The SNP's record in government

Did TATA bid for the contract?

Don’t knock foreign firms – a quick comparison of Scotlands GNI v GDP will explain why…

Joe, good for you, for attempting to have a serious balanced debate, so in that spirit

1. opposing UK military action in Syria

No- according to tata they were a potential plate steel subcontractor for one of the losing bids. Never saw much info on how much they hoped to supply, or even if they were assured of supplying anything, or if it was guaranteed to come from UK plants.

The Flying Ox – Member
Not meant in any way other than the phrase “no Scottish companies were involved…” is econimical with the truth

As is quoting something I never said! 😆

cheers thm! 🙂

As is quoting something I never said!

I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at here…

And regardless of that, the “weasel words” comment was referring to the statement from the Scottish Transport Minister which said that no UK companies were involved. I assumed you were quoting from that source (despite failing to attribute the quote…) 😉

Did they put in a bid to supply steel for the forth road? being involved with and actually putting in a bid are 2 very different things.

i was only quoting from something I heard elsewhere. tbh, i have no great knowledge. But i’m interested if people do, why I posted it to see if someone would counter it. I would like to know the truth, not get involved in headline grabbing snippets.

Isn’t that missing the point somewhat? The point being that the Scottish Government tendered out the management of the FRC project and followed all the relevant EU procurement rules. The cheapest tender came from the FRBC consortium. You can’t tell me that the Scottish Government just looked at the bottom line and said, “Yep, that’ll do” with no concern as to how that bottom line had been costed. They knew the steel was coming from China/Poland/Spain/not Scotland, but it wasn’t their problem. They could have managed the construction themselves. They would almost 100% guaranteed still arrived at the end result of Dalzell being uncompetitive from a financial perspective and therefore unsuccessful in any tender they may have put forth, but at least Holyrood could point to how their hands were tied by public procurement legislation from further up the food chain. It would have added tremendous weight to their separation/independence argument.

But no. Rather than actually having to do something unsavoury but ultimately beneficial to your cause, better to give the job to someone else – preferably Scottish so you can claim you’re “protecting Scottish jobs” – and then walk away from the mess. Ruthless.

BTW, I’m more than happy to have my opinion on this corrected.

I would like someone that knows about this to join into tbh.

The biggest mitigating circumstances I heard that the dalzell plant could only manage about 1/3rd of the capacity of the steel required and that even if they did, they would have made a loss on it.

tbh, with chinese steel, it’s a grim market for UK companies. We could subsidize them, but it’ll be long term subsidy in the face of Chinese steel and europeans also subsidizing their steel indistries.

It’s grim yip. And tbh, I don’t expect it to be the last. China is getting bigger and bigger. And with it’s cheap labour, it’ll become harder and harder to compete as the years go by.

It’s an utter ****. but what can you do in the face of that, subsidise or diverge/inovate into new industry is probably the only options.

As, just an opinion, but t just seems like a pretty grim situation all round.

i can’t really blame the Scottish government for it. it’s just a consequence of global economics.

And tbh, considering that the help that the steel industry was asking for, I don’t particularly blame the tories for being reluctant to help either.

It’s a terribly situation all round.

The Dalzell TATA situation is awful. I agree with flyingox that Dalzell should have have been considered even as a potential sub contractor for one of the bidders. However as flyingox concludes that

end result of Dalzell being uncompetitive from a financial perspective and therefore unsuccessful in any tender

What real benefit would have been gained from any extra consideration? How much time would this have taken? This is the proverbial lose-lose situation

I got to visit Clydebridge and Dalzell a few years ago – amazing places, but even then I got the impression that they were just hanging on. Back then it was Corus, and there was a feeling that these relatively small Scottish mills weren’t in a brilliant position WRT the larger mills down south. Since then, of course, the price of steel has almost halved and Chinese exports have gone up 50%.

Steelworks 58 by Ben Cooper[/url], on Flickr

It’s very sad for the people who work there – the skill base is immense, these machines may be computer controlled but it still needs very experienced operators to use them.

More pics:

Clydebridge & Dalzell Steelworks

Dalzell should have have been considered even as a potential sub contractor

Why? If what is said above is true that they couldn’t supply anything close to the required amount of steel, then why use them?

or if it was guaranteed to come from UK plants.

TATA’s International sales division didn’t even need to source from TATA, so even if they’d won the contract I’d be surprised if it was guaranteed to come from anywhere, let alone Scotland/UK.

I do feel sorry for the guys that have lost their jobs at the steel works all over the UK, however, unfortunately this is a cyclical oversupply issue and it will keep occurring every 10 years or so. Best way out is the way some of UK’s steel has gone and focus on the high end and value added products that places like China struggle to supply with the required quality.