Spanish company gets OK for scrap processing expansion

The Celsa Steel UK subsidiary of Spain-based electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaker Celsa has received the approval of a planning board in Rotherham, United Kingdom, to install scrap shearing equipment in that English city.

An August online article by the Rotherham Business News indicates opposition expressed to the town council and its planning board came from competing scrap recycling firms, including CF Booth Ltd., which refers to itself as “Rotherham’s oldest metal recycler.”

Celsa Steel UK operates an EAF mill in Cardiff, Wales, in the U.K., and reportedly submitted its plans earlier this year to add the shear to create 75,000 metric tons per year of scrap processing capacity to help supply its mill.

The Business News says the city’s planners determined, “The industrial nature of the process would not conflict with existing operations on adjacent sites. Accordingly, the proposals are considered to be acceptable in principle.”

The objection from CF Booth Ltd. said the new facility would put some of its employees at risk of losing their jobs, stating the new facility would “would completely crush us and many other metal recyclers, large and small, in South Yorkshire.”

The planners countered, however, that “the loss of trade to a competitor or competition is not a material planning consideration and therefore cannot be taken into consideration in this instance,” according to the news report.