London – Chinese companies will have to clear a “high confidence bar” by investing in key sectors in the United Kingdom, the country’s secretary of business said on Sunday, one day after taking effective control of the last remaining factory of Great Britain that produces steel from zero of its Chinese owners.
Jonathan Reynolds said Jingye Group, owner of British Steel since 2020, had not been negotiating “in good faith” with the government in recent months about the future of the future of the future of the future of the future of the future of the future Steel works with great loss in Scunthorpe In the north of England.
Reynolds said that it had been clear on Thursday that Jingye would not accept any financial offer of the government and that it was the company’s intention to close the blastes “see what it can” while maintaining the most profitable operations of the steel factory and supplying them from China.
In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, he refused to accuse the company to deliberately sabotage the business at the request of the Chinese Communist Party, but accepted that there is now a “high confidence bar” to take Chinese investment to the United Kingdom
“Personally, a Chinese company would not bring our steel sector,” he said. “I think steel is a very sensitive area.”
Prime minister Keir Starmer The legislators summoned Parliament on Saturday to support a bill mainly destined to block Jingye to close the two blast. The bill, which is now law, grants Reynolds the power to direct the Board and the British Steel workforce, guarantee that their 3,000 workers receive payment and order the raw materials necessary to keep the underfrews in operation.
The British government had been under pressure to act after Jingye’s recent decision to cancel the orders of the iron granules used in the high furnaces. Without them and other raw materials, such as cook coal, the furnaces would probably have to close forever, potentially in a matter of days, since they are extremely difficult and expensive to restart once cooled.
That would mean that the United Kingdom, which at the end of the 19th century was the world’s steel manufacturing power, would be the only country in the group of seven industrial nations without the ability to make its own steel from scratch instead of recycled material, which use the most green electric arc furnaces instead of clusters.
The repercussions would be huge for industries such as construction, defense and railroad and would make the country depend on foreign sources for the so -called Virgin Steel, a vulnerability to which the legislators of all political parties resisted.
In a separate interview with the BBC, Reynolds refused to give a complete guarantee that British Steel will be able to ensure enough raw materials in time to keep underway underway.
He said that he would not “make my situation or the situation of the nation more difficult” commenting on specific commercial details.
“If we had not acted, the underpants were gone, the production of steel in the United Kingdom, the production of primary steel, would have gone,” he said. “So we have given ourselves the opportunity, we have control of the site, my officials are on the site at this time to give us the opportunity to do it.”
