He said: “It was a suggestion I raised with trade unions at Tata Steel during a meeting on Thursday which I attended that I think it is important that we urge Sajid Javid alongside Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns to come and visit the plant and understand what is a profitable plant and offer their support and action to save the local industry”.
Advertisement
Sanjeev Gupta, a potential buyer of Tata Steel’s British assets, is meeting Britain’s business secretary on Tuesday to discuss his plan to turn around the struggling operations without the loss of thousands of jobs.
Founder of commodities firm Liberty House, Gupta said: “Many (parts of the business) are loss-making at the moment but we believe they can be turned around”.
Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies said their presence showed “just how seriously the United Kingdom government are taking this matter”.
Cameron held a meeting with Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones to discuss how to attract potential buyers for sites such as Port Talbot. “Everyone is very motivated to find a solution”, insisted Mr Gupta. “I now look forward to seeing what the UK Government is going to put on the table”. There’s a lot of detail there to work out and of course it depends on who the buyer is.
He agreed that the meeting was “constructive” and said he and the prime minister had agreed to talk regularly “given the urgency of the situation”.
Britain imported 826,000 tonnes of Chinese steel in 2015, up from 361,000 two years earlier, according to the International Steel Statistic bureau.
“Tata will issue an offer document very soon”, he told BBC television.
The managing director of European steelmaker Celsa UK, Luis Sanz, said he had “huge expectations” the government would act quickly, “because otherwise there will be no potential interest in the steel sector in the UK in the future”.
His colleague Gary Keogh added: “We are open to anything for the survival of our industry”. “Tata have confirmed that all their assets will be in a saleable position”.
With the costs passed on to consumers, those firms which use the most power, such as steelmakers, say they are struggling to cope.
“These are bread-and-butter policies that should have been providing opportunities to United Kingdom steel producers already”, he said. “If there were any barriers to that market [it would] undermine the steel industry further”.
Earlier, he explained that the main obstacle to reviving Tata’s remaining United Kingdom business was the giant blast furnace at the Port Talbot plant.
Tata Steel has said there is “no fixed timeline” for the sale process but stressed that urgency is needed to avoid “a long period of uncertainty” for employees and customers.
Four names emerged in as possible purchasers of Tata’s United Kingdom steel assets.
“We need to make sure we get the right deal, obviously that deal is for Tata to decide because they’re a private company, but that we do everything we can to make it happen”, Ms Soubry said.
“It has taken the tragedy of losing Redcar steelmaking to make the government realise that steel production is a vital economic interest, particularly as a foundation for advanced manufacturing”.
Advertisement
Gupta indicated Tata Steel’s pension fund, with 130,000 members and liabilities of nearly 15 billion pounds, could prove a barrier to rescue.
