- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Sattwik Biswal
IN a letter to the government, owner of Liberty Steel has asked for £170m in financial support.
Sanjeev Gupta wrote to the Department of Business and said the support is needed to pay day-to-day operating expenses and absorb the recent losses.
There are fears over the future of Liberty Steel after its major financial backer, Greensill Capital, collapsed.
Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance employs a total of 5,000 people in the UK – 3,000 of them in steel and aluminium businesses across 12 UK sites.
“The collapse of Greensill has put financial pressure on the GFG Alliance and our British steel operations,” Gupta wrote in the letter.
“We are still refining the details with my management team and our external advisors, but preliminary indications are that the steel manufacturing and processing operations would need in the range of £170m to fund working capital and some additional capital to fund operating losses in the short term, which we are in the process of finalising.”
A spokeswoman for the government told the BBC: “The government is closely monitoring developments around Liberty Steel and continues to engage closely with the company, the broader UK steel industry and trade unions.”
In the last few days, the prime minister and business secretary had pledged to be working towards saving the company from collapse and the 5,000 jobs in the UK.
“The government will do everything to ensure that we continue with British jobs producing British steel,” Boris Johnson had said and adding “I also share the anxiety of the families of steelworkers.”
