Dipankar De Sarkar

London, Jan 15 British union leaders on Thursday welcomed a decision by Tata-owned steelmaker Corus not to shut down a coking plant — saving 120 jobs — and to postpone the mothballing of a huge steel factory in northeast England.

Corus, the world's second largest steelmaker that is owned by Tata Steel, made the twin announcements after a meeting on Tuesday of a task force set up by the company to explore alternatives to its December 2009-decision to mothball the Teesside Cast Products (TCP) facility in Redcar.

The Redcar factory was meant to have been partially shut down by January-end, with 1,700 job losses, but Corus said after the meeting that it has agreed to consider a union plan to postpone the move until the end of February.

Corus also said it would continue operating the site's South Bank coke ovens following an improvement in market conditions, thus saving 120 jobs — a decision that was welcome by the GMB, Britain's general workers' union.

"The outcome of the meeting secured the Redcar South Bank coke ovens for the next three years, keeping 120 jobs," said GMB national officer Keith Hazlewood.

"We are still exploring any possibility of keeping steel production on Teesside."

The taskforce, which is working to mitigate the potential loss of Teesside's core skills base and the effects on the local region, will meet again next week.

Redcar, near the town of Middlesbrough, is one of Corus' three main steel-manufacturing factories in Britain, the others being in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and Port Talbot, Wales. All three produce their own steel from iron ore.

The Redcar factory, which employs a total of 2,300 people, is considered vulnerable because it produces raw steel, unlike the other two facilities, which produce finished steel.