A prospective buyer of beleaguered Tata Steel’s UK operations would seek to refocus the business on steel recycling.
Speaking to ITV News’ Robert Peston, Liberty House founder and chairman Sanjeev Gupta said that he would “radically re-engineer” the Port Talbot site if his bid to take over the company succeeds.
He told Robert Peston that he does not see a future in smelting as Port Talbot currently does, but should focus on recycling scrap steel instead.
In a piece on the ITV News website, Robert Peston wrote: “He (Sanjeev Gupta) thinks it is industrially mad that the UK has little indigenous capacity to recycle scrap steel. He argues that it is almost a crime that most of our scrap steel is exported to arc furnaces abroad, many of them in Turkey, for melting down and re-using.
“He points out that there is needless financial cost in shipping this scrap abroad, and environmental cost from both the transport and from the recycling being done in countries where coal is still used to generate power.
“So his proposal is for Port Talbot, over a period of years, to install arc furnaces, for recycling scrap steel, to replace its two blast furnaces.”
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