The future of steelmaking in Teesside is in jeopardy and many thousands of jobs at risk after four international slab buyers walked away from a 10-year supply contract with five years still to run.

The Redcar blast furnace and the vast surrounding five square-mile site of Teesside Cast Products, one of the UK’s biggest industrial complexes, may have to be mothballed, with the direct loss of up to 3,000 jobs, because a consortium which had agreed to buy 78 per cent of TCP’s output until 2014 has suddenly terminated the contract.