Bankrupt under strange circumstances metallurgical plant British Steel in Scunthorpe is running in normal mode, but the British authorities properly pay debts the enterprise for a salary, which last year amounted to 250 million pounds (320 million dollars), according to industry sources.
However, Reuters there was intriguing information about the intention of the British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta to join the fight for the metallurgical assets nationalized in 1988, Margaret Thatcher, and after that many times of transition in the management of different companies. Liberty Steel headed by Gupta can be a 10 on account of the owner of the company over the past 30 years.
According to Reuters made at the end of the week before last the proposal Chinese companies Jingye about buying British Steel over £ 40 million hung in the air. Previously reported that the sale of the British asset can lock in the European Commission representatives of the European industry Association Eurofer who rightly believe that the way the Communist regime of China is expanding its political influence and increasing metallurgical facilities outside of China.
a spokesman for the European Commission said Reuters that the Executive Director of EU has not received official notification of the deal, while press Secretary Jingye in China said that "still have to perform a lot of procedures."
Gupta, who heads the private family Alliance GFG, buying the past 5 years of steel assets around the world and repeatedly offered to buy British Steel. He proposes to replace blast furnace production of electric steel in Scunthrope and switch to secondary steel production from scrap, which ultimately fits into the economic landscape of the UK that collects up to 10 million tons of scrap metal annually.
in addition, Gupta offers for steelmaking the use of energy from renewable sources, which also looks quite attractive from the electoral point of view ahead of parliamentary elections.
Julian Allwood, Professor of engineering at Cambridge University, commented on Reuters the best hope for the UK to rescue the steel industry and the long-term preservation of jobs is the utilization of blast furnaces, which, he predicted, will disappear in any case and will be replaced with electric units.
