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The steelmaker in bankruptcy British Steel was bought by the Chinese group Jingye for an amount of 81 million euros, according to media reports. The UK government is expected to contribute to the rescue through loan guarantees and other financial support to save the company's approximately 4,000 jobs.
With our correspondent in London, Muriel Delcroix
British Steel is number two in the UK behind Tata Steel and accounts for one-third of UK steel production. He was forced into bankruptcy in May, for lack of sufficient cash and after the failure of discussions with the government on a new injection of fresh money. The steelmaker had made the Brexit responsible for its financial difficulties by pointing to the uncertainties that plague the steel demand of its European customers.
The Chinese firm Jingye plans to increase production and invest 1.4 billion euros in the next 10 years to improve equipment and make them more energy efficient. It is in particular the production of railroad tracks, of which British Steel is a specialist, which interests the Jingye Group, which already produces iron and steel and employs 23,000 people in China. Its officials say they want to save thousands of jobs while avoiding promising to save the nearly 4,000 employees of the Scunthorpe and Teesside complexes.
Still, the reaction to this buyback is mixed in the UK: While employees and unions in the sector welcome the announcement of a reassuring agreement for the immediate future of thousands of workers, they remain cautious about the intentions to long term group. The opposition parties are critical of this cheap buyout by China, whose fierce competition has contributed to the decline of the sector in Europe.
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