Tata Steel to offload Specialty Steel business
Published: Feb 10, 2017
By TIOLCORP News Service
NEW DELHI , FEB 10, 2017: TATA Steel has finally sealed the deal to sell some of its assets in Europe. It has sold its Specialty Seel business to Liberty House for £100 million. Although the Specialty Steel business does not form a significant chunk of Tata Steel's revenues (only 4 percent of their overall revenues), it is important since it has about 1,700 employees. The deal brings Tata Steel one-step closer to being able to consolidate their UK operations, especially after it talked about investing a huge amount in a bid to revive operations in the UK. The sale constitutes South Yorkshire based assets that include Rotheham Mill, steel purifying facility in Stocksbridge and mill in Brinsworth, as well as some service centres in Bolton and Wednesbury and two specific centres in China.
According to the deal, all the employees will be incorporated along with entire assets. This would bring down the losses on a day to day basis that Tata Steel was seeing with regards to these businesses.
Tata Steel entered UK in 2007 with the purchase of Netherland-based Corus for $12.9 billion and in next nine years invested around £1.5 billion to turnaround the steel company. However, the downturn of 2008 and failing demand forced the company to look at exiting its non-performing loss-making assets in the UK.
