The mothballing of the Teesside Cast Products (TCP) blast furnace in Redcar, UK, owned by Indian steelmaker Tata Steel's subsidiary Corus, will start on Friday, the British press has reported. The decision to mothball TCP is going to cause the loss of 1,700 jobs at the plant, and the city council predicts that a further 8,000 jobs could be lost at surrounding companies in Redcar.
The company had postponed the partial mothballing of the plant from the end of January to the end of February after a meeting with union leaders in mid-January.
The decision to mothball TCP follows efforts by Corus over eight months to secure a long-term future for the plant after the failure of four international slab buyers to fulfill their obligations under a 10-year contract that they signed with Corus in 2004. This contract committed the consortium in question to buying about 80 percent of the plant's production for ten years.
The global financial crisis caused a huge decrease in production at Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, which was bought by Tata Steel in 2007. Tata Group has found it difficult to run a 3 million mt capacity steel plant without any customers or without a long-term strategic partner, the company has stated at various times.