The line will be part of the brand-new Pickle Line being built at Tata Steel’s site in Port Talbot as the company progresses with its £1.25 billion journey to low CO2 steelmaking.

The new plant is designed to meet the highest environmental standards and support the planned capacity expansion of the site’s pickling line. The ARP will recover and recycle the Hydrochloric Acid that is used to clean coils of hot rolled steel strip before it is cold rolled for a wide range of demanding applications from cars to cladding, and lintels to washing machines. 

ARP Project Manager Paul Boxer explained: “The new plant will be a closed-loop system that will regenerate the used acid, providing a consistent quality acid, removing the need for importing vast quantities of acid from overseas and exporting the spent liquids.

Programme Manager Andrew McGregor, added: “This is a big step to decarbonise our pickling operations, with the significant reduction of acid deliveries from Europe though to the ability to recover and reuse the acid once the new facility is commissioned. 
“So, not only is this good news for our own process stability and costs, it’s also good for the environment, reducing our acid deliveries and collections from around 25 tankers a week to maybe 2 or 3 a month.”

Stefan Mitterecker from Andritz AG added: “Thank you for the trust in Andritz! With great confidence we can now proceed into execution of this project. We are very much looking forward to it.”

The new plant is due to be built from January 2027, for commissioning later that year.