Tata Steel has sought urgent policy intervention from the UK government to support its British business in line with the actions of the European Union which proposed to increase tariff and slash duty free quota on steel imports.

The company said it would not be able to reach positive EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and interest) — a measure of operational profitability — by the end of this fiscal year as projected earlier without the support from the Keir Starmer government.

Tata Steel reported an EBITDA loss of ₹765 crore in the September quarter, compared with ₹471 crore in the previous three months on Wednesday. T.V. Narendran, MD and CEO of the company, told analysts that Tata Steel has done its bit to take out costs and its now up to the UK government to “take some actions”.

The company decommissioned the structurally weak blast furnace-led operations at Port Talbot, Wales in 2024, costing thousands of jobs. It kicked off construction of a 3 million tonne capacity electric arc furnace earlier this year for £1.25 billion with a grant of £500 million from the British government. At this point, Tata is importing semi-finished steel to the UK before processing it further for customers’ needs.

Pointing towards the EU proposals to double tariff on imported steel to 50 per cent and cut tariff free import quota by half, Narendran said, “The UK government also needs to take some actions. “If there are no actions from the government, just by our own actions, it would be difficult to get to EBIDTA breakeven by Q4,” the MD told the analysts.

Koushik Chatterjee, executive director & CFO, who was in the call observed that prices prevailing in the UK are “very very un-sustainable” at this time. “We need policy intervention from a protection point of view,” he argued.

The management said the UK government is looking at the proposals but admitted London is behind the curve of Brussels in terms of policy support.

The ask of the steel companies in the UK from the Labour government is to reduce import quota now and then kick off consultation of carbon border adjustment mechanism.

In contrast, the Netherlands operations are going to benefit from the EU actions on steel from the fourth quarter onwards. The annual price contracts with the customers for 2026 will factor in market dynamics of higher tariff, lower quota leading to better prices for producers.