THE last shifts at a doomed steel plant are taking place in what was dubbed yesterday the “killing of steel-making on Teesside” after 170 years.

However, the cost of closing the doomed SSI steelworks in Redcar will be greater than the amount needed to keep the works going until a buyer can be found.

Two potential buyers are already waiting in the wings and a German firm says it wants the special foundry coke that the works produces for its own operations.

But the Tory government remained adamant that it would not help the works survive and the irreversible process of shutting down the furnaces has begun.

Thai-owned SSI has gone into liquidation. The closure will cost more than 3,000 jobs in a region already devastated by unemployment.

A union leader at the steelworks said the government’s refusal of a lifeline was “the final straw” in “the killing of steel-making in Teesside.”

Multiunion committee chair Paul Warren said: “There’s utter devastation here. We still feel as though the government could have done more and helped us out.

“When you look at the cost of keeping it going, it far outweighs the clean-up bill on the site.

“It’s going to cripple the area, either through poverty, through falling house prices or crime. We will all suffer and Christmas is coming up as well.”

Redcar MP Anna Turley posted on Twitter: “Still can’t believe they haven’t stepped in. We asked minister late last night just to give us three months to find a buyer.”

She told the government: “You are overseeing the death of 170 years of steel-making on Teesside and it doesn’t have to be the end — the site is still viable.

“I have literally just got off the phone to people on the site. German companies are willing to buy foundry coke that we can produce in those coke ovens. That sells at £520 a tonne, compared to £190 for ordinary coke.

“The site is viable, we have companies willing to invest, we have companies willing to come in and supply the coke ovens to keep the plant running, to do the mothballing. You are not giving us time, you are just throwing the towel in.”