production, the older furnaces, numbers 1 and 2 built in the 1920s, were demolished. No.3 furnace, built in 1941, was retained and used as a stand-by, until demolished in the mid-2000s. At the time of peak employment in the 1960s, the Abbey Works was Europe's largest steelworks and the largest single employer in Wales, with a labour force of 18,000. In 1967, The Steel Company of Wales was nationalised and absorbed into British Steel Corporation, which was subsequently privatised and merged to form Corus Group. Tata Group agreed to purchase all Corus' ordinary shares in March 2007, and the deal was concluded in April 2007. In 2010 it was announced that Corus was to be rebranded to the group name of Tata Steel Europe. Today An integrated steelmaking site using imported ore and coal, together with Llanwern steelworks, the plants produced up to 3.5 million tonnes of hot rolled and cold rolled annealed steel coils per annum, for a variety of different end uses. Output is taken by rail from Margam Knuckle Yard to: Shotton for coating; Trostre for tinplating; or direct to the Midlands motor industry and domestic goods. Top Gear have used the Port Talbot steelworks a number of times to film. Financial challenges Tata Steel announced on 30 March 2016 it may pull out of its UK operations, including Port Talbot. It provided as reasons "imports of Chinese steel, high energy costs and weak demand ". "Plans to save the steelworks were put on hold when potential buyers indicated their intention to withdraw from the bidding process due to the UK voting in favour of withdrawing from the EU" . However, the Brexit vote had the opposite effect with Tata Steel reconfirming commitment to the self-sustaining finance of its UK operations, while selling the EU - Netherlands operations. The UK Government said it "remains committed to supporting a sustainable, long-term future for steel making in the UK". Fatal accidents An explosion at the Port Talbot plant in November 2001 killed three men. Len Radford, 53, Stephen Galsworthy, 25, and Andrew Hutin, 20, died when blast furnace five erupted, sending molten liquid down on them. Twelve other men were seriously injured in the blast. The blast heavily damaged No.5, which was rebuilt and resumed operation from 2003 onwards. In July 2012 Tata Steel were fined £500,000 over the 2006 death of worker Kevin Downey at the Port Talbot