Steelworkers went unpaid despite $70m sale of US arm

The steel business run by the British metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta delayed payments to staff last month despite selling operations in the US for $70 million.
Gupta’s company GFG Alliance has sold off its Engineered Wire Products business as it faced a “severe market downturn”.
Yet as the deal was finalised, workers at Liberty Steel, the UK steel manufacturer that is a subsidiary of GFG Alliance, reported that their wages and pension contributions had not been paid on time.
Engineered Wire Products makes mesh wire products that are used to reinforce concrete in the construction of commercial and residential buildings. GFG Alliance bought the business when it expanded in the US with the purchase of Keystone Consolidated Industries for $320 million in 2019.
GFG acquired a group of companies including Keystone Steel and Wire, Engineered Wire Products, Strand Tech Manufacturing and Keystone Bar Products, and was part of a wider strategy to list Liberty Steel’s US division on the stock market, with Credit Suisse appointed to lead the initial public offering.
Insteel Industries, a US steel manufacturer listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has now acquired Engineered Wire Products in a cash deal. A press release announcing the transaction, which did not reference Gupta or GFG Alliance, was published in the US on October 21. Three days later local press in the UK reported that steelworkers were “in uproar after wages go unpaid”.
Steelworkers at Liberty Steel’s operations in Rotherham and Stocksbridge complained to The Star, a local newspaper, about the delay and Alun Davies, national officer for steel at Community union, called for a meeting with Gupta to discuss the “totally unacceptable” delay.
A Liberty Steel spokesman told the newspaper that funding had been secured for salaries and was “being processed as an utmost priority”. The spokesman said the company had “sought to preserve jobs and is focused on delivering profitable and sustainable production where viable” in the midst of a “severe market downturn”.
On Friday a Liberty Steel spokesman told The Times that all staff had been paid their salaries and the delay in payments had been resolved.
Gupta’s steel conglomerate has been in turmoil for some years following the collapse of its main lender Greensill Capital in 2021. Greensill has faced scrutiny of its financing techniques and became embroiled in scandal when it emerged that David Cameron, the former prime minister and adviser to the company, had lobbied politicians and officials on Greensill’s behalf.
Credit Suisse, the Zurich-based lender which collapsed last year, was also dragged into the affair after building up an exposure of $10 billion to Greensill. The case has spawned a number of legal disputes as creditors seek to secure payouts from Greensill’s insolvent estate.