Tata Steel announces £100m sale of speciality steels business

Tata Steel has announced the sale of its Speciality Steels business to Liberty House in a £100m deal.

The Indian conglomerate’s Speciality Steels business currently employs around 1,700 people, making steels for the aerospace, automotive, oil and gas industries.

The deal covers several South Yorkshire-based assets, including the Rotherham electric arc steelworks, the steel purifying facility in Stocksbridge and a mill in Brinsworth.

Service centres in Bolton and Wednesbury, UK, and in Suzhou and Xi’an, China, will also be purchased by Liberty House.

Bimlendra Jha, chief executive of Tata Steel UK, said: “This is good news for Speciality Steels and for Tata Steel’s core business in the UK.

“For Speciality Steels, which is largely independent of our European strip products supply chain, this is an important step forward in securing a future for the business under new ownership.

“Today’s news also marks another important step forward in realising a more sustainable future for our Port Talbot-based supply chain in the UK.

Mr Jha added: “Like our former Scunthorpe-based Long Products business which we sold last year, we will be handing over a business which has been transformed following difficult decisions to restructure and re-focus on higher-value markets.

“Employees, trade unions and the management team have worked incredibly hard at Speciality Steels to improve its performance and I’m delighted to say that the business is now on an improvement track which will enable it to thrive in the future.”

Sanjeev Gupta, Liberty House executive chairman, commented: “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.”

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