Blastr on Exclusive Talks to Buy Former Liberty Bell Sites in South Yorkshire
A Norwegian green-steel startup has emerged as the preferred buyer of former Liberty Steel operations in South Yorkshire, raising hopes for a long-awaited rescue of two plants that have become a symbol of Britain’s troubled heavy industry.
Blastr, a business backed by Oslo-based renewable energy investor Vanir Green Industries, has entered into a five-week exclusive negotiation period with the Government’s statutory receiver to acquire Specialty Steel UK (SSUK), the company that owns Britain’s largest arc furnace in Rotherham and the downstream works in Stocksbridge.
The deal, if completed, would draw a line under the most drawn-out corporate collapse in recent British manufacturing history. SSUK has been in the hands of a legal receiver since last August, when the High Court in London stripped the steel’s chief executive Sanjeev Gupta of its ownership and declared the business “hopeless”.
A successful sale can also provide ministers with rare good news in the metal file. The Department for Business and Trade is already grappling with the future of British Steel in Scunthorpe, the Chinese-owned blast furnace operation that was taken out of government control almost a year ago and is now more likely to be fully approved. Whitehall officials had privately floated the idea of tying SSUK to British Steel to create a single, government-sponsored steelmaker and long-term brands, but sources suggest that option fell short of Blastr’s plans.
Confirmation of the special window came on Wednesday. “The legal receiver will look to complete the sale as quickly as possible,” the Government said in a brief statement, with officials pointing to the five-week timeline as a sign that negotiations had advanced significantly.
For Blastr, the prize is great, but so is the challenge. The company does not own or operate a single active steel plant. Its flagship project is a greenfield in Finland, where it plans to use green hydrogen to produce low-carbon steel and iron – a technology that remains commercially unproven at scale. The business is headed by Mark Bula, a veteran of the steel industry who has held senior roles at major manufacturers in India and the United States, and is understood to be the driving force behind the United Kingdom.
Industry watchers expect Blastr will need significant external funding to move the Rotherham and Stocksbridge sites across the line. Still, insiders argue that SSUK itself is a viable business, plagued by the chronic shortfall in working capital that has plagued the wider Liberty Steel group under Mr Gupta and left plants unable to buy raw materials on a regular basis. Gupta, whose GFG Alliance has had the largest global contract in recent years as financial pressures mount, fought to keep SSUK until the end, but was eventually overturned in court.
The Rotherham electric arc furnace is a particularly strategic asset. As Britain’s largest operating EAF, it is at the heart of any credible vision of a low-carbon domestic steel industry and produces a range of specialty and engineering steels used by the aerospace, defense and oil and gas industries – customers the Government is determined to keep at home.
The response from the shop floor was cautiously welcoming. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, national secretary of the GMB union and a former steelworker herself, said Liberty Steel workers were “at the end of years of uncertainty at this time – this should be a deal that protects the long-term future of steelmaking in South Yorkshire”. He added that “any sale of SSUK must include due diligence to ensure the continued operation and stability of the sites”, a clear reminder that the unions will scrutinize Blastr’s financial package and work plan closely before giving undue support.
In a region that has watched its steel-making heritage erode over the past decades, and a Government eager to show that its industrial strategy can deliver more than just holding jobs, the next five weeks will be among the most important yet for the future of Britain’s special steel.
