The UK has appropriated its last working steelworks, following fears its former Chinese owners would shut it down.<\/p>\n
Published On 17 Jul 202617 Jul 2026<\/p>\n
Beijing has warned the United Kingdom that its nationalisation of British Steel has \u201cseverely undermined\u201d Chinese companies\u2019 confidence in investing in the UK.<\/p>\n
The UK nationalised the loss-making company on Thursday in what the government said was a move taken to protect national interests.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
British Steel is the only source of primary steelmaking in the UK. It supports approximately 2,700 jobs across its main steelworks in Scunthorpe and across the wider supply chain.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s former owner, Jingye \u2013 which is among the 100 biggest companies in China \u2013 bought British Steel for 70 million pounds ($94m) in 2020. By 2025, Jingye said it was losing 700,000 pounds ($942,000) every day.<\/p>\n
British Steel\u2019s nationalisation has been in the works for more than a year.<\/p>\n
In March 2025, Jingye carried out a consultation that concluded that the British Steel furnaces were not financially sustainable. The following month, it emerged that Jingye had cancelled orders for a key material used in the steelmaking process, stoking fears that it was planning to shut down the blast furnaces.<\/p>\n
That month, the UK government seized operational control of British Steel from Jingye to stop that from happening. The Chinese company retained ownership, but lost operational control.<\/p>\n
Thursday, though, saw ownership officially transfer to the UK government, which says it will appoint an independent valuer to \u201cassess whether any compensation is payable\u201d to Jingye.<\/p>\n
The process has angered Beijing. The expropriation of British Steel \u201cseriously damaged\u201d Jingye\u2019s legitimate rights and interests and \u201cseverely undermined\u201d Chinese companies\u2019 confidence in investing in the UK, China\u2019s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Friday.<\/p>\n
The UK, the ministry said, has \u201cforcibly\u201d taken over the company and \u201cdisregarded\u201d Jingye\u2019s contributions to the British economy and society.<\/p>\n
The ministry urged the UK to fulfil obligations under the China-UK Investment Protection Agreement and said it would assist Chinese companies in protecting their rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK has appropriated its last working steelworks, following fears its former Chinese owners would shut it down.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1296,891,1294,591,59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-696070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-asia-pacific","tag-china","tag-economy","tag-europe","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}