Britain’s largest steel mill will end production later on Monday, when the last blast furnace at Port Talbot in Wales closes after more than 100 years of steelmaking, with the loss of nearly 3,000 jobs.

The closure of the last blast furnace at Port Talbot, once Europe’s largest steel mill, caps decades of decline in the British steel industry, which has struggled to compete with low-cost imports.

In a demonstration of the scale of the challenge, Indian-owned Tata Steel was losing £1 million a day before it began closing its facilities.

The Tata Steel-owned site will now undergo a three- to four-year decarbonisation plan to build an electric arc furnace that will make steel from scrap, a £1.25 billion ($1.68 billion) project backed by £500 million in UK government funding.

Britain’s move to net zero is changing the country’s industrial landscape.

In central England, 200 miles from Port Talbot, Britain’s last coal-fired power plant is also due to close on Monday, ending more than 140 years of coal power.

The Steelworkers’ Union said in a statement that the recent blast furnace closure was “the end of an era”, calling it “a very sad and emotional day”.

Another company, Chinese-owned British Steel, continues to make crude steel at two blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, northern England, but is also in talks with the government about shifting to cleaner manufacturing.

The government has said it wants to invest £2.5bn in the steel industry and will publish a strategy on its plans to boost the sector next spring.

The shift to electric steelmaking is expected to cut Britain’s carbon emissions by 1.5%, with the Port Talbot coal-fired plant the country’s biggest carbon emitter.