BRITISH STEEL MAKES A RED HOT RECOVERY
£47m joy in one year
BRITISH Steel is booming as the company reported £47million profits a year after launching.
The firm is set give its workers a 5% stake in the business after a “remarkable” transformation.
UK metal prices plunged in recent years after cheap Chinese steel flooded European markets.
Indian-owned Tata Steel announced it was selling its lossmaking British arm in March last year, putting 15,000 jobs at risk.
But British Steel was reborn after investors joined forces to buy the doomed company’s Long Products Europe business for just £1 in 2016.
Executive chairman Roland Junck said he was “delighted” with the impressive turnaround.
“The transformation in this business is remarkable,” he said.
“That is down to our remarkable people who have embraced, engineered and led change.”
British Steel’s story is seen as a huge success.
The Scunthorpe-based company suffered losses of £79m in the previous financial year and raw material costs also soared by 44%.
It was given a boost by supplying all the rail for the huge Crossrail project in London.
The firm’s 4,800 employees returned to full pay yesterday after taking a 3% wage cut to make last year’s sale possible.
Mr Junck added: “Entrepreneurial spirit is starting to flow through British Steel.”
Union spokesman Paul McBean welcomed the news.
However, he warned it wasn’t “mission accomplished” and pressed for more government support. “People should be in no doubt, a lot of hard work lies ahead,” he said.
UK food and drink industries also enjoyed a massive boost in the first quarter of 2017 as demand for British products increased around the world.
Exports as a whole grew by 8.3% year-on-year to £4.9bn – the largest first quarter figure on record.
Whisky was the top seller with sales of £895.9m while salmon rose more than 50% by value to £186.7m.
The EU imported 35,000 tonnes of Atlantic-caught Scottish salmon last year.