Orb steel closure ‘end of an era’
WORKERS at Newport’s Orb steelworks have described it as a “sad day” as its remaining employees left the site for the last time yesterday.
Eleven employees at the site on Stephenson Street, which has been in operation for 122 years, staged a walk-out at 1pm.
The final decommissioning crew were applauded by ex-colleagues and public representatives as they left, several months after its owners Tata announced the site would be mothballed.
The Orb Electrical Steels site, which makes specialist electrical steels, was put up for sale by Tata last year after the Indian company said it had been unable to find a buyer and that the plant needed £50m of investment to make it competitive.
The announcement prompted outcry from former workers at the site, which employed 380 people, many of whom gathered in protest on the streets of Newport last October.
Newport councillor for Beechwood Mark Spencer, who worked at Orb for 38 years, said it was “the end of an era” for the plant.
“It’s a sad day for the whole community of workers and for the city of Newport,” said Mr Spencer, a representative of the steelworkers’ trade union Community.
“It’s important for us as exemployees to come down and show our support, to thank the remaining workers for what they’ve done over the last 12 weeks.
“I left the Army at 22 and started working in Orb in 1982. I became part of a family there. It gave me a good living all my life until I finished two years ago, and it’s given me a pension and enough to be able to look after my family.
“My father, brother, nephew and my son all worked there. My son only finished up three months ago – it’s very sad.
“You had a lot of employees who would have been there for 30 years, and others who were new and hoping for a future in the industry.”
Workers were joined on the walkout by Senedd Members John Griffiths and Jayne Bryant, as well as MPs Ruth Jones and Jessica Morden.
Newport East MP Jessica Morden said it was a “really tragic day” for workers and families at the plant, and said Orb had a “big place in the history of Newport”.
Alasdair McDiarmid, operations director at the union Community, said Orb was a business that “should never have been allowed to close”.
He said: “This is a sad day for Newport and the steel industry, but most of all for the incredibly committed and passionate workforce.”
“There was a viable alternative that was better for the steelworkers, the local community and our future economy. It represents a major failure of industrial strategy.”
Mr McDiarmid criticised the decision not to keep the plant open, and said: “Lessons must be learnt to ensure these failings are not repeated.”