A Cardiff steelmaker that melts recycled scrap in an electric arc furnace to make reinforcing bar, wire rod and sections for UK construction.
Celsa UK, also called Celsa Steel UK, makes steel from scrap metal rather than from raw ore. At its Cardiff site it melts scrap in an electric arc furnace, a furnace that uses electricity, and rolls the steel into reinforcing bar, wire rod, merchant bar and sections. Rebar is the ribbed steel bar buried inside concrete in buildings, bridges and roads. According to a trade magazine interview from November 2022, the site could make over a million tonnes of steel a year, its products contained 98 per cent recycled content and every bar was marked UK.
Celsa UK is part of the Celsa Group, a family-owned Spanish steel and recycling business, and it had been making steel in the UK for nearly 20 years at the time of that interview. A construction trade headline from April 2025 reports that a Czech energy businessman bought the UK's biggest rebar supplier, so ownership may have changed since; we did not read the full report and cannot confirm details.
In its own words, the company says it supports a strong, sustainable UK steel economy and wants to show actual circularity, meaning that steel is made, used, collected and made again inside the UK. Its recycling division, CELSA Recycling UK, supplies over a million tonnes of scrap a year to the furnace. The interview described work on hydrogen to replace natural gas in its reheating furnaces and energy-saving methods such as hot charging.
The UK footprint is the Cardiff melt shop and mills, scrapyards in Sunderland and Rotherham whose scrap travels to Cardiff by train, and what the company calls five circular hubs, whose locations we could not read. The 2022 interview said the Cardiff site employed over 900 people, which is an older figure. The company says it invests heavily in training and development, and that is its own claim.
Celsa says its rebar is graded B 500 C, which is a British Standard grade, and suitable for nuclear construction, so quality testing matters a great deal. Careers in a steel recycler are wide. There are furnace and mill operators, maintenance engineers and electricians, metallurgists and quality testers, drivers and rail logistics staff, scrap traders and recycling technicians, sustainability and energy specialists, health and safety officers, and commercial, finance and HR teams. If you care about the environment and like practical engineering, a business that turns old cars and cans into the steel for new buildings is a good example of the circular economy in action.
Website: www.celsauk.com
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