Indian summer
06 Oct 2008
As Forward Wales focuses on how the country should be marketed on the international stage, a recent arrival to one of Wales’ key industries explains why one of Wales’ greatest assets is the Welsh people—a high quality workforce with a close affinity to community and the environment.
Uday Chaturvedi arrived from Tata Steel in India to take on the role as MD of Corus Strip Products UK (CSP UK), the steel business based in Port Talbot and Llanwern. CSP UK is the largest part of a business that turns over an estimated £2.5 billion in Wales and employs 8,000 people there.
“I’m aware of the great responsibility that my colleagues have taken on. Steel, like its industrial bedfellow, coal, is as Welsh as your daffodils, dragons and rugby football;” says Uday. “Our relationship with Wales is more like a marriage than a transaction. It is the beginning of a new, intimate relationship. For this reason, I say that the workforce and the community in Wales is a very important attraction to us and vital in our investment decision-making.”
Wales can be a world leader…
“Already, Wales holds a very special place in my heart,” says Mr Chaturvedi. “I have received a great warm welcome here, both professionally and outside the boundaries of the steelworks. Wales is a familiar place to me. When I first visited in the 1980s, the integrated steel works at Port Talbot was a world-leader. I came to hone my skills—capabilities that I have both drawn upon and refined throughout my career at Tata Steel. Now I am back in Wales again, and with global growth set to be between 5-6 percent, we should be looking to recreate this reputation.”
“The Welsh country was built on industry—manufacturing and creating wealth is in the heart and mind of the people. After all, it shaped the wide mass of the Welsh population, as it exists today. Around two years ago, when my colleagues at Tata Steel were looking to invest into Corus, one of the principal assets to us was the workforce—not just their expertise, but their potential for the future.”
…with investment and building on the qualities of the workforce
“I have been warned that It’s easy to be cynical about the clichéd archetypal Welshman—but I have found that the Welsh really are passionate, robust and committed. Propelled by emotion and resilience, there is a determination to overcome the elements and achieve in adversity. Our industry is a case-study for this. The experiences of the past half-century have been testing and even bitter for some, but we are richer for understanding now how industry fits into a modern formula for sustainability—prosperity, people, government and environment. Often we say that crisis brings out the best in people—the so-called Dunkirk spirit—but I am eager that the best comes out in people in a time of relative prosperity. In Corus we are calling this creating a crisis of aspiration.
“For steelworkers, change has not been an occasional inconvenience, it has been a demanding fact of life. When I returned to look at the South Wales steel industry in 2006, I saw the fruits of what I have heard sports-coaches refer to as the great quality of 'bouncebackability'. In the last decade the Welsh steel industry has made great leaps forward from very testing times. In 2002, a new blast furnace was built in record time, and a year later the Concast—another major technical project delivered to budget and on time—complemented this. Now Port Talbot steelworks is making more steel at higher quality in safer conditions and with less impact on the environment than ever before in its history—and I put this down to the people. In our environment, there has been an immense bounce-back achievement in Llanwern where we have defined a new strategy for this vitally important mill. When I arrived in South Wales this spring, I heard much about a Welsh Grand Slam. I could have been forgiven for thinking that this referred to the achievements of the workforce this year.
What we take from the community we must give back many-fold
There is another quality which, I believe, is very strong in Wales. Alongside capability and resilience is a critical affinity between the workforce and its surroundings. This fits with Tata’s vision in Corporate Citizenship, which is all about the vital role the industry plays as a heartbeat of a community and force for good for the environment. The community is not simply another business stakeholder that we need to engage with; it’s the very reason for our existence. It’s a holistic ideal and it drives our investment into reducing our environmental impact, reducing our carbon footprint, reducing the amount of energy and raw materials we use and improving lives for local people and the amenities of the community. It’s not just good business—these are our abiding principles. Sustainable communities need sustainable businesses.
