The UK government was working hard on Monday to save the country's last primary steelmaking plant, after taking over British Steel during the weekend.
On Saturday, following an emergency parliamentary sitting, officials took control of the company, which continues to be owned by China's Jingye, with full nationalisation still a possibility.
Jingye, which bought British Steel in 2019 from private equity firm Greybull, had declined government support to keep the Scunthorpe plant running.
Jingye also failed to stockpile enough raw materials - principally iron ore and coking coal - to keep the two Scunthorpe blast furnaces burning. If the furnaces cool too much, they could be irreparably damaged.
In a statement on Monday, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: "When I said steelmaking has a future in the UK, I meant it. That’s why we’ve passed these new powers to save British Steel at Scunthorpe, and that’s why my team are already hard at work on the ground to keep jobs going and furnaces burning.
"Steel is vital for our national security and our ambitious plans for the housing, infrastructure and manufacturing sectors in the UK. We will set out a long-term plan to co-invest with the private sector to ensure steel in the UK has a bright and sustainable future."
Treasury minister James Murray later added that the government was "doing everything we can" to get the raw materials to the site in time, telling Sky News that the coal "is in the UK" but much remained to be done.
"There’s a process of getting it into the blast furnaces. There’s a slight limit on what I can say because of commercial decisions being taken, but we’re doing everything we can to get that coal into the blast furnaces to make sure that the operations continue."
Following accusations that China had sabotaged the plant, Reynolds refused to make accusations of Chinese state interference but said Jingye had not been acting "in the kind of rational way we’d expect a company to operate in a market economy".
GMB trade union general secretary Gary Smith confirmed that British Steel workers had acted to stop Jingye from gaining access to the plant.
"We were worried about industrial vandalism and there was a worry about sabotage on the site, quite frankly," he said. "And yesterday, workers did prevent executives from the Chinese owners from going on site."
British Steel last operated under public ownership in 1988, before being privatised by Margaret Thatcher.