A STEEL consortium, which put hundreds of Corus jobs in jeopardy when it pulled out of a major contract, tried to persuade the firm to mothball its threatened plant six months earlier.

The international consortium, led by Italian firm Marcegaglia, pulled out halfway through a ten-year agreement to buy almost 80 per cent of Corus Teesside Cast Products’ (TCP) output in May last year.

The Redcar plant faces being mothballed by the end of next month, with the loss of 1,600 jobs.

It has emerged that the consortium first put forward the idea of mothballing the plant to Corus in November 2008, when the price of steel started to fall.

Giving evidence before the North-East Select Committee, in London this week, Jon Bolton, TCP managing director, said: “We started facing pressures from the consortium in November 2008.

“The economic situation was poor then and in fact we faced our first challenge to mothball the plant in November 2008, which we successfully argued against with the consortium.

“We then obviously recognised there may be some difficulties.

The strategic goals of the consortium were changing.”

It is understood that in the end the plant reduced output by about 30 per cent.

Despite this, in January last year two members of the consortium signed a memorandum of understanding to buy the TCP plant, which expired without a deal being struck.

Last night, Redcar MP Vera Baird said: “It was news to me when Jon Bolton said Marcegaglia had pressured him into closing the plant in 2008, literally the minute the price started to turn down.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Jon fought back – he does have the workers’ interests at heart.”

In May, Mrs Baird had visited Antonio Marcegaglia, head of the Italian firm, to outline the potential consequences for the plant’s workers after it pulled out of the agreement.

Last night she said that, following the meeting, she had not been convinced the company “cared much” about the fate of the Teesside workers.

This was echoed by Geoff Waterfield, multi-union chairman at the plant, who said Marcegaglia had “showed no concern for the workers” in trying to get the plant mothballed.

Giving evidence this week, Mr Bolton said what was needed was a company to take a part ownership in the plant, invest money in it and take about 80 per cent of excess steel slab it produces.