British Steel’s factory in France has received four takeover offers, according to the country’s finance minister, a development that will complicate efforts by a Chinese investor to buy out the whole of the troubled company.
The bidders include industry giant ArcelorMittal, German steel producer Saarstahl and the UK-based industrial group Liberty House, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Another offer is from Ascoval, a French steelworks owned by the private investment firm Greybull Capital under whose ownership British Steel collapsed into liquidation almost a year ago.
Saarstahl confirmed its bid. The other companies declined to comment.
Jingye Group is poised to complete a £50m deal to rescue the UK’s second-largest steelmaker from bankruptcy next week, safeguarding more than 3,000 jobs in Lincolnshire and north-east England.
The purchase agreement included a mill in northern France that is one of British Steel’s few profitable operations, but the government in Paris has still not granted approval for a change in ownership of the site.
The facility in Hayange, near the German border, is considered a strategic national asset because it supplies metal tracks for France’s railways.
French officials have reservations about Jingye’s plans at a time of wider concerns about Chinese involvement in key European infrastructure such as 5G mobile networks.
A separate sale process for the plant was launched by local management last year as a back-up in case the buyout by Jingye fell through.
Finance minister Bruno Le Maire on Wednesday told BFM Business that there had been four offers of which three were “serious”.
Despite the hold-up in authorisation from French authorities, Jingye this week decided to proceed in stages to complete the acquisition that was first agreed in November.
The Chinese conglomerate will initially take control of British Steel’s main plant in Scunthorpe and two satellite factories in Teesside, as well as subsidiaries TSP Engineering and Netherlands-based FN Steel, from Monday.
However, uncertainty remains over the outcome for the French plant, which has an annual turnover of €250m and 450 employees.
Its shares are under the control of the official receiver, a court-appointed civil servant who has kept British Steel running with a UK taxpayer indemnity estimated to have cost tens of millions of pounds. The insolvency service did not respond to a request for comment.
Jingye has promised to invest £1.2bn to modernise British Steel and improve its environmental performance, including €60m to upgrade the French rail mill and increase its output. About 400 jobs will be cut under the turnround programme.
France’s finance ministry said that the sales process for the Hayange plant was being carried out under the supervision of a judicial representative and the commercial court. “It will independently determine the buyer based on the offer that best meets the criteria set by law,” it added.
