METAL workers on Teesside will be chasing a share of a 20 million-tonne steel market in an effort to save their jobs, a business delegation has been told.

Management at Corus's North-East operations has assured the North-East Chamber of Commerce that there are opportunities for future growth that would keep plants in the region open.

But those opportunities will come at a cost for both Corus and its supply chain.

Staff will be pushed to work more economically and there will be an expectation on suppliers to economise to enable the Anglo-Dutch manufacturer to offer its products as cheaply as possible.

Last night, the chamber told The Northern Echo that managers were "amazingly open and frank" at the meeting.

But union leaders were concerned that suppliers' costs were already pared to the bone and that further savings would be hard to find.

The precarious future of steelmaking on Teesside was brought into sharp focus last week when Corus told the London Stock Exchange that products from the region would no longer be used in other UK plants.

About 2,900 workers were left wondering how safe their jobs were when they realised that they would have to compete to sell their wares on the open market against heavily subsidised steel from Brazil, China and Russia.

The Northern Echo sought assurances from Corus that Teesside would be given time to prove itself. A company spokesman said that it would take at least two years for the works to establish a global footing.

Plants on Teesside supply about 200,000 tonnes of steel to European markets.

Analysts have told Corus there is a 20 million-tonne market, leaving enormous scope to carve out a niche.

However, producing steel in Britain at a competitive price will be a difficult task with strong currency exchange rates just one factor working against the company.

Despite this, Rob McMullen, Teesside area manager at the chamber, said the delegation led by chief executive George Cowcher was reassured by what they were told.

"They were amazingly open and frank," he said: "What quickly surfaced was that Corus do seem to be thinking through and planning a future for Teesside, and are developing appropriate management skills and structures to ensure that the growing global market that there is for these products is successfully entered."

Mick Mannion, national executive council member with the ISTC union, said: "Corus management needs to look at itself first. The new chief executive will pick up £1.7m and even if he makes a mess of it he then receives pay of two years' wages.

"It is fat-cattery gone mad. It is no way to run a business."