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British Steel British Steel is to change its name to Corus, following its recent merger with Koninklijke Hoogovens. 01-Oct-1999 British Steel is to acquire the rail manufacturing business of Usinor of France for £83m. 17-Sep-1999 British Steel expects up to 3,000 jobs to be lost after completion of its merger with Hoogovens, while the group also plans to invest in the aluminium side of the business and in Poland. 14-Sep-1999 British Steel has acquired Laminacion y Derivados, the Spanish steel business, for £19m. 05-Aug-1999 British Steel is said to be planning to rebuild its Redcar blast furnace, which would mean extending its life by a further 10 years from 2005. 09-Jul-1999 Bodycote, the heat treatment company, has won a contract to manage two laboratories at British Steel's Shotton Works in north Wales. 14-Jun-1999 British Steel has confirmed plans to merge with Hoogovens of the Netherlands with the loss of about 2,000 jobs, although there are no plans to close any big steel plants. 07-Jun-1999 British Steel is in merger talks with Dutch steel and aluminium company Koninklijke Hoogovens, in order to reduce its reliance on the UK market. 02-Jun-1999 British Steel is said to be in discussions with a large US energy group about the construction of a £1bn 1000MW coal-fired power station on Teesside. 04-May-1999 British Steel has set up a training centre at its Brinsworth strip mill in Rotherham that could be used by other companies needing to teach maintenance skills to staff. 26-Mar-1999 British Steel has acquired Caradon Catnic, the Caerphilly-based steel lintel producer, from Caradon in a £14m deal. 25-Mar-1999 British Steel is to relocate the commercial operations of its Sections, Plates & Commercial Steels division from Redcar and Motherwell to Scunthorpe, as part of a major restructuring of the business. 16-Mar-1999 British Steel is in discussions to acquire Sogerail, the French maker of steel for railways, from Usinor. 11-Mar-1999 British Steel has joined an international consortium of 26 steel-producing companies to develop a steel-based car for the next century. 09-Feb-1999 British Steel is seeking to diversify into new geographical areas and downstream businesses, and could spend up to £500m on the acquisition of a North American distribution company. 05-Feb-1999 The EU is dropping proposals to outlaw the use of leaded steel in cars, which would have threatened hundreds of jobs at British Steel in Rotherham. 03-Feb-1999 British Steel is to close one of its primary steel mills at Lackenby on Teesside in March with the loss of 47 jobs, and production will be moved to another mill. 20-Jan-1999 Associated British Ports is in discussions to acquire British Steel's cargo terminal at Immingham. 02-Dec-1998 British Steel is to step up its cost-cutting campaign in response to falling steel prices, and is expected to cut about 6,000 jobs over the next two years. 17-Nov-1998 British Steel is to close its hot-rolling facility in Darlington with the loss of 234 jobs, and production will be transferred to other sites in Skinningrove and Mannstaedt. 02-Nov-1998 British Steel is said to be considering plans to cut a further 400 jobs at its plant in Port Talbot, Wales. 23-Oct-1998 British Steel is planning to acquire Huta Katowice, the Polish steel manufacturer, and is waiting for the Polish government to open negotiations. 05-Oct-1998 British Steel is to close its Templeborough rolling mill in Rotherham with the loss of 112 jobs, and production will be transferred to Scunthorpe. 18-Sep-1998 British Steel is to close a mill in Darlington with the loss of 42 jobs. 14-Sep-1998 Avesta Sheffield, the Stockholm-based stainless steel maker that is majority owned by British Steel, is to cut 1,000 jobs in the UK and Sweden in response to a collapse in metal prices. 27-Aug-1998 British Steel is looking for acquisitions in continental Europe and North America. 16-Jun-1998 British Steel is planning to spend £70m over the next two years on off-site training courses for its employees, as it prepares to introduce new working practices ahead of another major programme of redundancies. 15-Jun-1998 British Steel is said to be planning an efficiency drive that could result in 10,000 redundancies among its 40,000 UK workforce. 01-Jun-1998 British Steel is planning to start paying some of its UK, Australian and Brazilian suppliers in euros instead of pounds and dollars, in order to reduce losses from exchange rate changes. 20-Apr-1998 The European Commission has fined seven steel producers a total of £18m for operating an illegal price cartel, with one of the companies being British Steel's 51%-owned Avesta business. 22-Jan-1998 British Steel is to merge its large diameter pipe businesses with those of Europipe, and will take a one-third stake in the Europipe venture in partnership with Mannesmannrohren-Werke and AG der Dillinger Huttenwerke of Germany. 20-Jan-1998 Cap Gemini has won a £400m information technology outsourcing contract from British Steel, and will take over the employment of about 600 British Steel staff. 13-Nov-1997 English Welsh & Scottish Railway is to transport 500,000 tonnes of steel coil a year from south Wales to the West Midlands on behalf of British Steel, in the biggest switch of heavy goods transport from road to rail since British Rail was privatised. 12-Sep-1997 British Steel has confirmed plans to cut 2,000 jobs in response to the effects of the strong pound, and has also announced that it will take a majority stake in an Indonesian steel mill in a joint venture with PT Bakrie. 17-Jun-1997 BOC has started work on a new £40m air separation plant at Teesside, which will supply oxygen and nitrogen to British Steel. 06-May-1997 British Steel is to cut 400 jobs at its tinplate business in South Wales in response to overcapacity in the European market. 30-Apr-1997 British Steel has rejected IBM's proposal for a £350m contract to take over its computing work, and will instead look to other companies such as EDI and Cap Gemini. 11-Apr-1997 British Steel Forgings is being acquired in a management buy-out for £74.5m. 28-Jan-1997 British Steel has warned that it will have to cut more UK jobs and speed-up its cost-cutting programme in response to foreign competition and the strengthening of the pound. 12-Nov-1996 British Steel is to set up an automotive engineering group in Coventry, employing 30 engineers and boosting the company's links with the motor industry. 16-Oct-1996 British Steel is looking to sell its Bromsgrove-based forgings division, for a price thought to be around £50m. 31-Aug-1996 British Steel has bought British Rail's Castleton Long Welded Rail and Track Works, meaning that about a third of the railway industry by turnover has been sold off. 16-Mar-1996 British Steel is to spend £70m upgrading its Scunthorpe and Teesside works to use the continuous casting method. 16-Jan-1996 Hoskyns is buying British Steel's computer operations in a £100m outsourcing deal. 12-Jan-1996 British Steel is to cut 520 jobs at its Wolverhampton plant, due to overcapacity worldwide for small seamless tubes. 09-Sep-1995 More from the Engineering sector Related pages: Eliza Tinsley Carclo Engineering Birse Smiths Industries Silentnight The information on this page comes from the UK Activity Report. 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