A STEEL firm boss has offered a “chink of light” to 3,000 Corus workers whose jobs came under threat after a consortium pulled a major contract.

Antonio Marcegaglia, head of Italian firm Marcegaglia, said he was willing to work with his consortium partners and Corus to find a way of preserving production at Teesside Cast Products (TCP), in Redcar, east Cleveland.

Marcegaglia is part of the four-strong international consortium which earlier this month tore up a ten-year “offtake agreement” signed in 2004 to take nearly 78 per cent of the Corus plant’s output.

Yesterday, Redcar MP Vera Baird met Mr Marcegaglia in Mantua, Italy to outline the potential consequences for the plant’s 3,000 workers.

Speaking after the meeting, Mrs Baird said: “We had the whole afternoon with Mr Marcegaglia and the conversation was constructive.

“We are going to go back to Corus now, but he has said he is willing to encourage his partners in the offtake agreement, and he himself will be willing, to sit down with Corus and look for some commercial solutions which will preserve production at TCP and help safeguard jobs.”

Michael Leahy, general secretary of Community, the majority union in the UK steel industry, was also at yesterday’s meeting.

In January, Marcegaglia and fellow consortium member Dongkuk Steel, of Korea, signed a memorandum of understanding to buy a majority stake in TCP. Corus cannot open discussions with other potential purchasers until the two firms decide whether they intend to continue with those plans.

Mrs Baird was not prepared to discuss to what extent that situation was raised yesterday.

The discussions in Italy came on the same day that the The Corus Response Group, including employment experts, the local authority, and trade unions met for the second time.

Alan Clarke, One North East chief executive and Corus Response Group chairman, said: “We fully support Vera Baird in her meeting with Marcegaglia in Italy to find out if the company still intends to take up an option to buy the Redcar plant.

“She will convey the strength of feeling among the workforce and across the North-East about the importance of this viable, potentially profitable business to the regional economy.”

Management at the Redcar plant have begun a 90-day consultation period with staff and trade unions.

In a separate development, Corus Tubes, in Hartlepool, which was already balloting employees at two mills on whether they would accept the suspension of a bonus scheme to avoid potential redundancies, has been hit by a delay in a major project from the oil and gas industry.