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Luke Keogh, 20, was the third generation of his family to find work at the steelworks in Port Talbot, but the first generation to be laid off. “I was devastated when I found out. This was my first proper job out of college,” he said. “My dad’s been here nearly 30 years and my grandpa was here, too.”

Port Talbot, a town of 37,000 that sits near Swansea on the Welsh coast, has been a steelmaking stronghold since the 1900s. The lossmaking Tata Steel plant that plans to lay off 750 of its 4,000 workers, as well as ageny staff such as Mr Keogh, was once Abbey Works, the most advanced facility in Europe when it opened in 1951. It remains the UK’s biggest plant, able to produce nearly 5m tons of steel a year for cars, food cans, kitchen appliances and engineering.

A derelict cinema painted with a mural of its most famous sons — actors Sir Anthony Hopkins, Michael Sheen and the late Sir Richard Burton — bears testament to Port Talbot’s heyday.

But years of under-investment followed and in the early 1980s the workforce was effectively halved. Nearly 6,000 people were laid off as British Steel restructured. Tata spent £185m rebuilding a blast furnace in 2013, but the decline in global steel prices has hit hard, and there is little money for short-term maintenance and upgrades.

“Steel was the making of Port Talbot. Now it’s the breaking of it,” said Julie Halpin, a pensioner whose father was a steelworker. “It used to be bustling but it’s been reduced to a ghost town since I was young.”

Thirty years ago, car factories, oil refineries, chemical works and local councils picked up workers who left the steelworks. “A lot of people were retired off with a considerable lump sum. My father took early retirement at 53,” said Graham Rowland, who is in his 37th year at the plant. “There weren’t plenty of jobs but there were some — more than today,” he added.

In 2012, when 500 jobs were cut, some workers emigrated to find work. Gary Keogh, Luke’s father, knows one who went to Qatar.

But the transition to an economy that is not dependent on the fire and smoke of the blast furnaces has been difficult. The steelworks pays some of the highest salaries in the region and many shops, restaurants and small traders rely on its workers.

Peter Eaton, an independent butcher on the high street, said he had seen an immediate fall in business. “Straight away it’s already dead. People are scared to spend their money. I’ve been here 30 years and it’s just dwindling down and down. I can’t see my own job lasting much longer,” he added.

At Fairwood Fabrications, a metal engineering company that supplies the plant, 150 positions are at risk. “We are part of the family with Tata — when they bleed, we bleed,” said Mark Coia, its chief executive.

Some investment is still flowing into Port Talbot. On the site of a former BP petrochemical works, also once a big employer, is Baglan Bay Energy Park. An initiative led by the local council with European funding, it aims to lure high-tech manufacturing, software and alternative energy businesses. It has attracted international companies and tenants include a paper mill producing toilet paper, an oil and gas technology company and a beauty products maker, with a total workforce of about 2,000.

Steve Phillips, the chief executive of Neath and Port Talbot council, believes the area can also act as a magnet for technology and services for the nearby planned £1bn Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon power project. “This isn’t about replacing steel — it’s about improving [our] economic resilience,” he said.

Meanwhile, Tata is a partner in a government-backed centre called Specific, which attempts to commercialise academic research into buildings that generate their own electricity. One of its projects uses Port Talbot steel with special coatings to make “printed” solar panels on roof cladding. The company, BIPVco, has set up manufacturing facilities in north Wales, on Tata’s colour coating site.

But Calvin Jones, professor of economics at the University of Cardiff, said such schemes struggle to fill the employment gap left by years of deindustrialisation in the region.

“There is a skills mismatch in the population, not just in Port Talbot but South Wales more broadly. Most people just aren’t qualified for those highly skilled and technical jobs,” he said.

While manufacgturing empployment in the area is double the national rate, many of those departing the steelworks are unable to move up the value chain, and are faced with lower paid jobs in the service sector or retail. Starting salaries at the plant are said to be about £30,000.

In Redcar, Teeside, where 2,200 employees and 1,000 contractors lost their jobs at the Sahaviriya Steel Industries UK steelworks last autumn, more than half are still seeking work. Last week, Anna Turley, Labour MP for Redcar, said many had failed to get training because of the sudden spike in demand, despite £50m of government money aimed at reinvigorating the local economy.

At Port Talbot, Luke Keogh hopes a crane licence will help him find work at a nearby sandstone quarry. “I imagine it would be quite well paid, they do long weekends and bank holidays,” he said.
Additional reporting by Chris Tighe