The steel industry may just get a second innings in Britain as Caparo Tubular Solutions, once owned by Lord Swraj Paul, has been acquired by new owners.
Caparo Tubular Solutions, which is a core conception of Caparo Industries, has been bought by the Gupta family, whose wider interests includes SIMEC and Liberty House, the international energy, metals, industrial and trading groups.
After concluding talks with administrators PwC, the Guptas made an announcement of the purchase. While buying Caparo, they stated that they were “very attracted” to the company.
Caparo's Tubular Solutions division, is considered as a leading UK distributor, manufacturer and supplier of advanced tube components and parts for the automotive and aerospace industries.
With the Guptas making this new purchase, it could help retain almost 350 jobs within this division of Caparo.
Sanjay Gupta, Chief Executive of Liberty (Liberty House Group), said, “There are many natural synergies between hot rolled coil production business and Caparo's design, manufacture and distribution of steel tube and various specialist engineering products. They are established customers for our product and we have, in fact, looked at them in the past about the possibility of integrating the two businesses in order to help create a comprehensive and robust new model for the steel sector in the UK. We now aim to achieve that objective.”
Liberty has offices across 30 countries across the globe. It is an international steel and non-ferrous metals group, operating from its four financial hubs- London, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Sanjay Gupta added, “I believe that, despite the current difficulties being encountered by the UK steel industry there is a future for the sector in Britain, if we can develop more efficient business models based on streamlined integrated production, processing and distribution. This, together with the new initiatives now supported by the Government to lower energy costs for energy intensive industries, provides an opportunity for UK steel once again to be competitive.”
This new purchase by the Guptas may most likely bring a ray of hope within the UK steel industry.
