Tata Steel agrees sale of speciality steels business to Liberty House

Tata Steel UK said on Thursday that it has signed a definitive agreement with Liberty House Group for the sale of its speciality steels business for £100m.

The business, which employs around 1,700 people, includes a number of South Yorkshire-based assets such as the Rotherham electric arc steelworks, the steel purifying facility in Stocksbridge and a mill in Brinsworth, as well as service centres in Bolton and Wednesbury, UK, and in Suzhou and Xi'an, China.

Liberty said the deal will make it one of the largest steel and engineering employers in the UK with more than 4,000 workers at plants located across Britain’s industrial heartlands.

It said the speciality steels business has the capability to make around 1.1m tonnes of liquid steel per year from recycled scrap, melted in two electric arc furnaces at Rotherham. This steel feeds downstream casting, re-melting and rolling processes, producing a range of high-value steels.

Sanjeev Gupta, executive chairman of the Liberty House Group, said: “I am proud that we are acquiring a world-class business with a very skilled workforce and broad range of high-value products. It is one of only a handful of such operations in the world and I am confident it will flourish within our group. Fulfilling the next key stage of our Greensteel vision is incredibly exciting.

“We will now be able to melt scrap steel to create high-value-added products and I hope that, in due course, we will do so using renewable power.”