British Steel forges to profit after painful crisis

In the fierce heat of a roaring blast furnace, liquid hot iron gushes forth from the taps, sending sparks dancing into the air at a sprawling steelworks in northern England.
The Scunthorpe complex is the latest reincarnation of British Steel, the former state-run behemoth that once towered over the nation's economy -- and now appears to be in recovery mode after a deep crisis.
"There's been some dark times -- periods of mass redundancy, a lot of negative press -- but now we are starting to see positive results financially," blast furnace manager Sam Thomas, 29, told AFP as melted iron ore spewed in the background.

"We're also starting to feel a bit more like the morale is picking up," said Thomas, who has worked at the facility for 11 years.
On its 100th day of trading yesterday, the new British Steel announced that it was back in profit following a painful cost-slashing turnaround plan.
"There were many months of uncertainty and we all worked hard to get to a profitable situation," said Thomas, who oversees four gigantic blast furnaces established in the 1950s and named after queens of England -- Anne, Bess, Victoria and Mary.

The group, sold by India's Tata Steel to investment firm Greybull Capital in May, said yesterday it had turned from "significant" losses over the last few years to a stage where it was now back in profit.

The region was thrown into disarray last year when Tata Steel put its European long products division up for sale as it refocussed on strip steel, in the face of a collapsing market.
The move sparked worries that Scunthorpe -- whose community of 65,000 inhabitants has been built around steel for generations -- could become a ghost town.
Long steel products comprise plates, rails for railways, sections used in construction, and wire rod. The latter can be used as steel rope for infrastructure like suspension bridges or filaments for car tyres to give rigidity.
In late 2015, Tata had scrapped Scunthorpe's plates output -- a key market which has been ravaged in recent years by China's steel overcapacity and the subsequent flood of cheap imports into Europe.