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Tata Group, an Indian company, agrees to purchase all Corus’ ordinary shares in March and the deal is concluded in April.

New production levels are achieved on the hot dip galvanising lines and both paint coating lines at Shotton. The current annual capacity rating of the works is 800,000 tonnes of hot dip galv. and 400,000 tonnes of organic coated strip. However, by August, all four lines are affected by outages. Demand is expected to return to more normal levels in 2008.

Imports from China now account for 30 per cent. of the European Union organic coated strip market.