Corus is taking advantage of favourable conditions in the global market and its new-found profitability to refinance part of its debt.

The company successfully restructured its 1.2bn-euro debt facility earlier this year and has now announced plans to offer 500m euros of loan notes, which are due in 2011.

The steelmaker is replacing 400m euros of debt that was due to be paid back in 2006 with a deal that should extend the borrowing for another seven years.

The Anglo Dutch company announced earlier this month that it had achieved an operating profit for the first time.

David Lloyd, Corus finance director, said: "We believe that this is an opportune time to raise funds, taking advantage of favourable conditions in the market, to refinance existing bonds maturing in the period 2006 to 2008. The fundamentals in the global steel industry are positive and our financial performance is improving as evidenced by the return to operating profit in the first quarter of 2004 and the expectation of further progress as the year develops."

The lead manager for the offering of the loan notes is Credit Suisse First Boston (Europe) Ltd.