page_title: Port Talbot Steelworks
section_title: Abbey works
hierarchical_section_title: Port Talbot Steelworks / History / Abbey works
context_page_description: Port Talbot Steelworks is an integrated steel production plant in Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, Wales, capable of producing nearly 5 million tonnes of steel slab per annum. This makes it the larger of the two major steel plants in the UK and one of the largest in Europe. Over 4,000 people work at the plant. The majority of the slab is rolled on-site at Port Talbot and at the Newport Llanwern site to make a variety of steel strip products. The remainder is processed at other Tata Steel plants or sold in slab form. The works covers a large area of land which dominates the south of the town. Its two blast furnaces and steel production plant buildings are major landmarks visible from both the M4 motorway and the South Wales Main Line when passing through the town.
context_section_description: Abbey Steelworks was planned in 1947, but today is correctly termed Tata Steel Strip Products UK Port Talbot Works. It is believed to be named after the Cistercian Margam Abbey that used to be on the site – a small amount of the original building still stands (protected) within the site that survived the dissolution of the monasteries. Several steel manufacturers in South Wales pooled their resources to form the Steel Company of Wales, to construct a modern integrated steelworks on a site then owned by Guest, Keen and Baldwins. However, political manoeuvring led to tinplate production being retained in its original heartland further west, at two new works in Trostre and Felindre. Opened in 1951, it was fully operational by 1953.
  Once the new No.4 and 5 furnaces began production, the older furnaces, numbers 1 and 2 built in the 1920s, were demolished. No.3 furnace, built in 1941, was retained and used as a stand-by, until demolished in the mid-2000s. At the time of peak employment in the 1960s, the Abbey Works was Europe's largest steelworks and the largest single employer in Wales, with a labour force of 18,000.
  In 1967, The Steel Company of Wales was nationalised and absorbed into British Steel Corporation, which was subsequently privatised and merged to form Corus Group. Tata Group agreed to purchase all Corus' ordinary shares in March 2007, and the deal was concluded in April 2007.  In 2010 it was announced that Corus was to be rebranded to the group name of Tata Steel Europe.
caption: Ironworks at Port Talbot
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