The 42-inch-tube mill, on the edge of Hartlepool Bay, is one of three at the site that Tata eventually expects to feed into its £2m ($3.2m) Offshore Processing Centre (OPC), opened last month, where steel tubes would be prepared for welding into ready-to-assemble wind turbine substructures.
Tata Steel, which supplies the oil and gas, construction, automotive and aerospace industries, hopes that rising demand for offshore turbines means tubulars rolling out of the factory will soon be used in jacket and tower construction.
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