WORKERS at the giant Llanwern steel plant and their colleagues are being urged by the boss to come up with urgent money-saving ideas.

Dr Mark Carr, managing director of Newport-based Corus strip products UK, made his plea to the whole division - which also includes Port Talbot - following the posting of half-year losses by the company as a whole.

CSP UK is a business unit with a net cash outflow within the Corus empire, and Dr Carr said this created a great strain.

"Our cash expenditure exceeds the amount of cash we receive from customers for the steel we sell," he said in Corus News, the business magazine of CSP UK.

"High performance will reverse this situation certainly over the next couple of years, hopefully in 2003.

"However, achieving this will require a very special effort from us all."

Dr Carr said good cash management was not a case of halting expenditure and hoping the company's problems would go away; it was about effective expenditure to allow the navigation of the business back to viability.

"Expenditure on areas such as safety, maintenance and essential business travel is part of how we do business, but we must think carefully and spend wisely," he said.

The company's business management team was continuing to look at all capital expenditure cases on their merits, especially those which have the most potential to improve the business position and add value.

He said he challenged the business unit's employees to think about: * How cash was spent in a particular area; * How the company could try to generate cash by getting stocks down; and * How cashed owed by customers could be obtained.

"UK market conditions remain difficult," Dr Carr said. "CSP UK has been doing all it can to select the most attractive orders.

"One of our core business objectives is to secure 55% UK market share and we are still some way off achieving this. Getting there means convincing customers to buy from CSP UK." The company's delivery performance under the slogan ROTIF (Right On Time In Full) needed to improve to much higher levels and stay that way.

"Only then will customers have confidence to place business with CSP UK and have reasons to buy from competitors. The future success of the business is in our hands."