Tata Steel to sell Corus Teesside assets to Thailand’s Sahaviriya Steel for $469 million

Tata Steel, the world's seventh-largest steelmaker yesterday said that it had agreed to sell certain assets of Teesside Cast Products (TCP) to Thailand's largest steel producer Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI), for $469 million (£291 million).

The sale comes after Corus, Europe's second biggest steelmaker, had announced in December 2009 that it would close the loss-making TCP unit after an international consortium in May 2009 pulled out prematurely from a 10-year slab steel purchasing agreement to lift around 78 per cent of TCP's 3.5 million tonnes production every year. (See: Corus to shut plant in north-east England, cut 1,700 jobs)

Tata Steel, with a tradition of making steel for over a hundred years, had acquired Corus in December 2006 for $12.11 billion (Rs53,526 crore), and re-branded the Anglo Dutch company as Tata Steel last year.

Since January 2010, Tata Steel had been scouting for buyers for TCP and signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in August 2010 with SSI for the sale of the plant located in north-east England.

The assets covered by the sale include the Redcar Blast Furnace, the Redcar and South Bank coke ovens, TCP's power generation facilities and sinter plant, and the Lackenby steelmaking and casting facilities.

TCP occupies an area of approximately 800 acres and its products, including slabs, plates and sections are exported to markets around the world.