Liberty House to create 300 jobs at former Tata UK unit

UK-based Liberty House is to create an additional 300 jobs at the speciality steel works it has acquired from Tata Steel for £100 million. It will also invest £20 million in the business in the first year alone.

“By investing to acquire Speciality steels we are casting a big vote of confidence in the future of British industry,” said Sanjeev Gupta, Executive Chairman, Liberty House Group, in a statement, calling for Britain to put steel making at the heart of its post-Brexit industrial strategy.

The company hopes to raise production from its arc furnaces to over one million tonnes a year, and for its bar mill to roll over 400,000 tonnes a year. Liberty House completed the acquisition of Tata’s Speciality steel division on Tuesday, following an agreement struck earlier this year. It covers assets in Yorkshire and service centres in Britain and China and focusses on steel in the automotive, aerospace, industrial machinery and oil and gas industries. Currently the division employs 1,700 workers, who Liberty House said were now secured.

The business will be relaunched as Liberty Speciality Steels. “The Speciality steels business is a global leader in its field, with a highly skilled and well-motivated workforce and we are eager to invest so it can grow and achieve its full potential,” said Gupta. “We are taking on strategically important capacity that will drive expansion in the years ahead.”

The deal leaves Tata Steel with its strip products business, after selling its long products business to Greybull Capital last year, as it seeks to transform and restructure its European operations. Liberty House has made a string of purchases in the UK steel sector over the past couple of years, now employing around 4,500 workers in the country.

A few days ago it announced plans to buy Arcelor Mittal’s Georgetown steel plant in South Carolina, US.

Tuesday’s developments were welcomed by the Unite union, which said it ended months of “agonising uncertainty” for its members, who had “done everything asked of them over the last few years to give speciality steel-making a fighting chance in the UK.” Tata Steel said it would continue to transform its UK business to create a viable future for its strip division, which employs around 8,500 people.

Discussions with the British Steel Pension Scheme trustees and the pensions regulator over finding a structural solution to its UK pension scheme continued, it added.

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