£15m Tata upgrade complete - making Wednesfield steel processing site biggest in UK
Tata Steel says it has completed its £15 million transformation of its Steelpark site in Wednesfield, turning it into the UK's biggest steel processing centre.
It is the end of a three-year programme that has seen the workforce at the site grown to nearly 600. After unveiling a new centre to turn plate steel into components 15 months ago, and further investment in its Automotive Service Centre making car parts, Tata has completed work on its new Light Gauge Service Centre.
This cuts up coils of sheet steel for customers such as manufacturers of lighting, IT cabinets, racking and shelving, office furniture, coinage, construction fit-out, exhausts, heating and ventilation and sheet metal work.
Most of the steel processed at Wednesfield has come from Tata's steelworks in Wales and is delivered at its Round Oak rail head, at Brierley Hill.
Tata Steel's chief commercial officer in Europe, Henrik Adam, said: "What we have created at Steelpark is a national hub for flat product processing that serves the whole of the UK."
It completes a major reorganisation that saw Tata announcing the closure of steel sites in Wombourne, Dudley, Kingswinford and Cradley three years ago, while the long products department at Wednesfield was moved to Teeside.
But Tata Steel promised new jobs and fresh investment at Wednesfield as part of the shake-up.
Henrik Adam added: "By reorganising our distribution activities and collecting such a large array of capability onto a single site we have improved the productivity of our processing lines and the efficiency our customer delivery systems."
Despite the closures, Tata Steel still has sites at Wednesbury and Walsall as well as the Round Oak site at Brierley Hill.
The company is part of the Indian conglomerate that also owns Jaguar Land Rover. Tata bought the Anglo-Dutch steel group Corus – formed from parts of the old British Steel business – in 2007 for £6.2 billion.
