Wind Tower Hub Opens in Scunthorpe

Tata Steel has invested GBP1.3 million and created nineteen new jobs at its Scunthorpe, UK, steelworks to tap into new market opportunities in the renewable energy sector. The company has created a new wind tower hub to process and distribute up to 200,000 tonnes each year of steel plate which is manufactured at the adjacent Scunthorpe Plate Mill, as well as at the Dalzell Plate Mill in Motherwell.

Tata Steel makes a range of steel products for the renewable energy sector. In August the company revealed plans to build a new GBP31.5 million manufacturing facility on Teesside, UK, to produce steel foundation structures ("monopiles"), which are used to secure offshore wind turbines to the seabed. Tata Steel also announced it was investing GBP8 million at its Dalzell Plate Mill in Motherwell to increase production of heavy levelled plate used in a number of applications, including foundations for offshore wind turbines.

Tata Steel has bought a purpose-built Messer Omnimat profiling machine and installed it alongside two other profiling machines at the wind tower hub. The machines, which use gas burners to cut the steel into the desired shape, can process up to 40,000 tonnes a year of profiled plate for delivery to manufacturers to be fabricated into tubular wind tower structures.

Phil Knowles, Tata Steel Plate Sales Manager for the energy sector, said that this new hub allows to supply plate to wind turbine and tower manufacturers at exactly the right time in their production process. It also allows to carry out further processing of our plate, enabling us to add extra value to the product.

The profiling machines will cut the plates into shapes suitable for fabricating into conical towers. They can at the same time cut special edges on to the plate so that the customers can weld the edges together after the steel has been fabricated into a tubular structure and join these sections together to produce towers.

While the first profiled plate has already left the new hub, the facility will continue to be commissioned over the next few months. When fully operational, 38 people will be working at the hub - six existing workers, thirteen contractors who have been transferred to Tata Steel, and nineteen new workers.

Wind towers typically contain between 150 and 250 tonnes of steel. Most of the material Tata Steel will supply for wind towers will be delivered to customers in the UK and mainland Europe, but the completed wind towers may be shipped around the world.