"British made steel." "It's everywhere." "The coins in your pocket." "The tins of baked beans in your kitchen." "Your washing machine." "The car in your garage." "Railway lines." "Do we care that it is all British made?" "If we do, do we care enough to use our taxes to save the industry from going under?" "For some, Port Talbot is famous for its acting sons Anthony Hopkins, Michael Sheen, Richard Burton, they all come from around here." "Now, this Welsh town is itself taking centre stage, a reluctant actor in what feels like the final scene of Britain's industrial age." "That is Port Talbot" "Steelworks, down there." "They have been making steel there for more than a century." "The whole town is built around it." "But as everybody must surely know by now, the future of the steelworks is looking uncertain." "March the 29th, 2016, is not a date anyone here will forget." "The top news story, the steel giant Tata announces plans to sell British businesses." "The company employs 15,000 workers, ministers are under pressure to intervene." "Most of the jobs would go from the Port Talbot plant in South Wales." "Surprisingly few people in Port Talbot blame Tata" "Steel for selling." "The company, based in India, said it was losing around £1 million a day propping up its many British works, Shotton," "Trostre, Llanwern, Orb, Caerphilly, Corby, Hartlepool, Rotherham," "Stocksbridge, Wednesdfield, Warwick." "Thank you very much indeed." "But Port" "Talbot stands to lose by far the most." "Thousands of jobs, and the" "Government has been blowing hot and cold." "Would they save the works?" "Would they let it go under?" "Maybe a foreign company would ride into town?" "It has been a frightening month." "And it's not just the steelworks, it is every business, even this little cafe that does enormous breakfasts for hungry steelworkers." "Very worried at the moment." "Nobody knows what is going on." "Just waiting." "It's like being on the end of a cliff, isn't it?" "Your customers, most of them, steelworkers?" "60%." "Really?" "Easily 60%." "So you would be bust?" "Definitely." "If you've got a steelworks in your town, and you look at it every day, you pass it every day, it is part of your life, isn't it?" "It is, yes." "There is a great family value to it." "To take that away, it would be ripping the heart out of the place." "But it is not just can it survive, and in Port Talbot they won't like this question, but should it?" "In other words, close down the blast furnaces?" "Absolutely." "But that's the heart of this place?" "Unthinkable to most locals, but this is not just a local issue." "That is why we brought some outside experts in to argue the colder, economic case about the future British steel." "What about national security?" "Steel is important's Who wants it to be expensive, other than the producers?" "How many of you have been inside a steelworks?" "This, against the backdrop of a global steel crisis that has seen the industry fortunes fall over the years." "It is a fundamental foundation industry in the UK which we all, every single one of us, cutting daily, do we want to give that away?" "I'll tell you what will make it work, the pride in what they do." "They have been determined all the way through it." "Forget about the great global steel crisis for a moment." "Here, it is local, it is personal. 15,000 jobs are at stake in this area." "Steel goes deep here." "Steel." "For over 100 years..." "It has been heart of our lives." "It's given us jobs." "Skilled jobs." "It's given us homes." "It's put food on the table." "It is who we are." "This video is how the people of the town put their case to the owners in India when they held a board meeting last month that would decide the steelworks' future." "I'm asking." "I'm asking." "And we are asking." "We are all asking." "To secure our jobs..." "Our communities..." "And our futures." "The managers made their own appeal." "They put forward a survival plan to the Tata board, a plan to make steel more efficiently, codenamed The Bridge." "Save our industry." "Save our steel!" "The plan was unanimously rejected." "Tata said it was too pricey, too risky and they wanted a quick sale." "As the news broke, the" "Business Secretary Sajid Javid was in Australia, blissfully unaware it was coming." "That didn't make him many friends in Wales. 48 hours later he was in Port Talbot, trying to make amends." "Behind the scenes, plans were already being laid to resurrect the management proposal." "We will do everything we can." "There are a lot of tools in the box, we will do everything we can to help continue steel-making in Port" "Talbot." "These are tough times for the steel industry." "Has crashed worldwide over the last few years." "And, with it, the price of steel." "China gets the blame for producing too much and off-loading at the rest of the world for less than it costs them to make it." "It called dumping." "The steel sector in the UK isn't inherently inefficient." "It is because we are snowed under, drowning under a tsunami of Chinese imports." "We are seeing China dumping steel at a huge rate onto global markets." "Tata, which has had £2 billion wiped off the value of its British steel business over the last five years, don't just blame that for their woes." "They say it costs too much in this country to make the stuff, for a whole variety of reasons." "We have business rates here which are perhaps ten times as high as they are in Germany or France, for the equivalent work." "All of the other countries have low energy costs and everything." "I am sure on the same playing field we could compete against anybody in the world." "We have been telling successive governments that the costs they are putting on to us, adding to our costs, are harming us." "It has taken ten, 15 years for Government to realise that when we were saying this was going to harm us, we were not crying wolf and it is really now coming home to roost." "It is the Business Secretary's job to promote economic growth in this country." "So what is the Government doing about helping out with things like business rates and energy costs?" "These are all of the kind of areas where we have taken action over a number of months." "In fact, energy action was taking place three years ago." "It is now starting to have an impact and an effect." "The energy offering is already much more competitive than before." "Business rates, that is another one?" "You're highlighting different areas where, one way or another, we have already taken action." "If they don't stand by the steel sector now, I think this could be the beginning of the end of steel-making in the UK." "Wait for us, Ems." "Steelworkers like" "Neil Woodcock will have most to lose if the worst happens." "Like his father, his grandfather and his great grandfather before him, his life has been forged by the steel industry." "To us, as a family, it has not only been a source of great income, but a source of great pride and achievement." "It's something that I could save my family could not have been where it is today, and what they are today, without it." "But how many families in Britain today could expect to pass their way of life down to yet another generation?" "As it happens, Neal is not that keen on his children going into steel like he did." "But it's what happens now to him, and his family, that keeps him up at night." "As a father, he worked to provide for your family." "If Port Talbot goes, I..." "I dread to think where the money is going to come from." "Well done," "Emlyn." "We are just really worried that this is the end." "That is not going to carry on." "We are really going to be struggling as a family, if he does lose his job." "Kurtis Davies is 16 and wants to be an apprentice." "He went for an interview at Port Talbot works a fortnight ago." "It's scary now, thinking, you no in two or three years, your place could be gone." "I'll have to go outside of Port" "Talbot if it gets close down." "It will be the case of leaving family, friends, and have to go on my own." "You will look for an apprenticeship elsewhere, if it happens?" "It's the only other option." "Why should that young man have to move from that area?" "Why?" "Where is he going to go?" "I have this picture in my mind of the young lad going to Nigeria to do his apprenticeship." "You'll have to get but very early in the morning for that!" "But you will have the weekend off." "So I think what you're saying is you can't imagine Port Talbot without steel?" "None of you can?" "With the clock ticking on Tata's sale deadline, Port Talbot steelworkers could have been forgiven for wondering if their future had been given to this man, Sanjeev Gupta, the boss of Liberty" "House, was telling anybody that would listen that he was interested in buying the plant." "It is daunting to consider doing this." "But can we do it?" "We can." "I have never lost money in my life." "My company has made profits every single year, 425 years." "My job every day is to manage risk." "You have to take you can't do business without taking risks." "At my job is to take a managed risk." "A fortnight ago, he took control of two mothballed Tata Steel mills in Scotland, and talked of his role as the saviour of steel-making in Britain." "We hope what we start here today will be the beginning of a new era for Scottish steel and maybe for" "British steel as a whole." "Even if that is true, it would be a new era, which would not actually include making steel from scratch, which is what Port Talbot's blast furnaces do." "Liberty's business model is all about recycling steel from scratch, using electric powered furnaces." "When it comes to a new model the main thing is to start recycling scrap." "Rather than making steel we recycle steel." "There is enough scrap in the UK for all our requirements in steel." "The really big customers like car makers prefer Virgin steel to recycled steel." "And there's a worry about the number of men that he would employ." "Mr Gupta says no problem, you just retrain them." "We've done our initial studies today the number of workers are more or less correct in terms of our plans and what we want to do." "So would he promise to protect all those 4,000 jobs were he to take over the works?" "Yes, absolutely." "Stephen Kinnock is the local Labour MP and he's pretty sceptical about the whole proposal." "My understanding is that we would be reducing from about 4 million tonne as year of production to 1 million, and it is difficult to see how you can do that without pretty devastating number of job losses." "Mr Kinnock knew nearly three weeks ago that the management buyout was being put together, and he was backing it." "I know the conversations are taking place." "I think it's a very attractive idea with some great potential, but, of course, the team around it need time to flesh out the details and also to get the investment that they need to back the plan." "The steel industry has been up and down since World War II." "Mostly down." "The Government intends to bring iron and steel under public ownership." "Nationalised by Labour in 1951." "We shall immediately reveal the act of nationalising deal." "Reprivatised by the Conservatives in 1953." "Nationalised again by Labour in '67." "And then in 1988 with the" "Conservatived again in power..." "British steel is to be privatised after turning in impressive profits." "But the good times didn't last and the steel industry stumbled into the 21st century." "And now nationalisation, is it back on the agenda?" "Four days ago with the pressure really mounting, the Government did say it is willing to take a 25% stake in any credible rescue package." "That's hundreds of millions of pounds." "Isn't that just part nationalisation by the back door?" "No, says the Business Secretary." "The Government will be investing on a commercial basis." "If you look at some of our fastest growing industries today, aerospace, the automobile industry, they rely on other industries and steel is an important part of that." "Our infraplans, £300 million planned over five years." "Years." "A lot of that relies on British steel." "I believe firmly that steel has a huge future in Britain." "But steel production makes up just 1% of" "Britain's manufacturing output." "And just 0.1% of the country's economic output." "That's only a little more than the fishing industry." "If we contrast it to something like financial services for example, that constitutes about 12.5% of the UK's economic output." "In terms of its relevance to the much wider manufacturing sector, it's not as important as people realise." "When the plant a at full production it produces a radiator every 5 seconds." "Tony mull ins is the boss of a radiator company just down the road from Port Talbot." "Port Talbot is 37 miles from us." "Transport costs and logistics are very efficient and the services excellent." "His company, QRL Radiator it is, has used Port Talbot steel for a decade and he's very happy with the service and quality of the product." "He wants that to continue." "Indeed, he feels strongly about it, but his company could live without it." "If Port Talbot were to close tomorrow, let's be realistic, a month or month after, how would you manage?" "We would have to source our steel overseas." "No other UK manufacturer could do it?" "No." "As such, we would regret it greatly." "And the effect of that on your business would be what?" "Clearly we will cope, because, as you are aware, John, there is no shortage of steel in this world at this time." "We have people queuing up to sell us steel." "And that strikes at the heart of keeping Port Talbot open, and indeed at the argument for keeping British steel." "If Tony Mullins can easily get steel from elsewhere, can our steel industry really make the case that it is economically crucial?" "And does it really make sense for the Government to spend vast sums propping the industry up?" "What is so special about British steel is is there anything special about British steel that says we absolutely must keep this industry alive?" "No, not in that sense." "You should keep it alive base makes economic sense to do so, because within this industry there's profitability." "Mark, you are not impressed with the idea of" "Government money bailing out this steelworks." "I think the Government should be putting in policy frameworks, not direct market interventions on playing the stock market on a gamble of whether or not steel prices are going to go up and down or a particular business might" "work." "I'm sure in the end there'll be pay back for the Government but it is giving all steelworks in Britain a chance." "We made money years ago and we can make money now." "If there is to be a turn around it needs to be private sector money, and a business proposition, not a political opposition from the Government." "And if that means the company going bust or the steelworks closing?" "So be it Ultimately so." "That's clearly not the Goth's view." "It is a bit unusual for me to agree with any Conservative, but anyway, you take what's on offer." "What sort of figures do you have in mind?" "Are you talking about millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions or billions?" "One of the figures I've heard quoted is £2 billion over ten years, which isn't a great deal of money for anybody who wants to invest." "I'm saying not a great deal of money, for people that are big business." "I was going to say some taxpayers might regard that as a great deal of money." "You're right, spot on, but for a lot of people it represents a very good opportunity." "It is an opportunity, and it is not one to be missed." "It is not one to be rejected." "True, but it's just part of the solution." "Somebody has to have a realistic plan for buying the steelworks, or the Government share has got nowhere to go." "And that plan, which the steelworkers obviously hope is realistic, re-emerged as if by magic at the same time that the Government made its offer." "That plan, the management buyout." "I felt since the beginning really that a management buyout would be the best option, because you would have a team in place that really knows the business, and you would have a set of buyers behind them with the power on the turn around plan." "Hang on a minute, that's the same turnaround plan, the so-called Bridge that was thrown out by the Tata board in March as too pricey and, yes, too risky." "Ah, but then The Bridge didn't have those Government millions behind it or a consortium backed by one of Wales' richest men, the billionaire Sir" "Terry Matthews and headed by investment guru Roger Maggs." "I think the management buyout plan is totally viable." "It will be raising money from the management, from hopefully the employees, and probably other people's money as well, other investors, sufficient to finance the Bridge, the plan developed to get the company back to" "break even." "Roger Maggs also recently landed a job charged with driving future business diversity in Port Talbot to make it less dependent on steel." "But diversifying for now can wait." "Dragging the past into the future is more important." "The number one priority is to keep the boat afloat." "I hope that they will be once the dust has settled efforts made to make this not just a steel-making region but the best." "Not in Britain but in the world." "But perhaps we shouldn't get too carried away." "After all, the problems of yesterday are still there today." "This is an operation that is shedding £1 million a day." "And so there would have to be a massive turnaround to make it into a profit rather than a loss-making business, so there's a strong potential it may not be around in five years." "In the case of many management buyout you hear ideas about management restructuring but there is very little detail operationally how it is going to prove." "The unions say the management buyout is what ultimately convinced the Government to get involved." "The plan is there, the plan can turn it around." "I'm sure the more people that come to see the plan will buy into it and agree with it." "The Government agreed to at this time, I didn't think we radio would have a hope in hell, but getting them involved seems to have worked." "That's a credit to the workforce here." "Are you supporting a management buyout?" "Want to see as many potential buyers as possible." "Certainly the management team would be an attractive one." "It is not all gloom and doom." "Growing up in the shadow of the steelworks today means facing uncertainties that might have surprised people like Richard" "Burton, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Sheen." "We are going to do "When I" "Grow Up" from Matilda." "Who knows this one?" "Michael Sheen father's" "Meyrick chairs the local amateur operatic society." "It's youth theatre rehearses every week." "Nine-year-old Neve McQuaide, herself the daughter of a steelworker and, who knows, perhaps Port Talbot's next Oscar winner, she certainly knows how to attract attention." "She showed they the poster she had made campaigning against closing the works." "It went viral on the internet." "I am scareded that if the steelworks close this town will be worse than it is now, and we need to make sure that people have other jobs to go to." "Other jobs to go to?" "Who wouldn't want that?" "But the next generation relying on the same old industry." "That's a different proposition." "Final thought, final question." "Can any of you imagine a Port Talbot without steel?" "No." "No." "Definitely no." "None of you can?" "ALL:" "No." "You asked what is special about it." "It is pride and passion." "That's why I do it." "I'm a fourth generation steelworker myself." "If we let this go under, our forefathers will never ever forgive us." "Never." "APPLAUSE." "There's just five weeks left for any other buyers out there to get their bids in for Tata's British steel business." "They'll be looking for more than pride and passion from their workforce." "They'll be looking at the balance sheet." "Whether there really is anything special about" "British steel depends on the bottom line." "Hello, I'm Riz Lateef with your 90 second update." "BHS could disappear from our high streets." "It's run out of cash and gone into administration." "11,000 jobs are under threatm and 164 stores could close." "Junior doctors across England are set to stage their first"