50 Tata jobs saved after firm agrees £100m sale
UP TO 50 jobs have been saved in the Black Country after Tata Steel agreed a £100 million deal to offload part of its troubled UK operation.
The company, which has been trying to sell its UK operations for almost a year, has sold its Speciality Steels division to commodities trading group Liberty House Group.
The portfolio comprises service centres in Wednesbury and Bolton, several operations in South Yorkshire and bases in Suzhou and Xi’an, China.
The Speciality Steels division directly employs about 1,700 people making steels for the aerospace, automotive and the oil and gas industries.
The deal was first mooted last November when the two companies signed a letter of intent in order to enter a period of exclusive negotiations.
Bimlendra Jha, chief executive of Tata Steel UK, which is part of the same group as Jaguar Land Rover, said: “This is good news for speciality steels and for Tata Steel’s core business in the UK.
“For Speciality Steels, which is largely independent of our European strip products supply chain, this is an important step forward in secur- ing a future for the business under new ownership.
“We will be handing over a business which has been transformed following difficult decisions to restructure and refocus on highervalue markets.
“Employees, trade unions and the management team have worked incredibly hard at Speciality Steels to improve its performance and I’m delighted to say that the business is now on an improvement track which will enable it to thrive in the future.”
Tata Steel is also in discussions with the British Steel Pension Scheme trustee and the Pension Regulator to develop a structural solution for its UK pension scheme in the coming months.
The deal does not include its coated narrow strip plant in Walsall.
In 2015, Liberty House Group also rescued parts of struggling engineering group Caparo, saving around 300 jobs in Oldbury and Bilston.