Tata Steel Ltd. plans to cut as many as 3,000 jobs across its European operations to cut costs in the latest blow to the region’s industru.

About two-thirds of the reductions would be office-based staff, the company said in a statement. While the steelmaker didn’t give a detailed breakdown, Tata Steel Works Council said more than half of the planned cuts would be in the Netherlands.

Tata Steel, which bought Corus Group Plc, formerly British Steel for about $13 billion in 2007, has been closing and selling plants in the U.K. since the 2008 financial crisis to make the business more profitable.

The company is focusing on growing in India, where it aims to ramp up capacity as the nation’s demand is set to expand as much as 7% in the coming years.

Steel production in the EU slumped in August to the lowest since the financial crisis amid a record jump in imports. The bloc’s output dropped to 11.45 million tons that month, according to World Steel Association data. That’s the lowest level since 2009.

Roy Rickhuss, General Secretary of the steelworkers’ trade union, Community, said:

“This is a shocking announcement, which will worry many steelworkers and their families in the UK and across Europe. This news has been badly handled and the company should hang its head in shame with the way this development has been communicated. The workforce should not pay the price for the failure of the joint venture with Thyssenkrupp nor the lack of a plan B when the JV talks collapsed. We secured a jobs guarantee until 2021 and we will be robustly defending that agreement. We want a long-term vision for the future of steelmaking in Tata Steel Europe, not the management of decline by 3,000 job cuts.”

 

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