Annelies Janse
Annelies guides visitors across the Tata Steel site. As the bus passes factories and installations, she explains what happens here — and why nothing exists in isolation. Change one part, and the effects ripple throughout the whole.
She has worked at the company for nearly twenty-five years. Not by design, but by circumstance. She started through an employment agency as a management assistant in Research & Development. From there, she moved through various roles, including the commercial department for packaging steel. She dealt with orders, customers, and logistics. She knows the process well, though for a long time she remained on the office side. The factories were always there, but rarely up close.
“You fall into it,” she says. “Into a working life that stays.”
Since January 2024, she has been guiding visitors on-site. That means learning again: routes, installations, names of factories, the pace of a place that is constantly in motion. “A lot falls into place,” she says. “But you also have to literally see it.”
The groups she receives vary widely: clients and suppliers, school pupils and students, journalists, policymakers, local residents.
Some come curious, others critical.
“Many people have never really thought about how steel is made.”
During the tours, she tries to show connections. The site is not a collection of separate parts, but a chain. “Every plant is a link. If you intervene somewhere, it affects everything downstream.” Visitors often leave with more questions than answers — not necessarily with a different opinion, but with a deeper sense of how complex a steel plant is.
Annelies herself lives near the plant. She recognises the concerns about environment and health. “It’s heavy industry,” she says. “You can’t make that look prettier than it is.” At the same time, she stresses that no one within the company deliberately wants to cause harm. “We live here too. No one benefits from damaging their own environment.”
Because visitors ask about it, she closely follows the news around Tata Steel. Topics such as coke plants, permits, measurements, and the pace of greening come up frequently. About the plans for green steel, she is cautiously optimistic. “It’s a massive project. Everything is large: the installations, the investments, the procedures. That takes time.”
This period is further complicated by the announced reorganisation. Hundreds of jobs will disappear. The tension is palpable in her own work environment. “You work here with heart and soul. And then suddenly you hear that cuts are coming.” It affects not just roles, but the people she has worked with for years.
She speaks about activist groups and environmental organisations in a nuanced way. She sees the importance of external pressure, but sometimes struggles with the tone.
“Drawing attention is necessary,” she says.
“But when anger takes over the conversation, you lose each other.” She does not believe in a strict us-versus-them narrative. “We need each other to move forward.”
What defines her work is explaining without simplifying.
Not defending, not glossing over — but showing how things fit together. “We all use steel. We build, live, and exist with it. So we have to figure out together how to do that as responsibly as possible.”
Her role sits precisely there: between technology and the public, between questions and explanations, in the middle of a company that is changing — while its future remains open.