 "Tata Steel sells Scunthorpe steel plant to Greybull Capital")
Tata Steel, the country's largest steel producer, has sold its 4.5-million-tonne long product Scunthorpe steel plant to UK-based investment firm Greybull Capital.
"The signing of the deal has taken place at about 11 am London time today and we trade unions welcome this news," Harish Patel, national officer (metals and foundary) of Unite told Business Standard today.
The unit has 4,500 direct employees and about 16,000 indirect employees, informed Harish.
Tata Steel was earlier in talks with the Klesh Group for the sale of this unit. However, the deal did not go through after almost a year's of due diligence carried out by the German company.
"The UK government has lent full support to this sale and has also offered Greybull with guarantee loans. However, the company has responded to the government saying that as of now, it does not need these loans and can manage without this additional support," informed Patel.
This long-product division of Tata Steel is a profitable one without the two small units of Scotland which were recently taken over by the Scotland-government. This plant makes rail tracks for the railways in UK and its products finds wide applications in the construction segment mainly bridges, towers and highways.
Apart this unit, Tata Steel has also put its 10 million tonne UK-business for sale as it intends to lower its cash drain which has been eating up into its margins significantly for quite some time now.