Steel giant pledges 300 new jobs to bolster £100m acquisition

International industrials and metals group, Liberty House, has pledged to create hundreds of new jobs as it looks to secure the future of five key sites in the West Midlands and the north of England.

The company, which has already proved the saviour of Midland steel firms Caparo and Covpress, made the pledge as it completed the £100m deal to acquire the Speciality Steels division of Tata Steel UK.

The 300 production jobs have been promised to operations in South Yorkshire.

The conclusion of the Tata deal will protect the jobs of 1,700 workers at Rotherham, Stocksbridge and Brinsworth in South Yorkshire, smaller sites in Bolton, Lancashire and Wednesbury and two distribution centres in China.

Speciality Steels produces a range of high-value steels used in the manufacture of vehicles, aircraft, industrial machinery and equipment for the oil and gas industry.

Liberty said it would invest up to £20m in new plant and equipment in the first year alone to boost competitiveness and secure international market leadership for the business, which is being relaunched as Liberty Speciality Steels.

The business will increase output substantially at the electric arc furnaces, casting shop and bar mill in Rotherham, with bigger plans across the wider Speciality business in the years ahead.

Production from the arc furnaces is expected to rise to over a million tonnes per annum and there are plans for the bar mill to roll over 400,000 tonnes a year. In addition, the business will grow its position in the aerospace markets, utilising recent capital investments at Stocksbridge and investing in additional capacity and new technology.

The Speciality Steels businesses will also complement Liberty’s engineering operations in the West Midlands which already use steel from these plants to make their precision products. Liberty will explore further downstream investment to make more extensive use of the products from Speciality Steels to boost manufacturing in the UK.

Sanjeev Gupta, executive chairman of Liberty House said: “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.

“Today marks a step change for the Liberty House Group because we are taking on strategically important capacity that will drive expansion in the years ahead. It will help us achieve our GREENSTEEL vision and facilitate investment in engineering products, thereby reducing the supply-chain gaps in the UK, especially in automotive and aerospace sectors.

“By investing (in) Speciality Steels we are casting a big vote of confidence in the future of British industry. With the right business model and an innovative approach, the UK steel and engineering sectors can recover and thrive. The Government is now pursuing a new post-Brexit industrial strategy and steel must be at the heart of that strategy.”