Liberty Steel to sell trio of West Midlands plants in major restructure

Liberty Steel is to sell three plants across the West Midlands as part of a major restructure.

Sites in West Bromwich, Wednesbury and Kidderminster will all be sold by the UK’s third largest steel business, owned by Sanjeev Gupta.

The plans also include the sale of the major Stocksbridge steel plant near Sheffield along with sites in Coventry and Brinsworth, South Yorkshire.

Together, the plants for sale employ around 1,500 people.

The latest announcement follows talks over the weekend in Dubai involving Gupta and Credit Suisse.

The investment bank lost more than £1bn when Gupta’s main financial backer Greensill Capital went bust in March, raising concerns about Liberty’s future and the 5,000 people it employs in the UK.

Liberty Steel’s largest UK site, its aerospace and special alloys business at Stocksbridge, employs 762 people.

Stocksbridge’s “downstream” sites at Brinsworth, near Rotherham, employ 101, and West Bromwich has 167 workers.

Parent company GFG Alliance says it has begun sale processes for Liberty Aluminium Technologies, and Liberty Pressing Solutions, which together employ 475 people in Coventry, Kidderminster and Witham in Essex.