London/New Delhi, Feb 18 (Inditop.com) British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Thursday there are several potential buyers interested in acquiring a Tata-owned steel plant in northeast England but confirmed any purchase will come too late to roll back plans to mothball the plant Friday.
Brown’s statement came amid a flurry of last-minute activity to save the Corus Teesside Cast Products (TCP) plant in Redcar from being mothballed – a step that would throw 1,600 workers out of their jobs, with a possible 8,000 more job losses in the local supply chain.
Brown said “a number of companies” had expressed an interest in buying the plant, adding he had spoken to the Indian parent company Tata Steel and Corus chief Kirby Adams.
“A lot of work is being done behind the scenes. Mothballing will unfortunately have to go ahead,” he said.
With the threat of a strike looming just months ahead of British general elections due by early June, the Corus move prompted a dash to Teesside – a region with a 150-year history of steel making – by Britain’s number two in the cabinet, Lord Peter Mandelson.
Informed sources in New Delhi told IANS Mandelson’s junior minister Pat McFadden may have met Tata executives on the sidelines of a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in the Indian capital Tuesday, but that a formal meeting could not be set up despite efforts.
Terry Pye, who heads the steel section in Britain’s largest workers’ union Unite, raised the possibility of industrial action, saying: “We will be calling on our members at the other Corus sites to take strategic action to force the company to take heed to the offers it is receiving to save the plant.”
Corus says it was forced to take the decision after an international consortium of four companies “illegally” reneged on an agreement last April to buy 78 percent of the steel slabs produced at the plant for 10 years.
“There has been speculation about potential last-minute bidders for the plant,” said a Corus spokesman.
“Corus’s position remains unchanged. This is a mothballing, not a permanent closure. TCP will be kept ready for a restart. Corus remains open to credible offers for TCP.”
But Pye said: “Unite believe the mothballing of Corus’s Teesside site is a disgraceful charade. The union has reason to suspect that Corus never had any intention of selling this plant and they intend to close the site, which will have a devastating effect on the community.”
An additional problem arises from the fact that the British government faces restrictions over what it can offer to potential bidders – including incentives such as wage subsidies – because of European Union rules on state aid.
McFadden told British MPs in December last year that despite the failure of Corus and the consortium to resurrect their agreement, Corus has “tried to keep the plant alive”.
