Tata Steel Europe Limited has made an investment of £3 million in its steelworks operations in North Wales in an effort to boost quality and environmental credentials.

The investment will be made in the company’s Shotton Works plant in Deeside for upgrading its two Colorcoat paint lines. The upgrade will help bring down the use of paint by 650,000 litres per annum.

According to Tata Steel Europe, the new finish coater heads on Colorcoat No.1 line has been now commissioned, while work on Colorcoat No.2 is likely to be wrapped up in June 2023.

The Shotton Works plant manufactures nearly 500,000 tonnes of metallic coated and pre-finished steel per annum, which is used for building envelope, consumer, and domestic applications.

Dave Prytherch — Lead Engineer for the project said: “Coater heads are fundamental to the Colorcoat production process, being used to apply paint to the steel strip substrate. Upgrading them will deliver greater control of the paint application process by improving how the paint is transferred onto the strip, and will give us infinite repeatability.

“The current coater heads rely on manual adjustments to set the paint thickness, whereas the new heads incorporate a servo motor control, which will provide much greater accuracy and safer hands-free operations.”

  Dave Prytherch, Deeside, North Wales, Tata Group, Tata Steel, Tata Steel Europe