Welsh steel manufacturers Corus have announced plans to cut almost 100 jobs at its plant in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire.

The 94 redundancies at Trostre were announced following the earlier decision to shed 212 jobs from the Llawnwern plant in May.

Corus Packaging Plus (CPP) declared a 120,000 tonnes capacity reduction following a review of its manufacturing organisation which is due to commence from January 2008.

Works Manager at CPP Stuart Wilkie said: “We have an excellent record of improvement at Trostre, however we are experiencing very difficult market conditions.

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“To ensure the longer-term security of packaging steels manufacture at Trostre we must take action to reduce costs and improve our operational flexibility.”

It is understood full consultation with trade unions and employees will begin immediately and a support programme to deal with those made redundant will be provided.

More than 7,900 are employed by Anglo-Dutch Corus in Wales alone and the job losses come after Tata took over the company for a sum of £6.2bn.

Robert Dangerfield, spokesman for Corus commented: “Market conditions in tinplate pre-date the acquisition by a considerable amount of time. I know that Tata hasn’t brought its weight to bear on this issue at all.

“The Western European tinplate market is in a mess, it’s at vast overcapacity not just at Corus and there are likely to be changes made in other businesses.”

Mr Dangerfield also went on to explain that last year Corus took on 500 new people and he felt the overall feeling about the long term future in Wales was “upbeat”.

(JM)