Liberty Steel said in a statement Wednesday it has appointed four new directors to its board to form a Restructuring & Transformation Committee (RTC) that will have “full autonomy to restructure Liberty’s operations to focus on core profitable units, and either fix or sell underperforming units,” in a move to “lead and accelerate the restructuring and refinancing of Liberty in order to protect and maximize creditor and stakeholder value.”
Liberty Steel has a total rolling capacity of 20 million tons, over 200 manufacturing locations globally across 10 countries and employs more than 30,000 people.
Sources close to Liberty told S&P Global “it has been made very clear that the company’s major businesses — Liberty Whyalla [in Australia] and Liberty Galati and Liberty Ostrava in Europe — are performing strongly.”
Liberty Steel has grown rapidly in recent years to become Europe’s fourth-largest steelmaker with 6 million tons a year of crude steel capacity in the region, after it acquired works including Ostrava and Galati from ArcelorMittal.
In a recent interview, Ajay Aggarwal, member of the board of directors of the plant in Romania and chief executive of GFG, told Ziarul Financiar the plant in Galati was profitable and working at full capacity.
“We are positive we will overcome the difficulty the GFG Alliance is facing due to its main financier falling into administration. However, it is important to keep in mind that Liberty Galati is a viable and profitable facility, which increased production compared with last year, which is capable of delivering quality steel and generating the necessary funding for its regular operations and projects”, Aggarwal told ZF.