Contractors working on the High Speed 2 (HS2) project bought steel from nine different nations in the year to April 2023, official data has revealed.
Poland, Belarus and Turkey were listed among the countries of origin for ferrous material supplied to the rapid rail project in that period.
France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy also appeared on official inspection certificates, as did the UK.
The detail emerged as the Department for Business and Trade published a breakdown of public steel procurement for 2022/23.
Almost £160m was spent on the material by contractors working for HS2 alone, the report showed. This represented more than a third of the total £470m of steel procured by the government that year.
An HS2 spokesperson told Construction News: “Steel for Britain’s’ new high speed rail network will mostly be bought by HS2 contractors for a whole range of uses including tunnels, bridges and overhead power equipment. To date, the UK steel industry has benefited from HS2 orders worth over £100m.”
“HS2 Ltd has met with the UK Steel Board and pledged to work with UK Steel members. We will continue to work with our contractors to promote opportunities for the UK steel industry.”
Highways England, Network Rail and the Ministry of Defence were among other bodies purchasing the material.
They were joined by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, UK Research and Innovation, the Environment Agency, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Education, and the National Health Service.
UK Steel calculated that almost £300m of the material was purchased from UK sources with buyers reporting that some £15m of that shipped in from abroad could have been produced domestically.
UK Steel director-general Gareth Stace said: “It is brilliant to see public projects are increasingly made with British-made steel, and improvements are made to future forecast demand alongside better origin data for steel.
“We look forward to our continued partnership with the government on this programme as UK steelmakers aim to offer more and more steel to the projects that make up the backbone of our society, from new hospitals to schools and defence purposes.
“However, there is a significant amount of work to do to ensure UK steelmakers are given the opportunity to demonstrate their capability and capacity to support our green energy transition – even more comprehensive data on renewables must be included in next year’s pipeline.”
HS2 chiefs were in 2021 forced to defend their use of steel reinforcement from a French fabricator, citing a lack of suitable UK suppliers for material needed for ventilation shafts on the Chiltern tunnels.
A survey of 750 built environmental professionals released earlier this year predicted structural steelwork consumption in the UK to drop over the three years to 2026.
HS2 has been contacted for comment on the latest procurement data.
