A RESCUE deal to save North-East steel jobs is close to completion, The Northern Echo can reveal.

Liberty House is nearing an agreement over Tata Steel’s Hartlepool pipe mills.

Industry sources say talks over the mills, which process steel for the offshore energy sector, are at an advanced stage.

Liberty, which earlier this year bought two Scottish mills from Tata, declined to comment on the reports, while Tata said it remains in talks with a number of interested parties.

The deal, which excludes the site’s 20-inch tube mill, is expected to provide certainty for hundreds of workers at Hartlepool, whose livelihoods have hung in the balance ever since Tata announced its intention to offload costly British works.

It is understood Liberty, a UK and international industrial group, sees the Hartlepool site as a key component to support the growth of its steel division, with officials having visions of processing plate in the North-East that has been made in its new Scottish mills at Dalzell and Clydebridge.

The Northern Echo reported in May how Liberty was finalising an approach for Tata’s UK plants.

In the intervening period, Tata has since revealed talks with ThyssenKrupp over a potential joint venture of its European operations.

However, a deal for Hartlepool remains likely because Tata wants to separately offload sections of its UK business, including Hartlepool and a South Yorkshire speciality steels arm.

The Hartlepool pipe mills have supplied steel for numerous energy projects, with bosses previously revealing it would back Maersk Oil’s $4.5bn North Sea Culzean scheme, which includes a 53km gas pipeline.

They added workers in the region would deliver more than 18,000 tonnes of pipe in a deal described as a multi-million pound agreement.

The site also previously oversaw a contract worth more than £100m to supply 214 miles of pipe to the Discovery gas project, in the Gulf of Mexico.

Any sale would come after investor Greybull bought Tata’s loss-making Long Products division, which employs about 900 people across the North-East and York, for £1.

The organisation has since been renamed British Steel, with its regional bases including the Teesside Beam Mill, near Redcar and a York design site.