Jobs boost as steel firm signs port deal

Mar 26 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

UP to 40 jobs are expected to be created by a new business which has signed a 25-year lease at the Port of Sunderland.

Total Global Steel (TGS), a subsidiary of Transglobal Holdings, has moved into the former Fina Oil site, where it will import and store steel for use in the construction industry.

Six staff have been taken on initially with the additional jobs being created when the company builds a mesh manufacturing plant on the site within the next couple of years.

“We traded internationally in steel and we took a view a year ago that we’d like to be a stockholder ourselves and have a stock in the UK,” said Martin Lonergan, a senior director and buyer with TGS.

“We looked for somewhere that needed us as much as we needed it but three or four years down the line, the Port of Sunderland probably won’t have a lot of space.”

TGS’s parent company agreed the lease with Sunderland City Council, which operates the port, after importing steel via some of the UK’s larger ports.

“When we used those facilities, we had to use an existing, established handler in the port. It was their cranes and their steelyards. We decided that we would like somewhere for ourselves,” said Lonergan.

The additional costs associated with the South East meant TGS directed its searchlight north, initially looking at the Port of Tyne which was recently named the Institute of Transport Management’s European Port of the Year for the second successive year.

But Lonergan opted for Sunderland because it offered more room to expand and he said TGS was able to negotiate a very favourable deal.

Sunderland, the only local authority-controlled port on the North East coast, has often been considered the poor relation of the larger facilities at the mouths of the Tyne and Tees.

The city council has been in talks with potential private-sector partners to run the facility on its behalf but has yet to make a decision on this.

Lonergan, whose company imports steel from Turkey and fabricates it for customers in the UK and Ireland, is confident the business has chosen the right location.

“Logistically speaking, Sunderland is well suited,” he said. “There is plenty of labour in the area that we require, there are people with the skills to unload the ships.”

Sunderland port joins the boom: Page 29