THE Thai firm in talks to buy the Corus steel plant in Redcar may seek a listing on the London Stock Exchange.

Last month Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI) said it had started to raise £400m to buy the Teesside Cast Products (TCP) plant from Corus owner Tata Steel.

The plant is expected to be open again by the summer after it was mothballed last year following a severe downturn in the global steel industry.

SSI has said it is considering a UK public listing if the deal to buy TCP goes ahead.

SSI’s president, Win Viriyaprapaikit, told the Bangkok Post: “England is a country that has stable politics as well as laws and regulations.

“Prospects are good for us to list on the stock exchange in the UK to raise funds from its capital market and we are going to study the options.”

The London Stock Exchange refused to say whether it had received an approach from SSI about a possible listing.

The Thai firm hopes the TCP deal will be finalised “in one to two months” and help boost annual revenues to £1.06billion this year. Revenues for the nine months to September 30 were £0.78 billion.

The Corus plant was mothballed last year with the loss of 700 of its 1,700 workforce after the consortium which bought most of its output walked away halfway through a 10-year supply deal in 2009.

The deal would make the Thai steelmaker the largest of its kind in South-east Asia.

Talks between SSI and Tata have gathered pace in recent months, with Viriyaprapaikit describing TCP as the ‘perfect match’ when he visited Redcar in September.

He also praised Teesside’s pride and passion for steelmaking.

He described it as something he had never felt anywhere else in the world.

SSI plans to produce 3.5 million tonnes of slab steel from the TCP plant once it is at full capacity and export it all to Thailand.

Previously around four-fifths of the site’s output was shipped to Europe, South America and Korea.