Corus closure threatensTeesport jobs

The jobs of 120 workers at PD Ports’ Teesport facility have been cast in doubt after steel producer Corus announced it would partially mothball its Teesside plant.

The steel producer said Redcar Blast Furnace, Lackenby steelmaking and the South Bank Coke Ovens would be mothballed at the end of January 2010 because four international slab buyers failed to fulfil their obligations under a 10-year contract, which accounted for 80% of the plant’s production volumes.

However, Corus intended to keep open a number of operations, including the Redcar Wharf, Redcar Coke Ovens and some of the power-generating capacity.

In the summer, PD Ports wrote to workers to tell them it may need to make up to 120 redundancies because Corus had threatened to close Teesside Cast Products and because of recession-related volume reductions.

At the time CEO David Robinson told IFW: “No decisions are going to be made until we’ve got certainty over what’s going to happen with the Corus plant and a clear outlook on our business.”

Since PD Ports sent the letters out in the summer, it has won new contracts, which, along with the fact Corus is keeping certain parts of the facility open, may have an impact on the number of job losses.

In July, PD Ports welcomed UK government approval for it to build a wood-fuelled power station at its Teesport facility, which would bring in an extra 2m tonnes of traffic when it opened in 2012.

It also announced a contract with shipper Taylors of Harrogate, to handle more than 1,000 containers of imported tea and coffee a year and Taiwanese box carrier Evergreen started to deliver containers to Teesport following the opening of Tesco’s distribution centre.

Last month, it was confirmed PD Ports had been sold by its then owner, Babcock and Brown Infrastructure, to Brookfield Asset Management.

PD Ports’ profits fell by more than 45% in the year to the end of June, as both containerised and bulk volumes were hit by the recession.

Container volumes dropped year-on-year by almost a third, from 770,000teu to 520,000teu, while lo-lo volumes declined 26% and ro-ro traffic 14%.