Mr Nick Clegg Deputy Prime Minister of UK has welcomed a deal to bring steelmaking back to Teesside and the safeguarding of 700 jobs.
He toured the former Corus blast furnace in Redcar, which was last week bought by Thai firm SSI for almost GBP 300 million. He said that the deal, which should mean 1,000 more jobs in the wider economy, was a great thumps up for Teesside.
Mr Clegg said that "It's a great thumbs up for Teesside and the North East, for the steel industry and the UK. It's a breath of fresh air at a time of difficult news about the British economy. I would like to pay tribute to TATA and SSI who struck this deal. For too long our economy has been run according to the interests of a particular sector, the financial services sector."
He added that "We need to support investors such as SSI to create jobs in other sectors in other parts, not just the South East, not just in financial services. We are a great manufacturing nation. For too long we have been too shy about celebrating our manufacturing successes."
It will take six months to start up the blast furnace, Europe's second biggest, which was switched off a year ago.
The Redcar plant, bought from Corus by TATA Steel, was created in the 1970s and has a slab production capacity of 3.5 million tonnes per year.
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