It is one of the most striking paradoxes in British industrial life: a company capable of winning a prestigious international contract worth tens of millions of pounds, while simultaneously haemorrhaging over £1 million every day. British Steel’s deal to supply rail for Turkey’s new Ankara–İzmir high-speed railway is a genuine commercial achievement — and yet the plant it came from is losing £1.2 million of public money every 24 hours.
The eight-figure contract with ERG International Group covers 36,000 tonnes of rail for the 599km line connecting Ankara and İzmir, and it has created 23 new jobs and restarted round-the-clock production at Scunthorpe for the first time in over a decade. UK Export Finance helped facilitate the deal, demonstrating the potential of government-backed trade finance to support UK manufacturing.
UK Steel has praised the contract and made the case for structural support alongside commercial wins — particularly on energy costs and import safeguards. The director general noted that British Steel is “a globally respected manufacturer with a strong international customer base,” even as financial pressures continue to mount.
How is it possible to be globally respected and commercially successful while losing over a million pounds a day? The answer lies in the structural disadvantages facing UK steel producers: energy costs significantly above those of European competitors, competition from subsidised overseas steel, and the legacy costs of an ageing industrial base that requires significant investment to modernise.
The Turkish deal shows what British Steel can do when it is supported and operating effectively. What is needed now is a plan to address the structural issues that have kept the plant loss-making, so that commercial successes like this one can translate into genuine financial viability rather than a momentary respite.
