ambition to produce net-zero steel by 2050 at the latest and to have reduced 30% of CO2 emissions by 2030. The vast majority of that work will need to happen in South Wales where the company’s largest operational site is. Tata Steel is developing detailed plans for this transition to future steelmaking based on low CO2 technologies and is close to knowing which will best help achieve its ambitions.