It wasn’t inevitable that the rail for Turkey’s new Ankara–İzmir high-speed railway would come from Scunthorpe. British Steel competed in an international market against rivals from across Europe and beyond — and it won. The eight-figure contract with ERG International Group, covering 36,000 tonnes of rail for the 599km line, is a competitive achievement that says as much about the plant’s capability as it does about any commercial deal.
Winning international rail contracts is not easy. The product must meet exacting technical specifications. The supplier must have the capacity to deliver at scale. The price must be competitive. And the customer must trust that the supplier can deliver consistently, over time and across thousands of tonnes of material. British Steel, supported by UK Export Finance, met all of these tests.
The practical results in Scunthorpe are striking: 23 new jobs and 24-hour production restarted for the first time in over a decade. Turkey’s Ankara–İzmir railway is one of the country’s most ambitious infrastructure projects — electric, high-speed, and designed to cut travel times and carbon emissions — and British Steel is at its heart.
UK Steel has praised the deal as a demonstration of British Steel’s world-class capability and a key step toward a sustainable turnaround. The director general called for structural support — on energy costs and import protections — to ensure that the competitive advantage demonstrated in winning this contract can be maintained and built upon.
The financial challenges remain: £1.2 million a day in losses, £359 million in total government costs. But for one international tender, at least, British Steel beat the world. The question now is how to build on that, and turn a competitive win into long-term viability.