Indian steel giant Tata Steel has announced that its UK operations Tata Steel UK Limited, formerly named Corus, received a partial final award in its favor on January 5, 2011 in an ongoing arbitration proceeding with certain off-takers of its Teesside Cast Products Plant.
Tata Steel statement read, "The arbitral tribunal amongst other things found that the off-takers did not validly terminate their off-take agreements. The arbitration proceedings are being held under the auspices of the International Court of Arbitration. The arbitration proceedings will now move to the next phase of determining the amount of damages."
As SteelOrbis previously reported, the decision to mothball the then Corus' Teesside Cast Products Plant in the UK had followed efforts by the company 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 3 million mt capacity plant's production for 10 years. Teesside Cast Products plant, which provided 1,600 jobs, is currently in the process of being sold to Thai steelmaker Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI).
The global financial crisis caused a huge decrease in production at Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, which was bought by Tata Steel in 2007.