Fit for the future

26 Jan 2009

Corus has made several announcements today about actions it is taking to reduce the impact of the current dramatic downturn in demand for steel.

Committed to sustaining the steel industry and ensuring fitness for the future, Corus has today announced the following measures in Wales:

• Operations are to be suspended at a number of units at the Llanwern site for the foreseeable future – with additional impact on support engineering and transport services. This will affect 528 posts.
• The aluminized coating line at Pontarddulais, which has been largely on temporary stoppage throughout most of 2008, will cease production permanently, affecting 52 posts.
• A restructuring of the Building Systems business will result in the closure of the Ammanford (73 jobs) and Tewkesbury (147 jobs) sites, and a reduction in manning at Catnic in Caerphilly of 17 posts.
• Corus Colors’ Shotton site will be making reductions of 90 posts, but the relocation of plant from Ammanford and its sister plant at Tewkesbury will result in some 100 additional posts at the Building Systems business on the Shotton site.
• Following on from the announcement made in April 2008, regarding the Corus Packaging Plus operations in Trostre Works, Llanelli, the full implementation of this restructuring plan will be further postponed until 2010, effectively retaining 120 posts that would otherwise have been made redundant. A further review will take in the Packaging Business at the end of 2009 to reassess the market situation.

Consultation will begin immediately with the unions for these reductions in the Corus workforce in Wales. Every effort will be made to minimise job losses, to encourage redeployment and seek other ways to minimise the impact of the workforce reduction.

Additionally, an organizational review of Port Talbot manufacturing facilities and a full functional review across the Corus group will commence.

These measures follow Corus’ announcement in November to reduce crude steel production in Western European operations by some 30 per cent before the end of March 2009, and the recent imposition of the Guaranteed Working Week at both Llanwern and Port Talbot.

Notes to Editors

Corus is Europe's second largest steel producer with annual revenues of more than £12 billion and crude steel production of about 20 million tonnes.  With main steelmaking operations primarily in the UK and the Netherlands, Corus supplies steel and related services to the construction, automotive, packaging, mechanical engineering and other markets worldwide.  Corus is a subsidiary of Tata Steel, one of the world’s top ten steel producers.  Following the acquisition of Corus in 2007, the combined enterprise has an aggregate crude steel capacity of more than 28 million tonnes and approximately 82,700 employees across four continents.

For further information please contact:

Robert Dangerfield: 01639 603210 / 07917 267795

Tim Rutter:                01639 603158 / 07850 990755

Corus Group (Tata) enquiries to:

Bob Jones:               0207 717 4532 / 07764 710340