Tata Steel to invest additional £2 million on renewable energy plant in UK

India's largest steel maker Tata Steel investing an additional £2 million (Rs15 crore) in its UK-based Hartlepool tube facility to build a plant to produce wind farm structures for wind turbines.

Tata Steel, the world's seventh largest steelmaker has also inked a supply deal with German steel tube producer Eisenbau Kramer (EBK) to increase its product and service offering to the offshore renewable energy sector.

In August 2010, Tata Steel Europe, the European steel arm of Tata Steel had unveiled plans to construct a new £31.5-million manufacturing plant to produce wind farm structures on the site of its mothballed plant in Teesside in the UK. (See: Corus to set up wind farm components plant at Teesside)

Tata Steel Europe had at that time said that it intends to redeploy and re-equip redundant buildings on the company's 3,000-acre Teesside site for monopile production and shipment of the structures that can weigh as much as 650 tonnes.

The steelmaker will establish a central supply base at Hartlepool for steel tubular sections to be used in the fabrication of wind turbine steel foundation structures, known as jacket foundations. Work on the site is scheduled to begin in October and to be complete by spring next year.

Components will be manufactured from tubulars at the new facility and prepared for welding into the finished structures, shortening throughput times and improving cost efficiency as customers will be able to source all steel components from  a single supplier.