A DEAL to save hundreds of North-East steel jobs won’t be derailed by a company’s plans to withdraw from the UK.

Tata Steel told The Northern Echo it remains focused on offloading its loss-making Long Products division, which runs plants across the North-East, to an investment group.

The Indian company has been in talks with Greybull Capital for weeks, and an insider last night (Wednesday, March 30) confirmed negotiations are continuing.

However, the future of the firm’s Hartlepool Pipe Mill remains less certain, as the business, which employs about 600 staff, falls outside Long Products and is not included in Greybull’s potential package.

Fears had been raised Tata’s plans to sell its UK assets, blamed on spiralling costs and deteriorating market conditions, could have scuppered the Long Products agreement, striking another blow to the area’s proud steel heritage after Redcar’s SSI UK went into liquidation.

But Tata and Greybull say they remain committed to a deal, though both were reluctant to offer any timescale on an announcement.

It is also understood Greybull has no interest in any other parts of Tata’s UK estate, including its Port Talbot plant.

Any deal with private equity firm Greybull, which rescued holiday airline Monarch and is run by brothers Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, would see Tata staff move over under a TUPE transfer arrangement, which would initially safeguard workers’ contracts.

Tata’s Long Products business makes and supplies steel for construction and heavy industry, with its various bases employing close to 900 people across the North-East and Yorkshire.

Its Teesside Beam Mill, at Lackenby, near Redcar, provides work for more than 200 staff, and previously supplied the new World Trade Center site, in New York, while its special profiles factory, in Skinningrove, east Cleveland, employs more than 360 people and is known for providing thousands of tonnes of steel, including pieces to help weld pates together, for the £6.2bn HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier.

The company also operates another special profiles base, which looks after steel finishing, in Darlington, has a design base in York, and runs a distribution hub in Blaydon, Tyneside.

The firm has been trying to sell Long Products for two years after low prices compounded a global steel crisis.

US billionaire Gary Klesch, who had spent months in talks with Tata’s hierarchy, walked away from any deal saying the Government wasn’t doing enough to support the steel sector.

Earlier this year, Tata announced Dr Karl Köhler, the boss of its European operations was leaving to join an unnamed private industrial company in Germany.

Tata’s Hartlepool Pipe Mill, which is not part of Long Products, supports offshore energy work, with previous contracts including 18,000 tonnes of steel pipe for Maersk Oil’s $4.5bn North Sea Culzean project.

Who are Greybull Capital?

Founded by former Lehman Brothers’ banker Nathaniel Meyohas and his brother March in 2010, the business specialises in acquiring underperforming and troubled companies and making them profitable.

Greybull backed OpCapita’s investment in the now defunct electrical chain, Comet, and the buyouts of the retailer, Game, snooker hall operator, Rileys, and Metalrex, an engineering group.

In October 2014, it acquired a 90 per cent stake in Monarch, the UK-based holiday and budget airline.

It also backed Mike Greene’s takeover of Morrisons’ convenience stores.