British Steel on track for Egypt

British Steel has won a contract to supply railway tracks for Egypt, the company announced.

The deal involves producing approximately 9,500 tons of rails at British Steel’s Scunthorpe works for the Green Line railway linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

The route will be Egypt’s first fully-electrified mainline and freight network, with trains capable of reaching 250 kilometres per hour.

“We are delighted that British Steel will be involved in such a transformational project for Egypt,” the company’s Commercial manager Jerome Bonif said.

Without disclosing the sums involved, he revealed that supplying rails for the 660-kilometre network would involve “multimillions.”

The April 2 announcement followed February 2024’s protests over future job cuts in Scunthorpe if blast furnaces were closed and replaced with an environmentally-acceptable electric arc furnace in line with British Steel’s objectives of creating “a green and sustainable company.”

These plans would put up to 2,000 people out of work, the unions warned.

Meanwhile, owners China’s Jingye Group maintained earlier that it had invested £330 million (€385.3 million) in steelmaking in the UK.

The first shipment of track will be sent from Britain to Alexandria in North Egypt in April with a further delivery scheduled for June.