Tata Steel has announced that it is carefully evaluating the support package offered by the British government for the steel industry. The package, which is expected to be worth 600 million pounds, is aimed at supporting the transition to greener, less carbon-intensive steelmaking, and is expected to include around 300 million pounds for Tata Steel, to introduce green furnaces at its UK operations.

The company has previously warned that it could be forced to shut down its operations in the UK if it did not receive support in its move towards greener steelmaking. Tata Steel is the largest steelworks in Wales and employs around 8,000 people in the UK. The move is also aimed at protecting thousands of jobs in Britain’s industrial heartlands.

This comes as the government is seeking to align the steel industry with the UK’s legally binding climate action commitment to massively reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades. Central to the government offer of support are the companies’ blast furnaces, which are a major source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Last week, the UK’s Unite workers’ union wrote to Business Secretary Grant Shapps to warn that the steel industry faces huge job losses unless action is taken. “We are, in the words of many, ‘a whisker away from collapse’,” Steve Turner, Unite’s assistant general secretary, wrote in his letter.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has said that it is working closely with the steel industry to secure a sustainable and competitive future. Any government support package is expected to be dependent on pledges of investment from the steel companies and a guarantee that their plants will continue to operate to at least 2030.