Tata Steel bags multi-million pound European order for Siemens' wind project

Tata Steel Europe has secured a multi-million pound order from German engineering giant Siemens to supply steel plates for building 150 onshore wind turbine towers at the Scunthorpe steel plant in the UK.

The order, which is the largest so far for its dedicated wind tower project, would vindicate the company's decision to spend £31.5-million on constructing a new manufacturing plant to produce wind farm structures on the site of its sprawling mothballed plant in Teesside in North Lincolnshire.

Tata Steel, the world's seventh largest steelmaker, had bagged an order from German steel tube producer Eisenbau Kramer (EBK) last year to increase its product and service offering to the offshore renewable energy sector.

Under the supply agreement with EBK, tubes from 400mm diameter upwards would be produced by Tata Steel and EBK from plate manufactured by Tata Steel's plants in Scunthorpe or Dalzell.

In August 2010, Corus, which has since changed its name to Tata Steel Europe, had unveiled plans to construct the new manufacturing plant, (See: Corus to set up wind farm components plant at Teesside) immediately after the UK government approved plans to build thousands of wind turbines in the sea over the next 10 years to generate 35 gigawatts of electricity, or around 15 per cent of the UK's energy requirements.

Tata Steel had envisaged that the UK would require around 6 million tonnes of steel over the next 10 years to make the foundations and tower structures for offshore wind turbines.