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- By Charles Miller
It was an unseasonally warm Saturday in early spring with clear blue skies, when British parliamentarians were pulled away from family and constituency work to attend a rare emergency sitting of Parliament on April 12.
Their task? To stop the surreptitious sabotage, and destruction, of the UK’s last remaining virgin-steel blast furnace at Scunthorpe, and rescue the British steel industry.
Scunthorpe, in the north-east, has been a hub of steel production for over 150 years, and provides about 70 per cent of Britain’s requirements.
In 2020 the Chinese steel conglomerate Jingye purchased Scunthorpe from receivership, pledging to invest 1.2 billion pounds to modernise and upgrade the facility.
This failed to materialise, and in April, 2025, Chinese-owned Jingye Group ceased ordering raw materials for Scunthorpe’s blast furnaces, effectively initiating shutdown.
Suspecting strategic sabotage, the UK Parliament convened the emergency session and passed the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act 2025, allowing Government intervention to prevent closure.
This action preserved the UK’s only virgin-steel capacity and brought to the fore the risks of foreign ownership in strategic industries.
Since the Thatcher era, UK steel production has been in steady decline.
Privatisation, deregulation, and an ideological fervour for global comparative advantage led policymakers to favour cheaper imported steel over domestic investment.
As global supply chains expanded, Britain ceded more and more production capacity to lower-cost countries, prioritising ‘cheap’ over ‘sustainable and secure’, leaving sites like Scunthorpe increasingly exposed.
Scunthorpe’s near collapse was the result of failing to read the signs.
Long before Covid, Brexit, or Trump, the world was shifting.
Yet Britain clung to a failing globalist model, surrendering control of key assets without strategic context.
When shocks hit, they lacked resilience.
Strategic self-reliance means retaining capacity, control, and clarity, before it’s too late.
This is as important for business owners in New Zealand as it is for the industrial powerhouses of the global north.
For small businessowners, control of the future is just as existential as it is for a steel plant.
To the greatest extent possible, own your assets, protect your IP, avoid contracts that dilute or negate your agency and maintain wherever possible a ‘steel’ clad balance sheet.
Relinquishing control, even in pursuit of growth, can ultimately cost you your business.
Equally vital is stakeholder management.
Whether it’s a supplier, regulator, staff member or investor, success depends on mutual understanding.
What do they value? What do you need? Are your goals aligned?
This isn’t transactional, it’s strategic, and honest dialogue, shared plans, and regular check-ins are essential.
When things change, and they will, it’s these relationships that determine whether you adapt or unravel. Stakeholder alignment is earned, not assumed.
Strategic drift happens slowly, but then suddenly.
The businesses that endure are those that invest in skills, systems, and relationships that equip them to thrive in an unknown future.
Futureproofing does not mean predicting the future.
It means building a business with the flexibility and capability to thrive in uncertainty, a business that makes deliberate, consistent, forward-looking decisions, a business with you in control.
