Liberty Steel Group (LSG), part of Sanjeev Gupta’s sustainable industry leader GFG Alliance, won the tender for the acquisition of the strategic French steel assets of France Rail Industry business (Hayange) and the Ascoval steelworks.
Following the decision in July by the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Strasbourg to award Hayange to Liberty Steel Group, the French government has approved the transaction on August 14 which will secure the future of the nationally strategic plants and their 700-strong workforce.
This is a “landmark moment for the workers of Hayange and Ascoval, for the French steel industry, and for Liberty Steel Group’s Greensteel ambitions in France. We have been interested in both of these sites for many years and have always believed that their futures were interlinked. We will revive both businesses, in a partnership supported by the extended GFG Alliance,” Sanjeev Gupta, the Executive Chairman of GFG Alliance said.
Hayange, located in Moselle, in the Lorraine department, east of France, manufactures a wide range of steel rails for railway projects in France. The company has delivered its products to SNCF, RATP and is seen as a strategic asset by the French government. The site, which employs around 430 people, produces over 300,000 tonnes of rail per year. While the French rail market is key to the business, with help from across the LSG network the company will seek to grow sales of rails across Europe and other markets. LSG already has a rail mill supplying the Australian network from its steelworks in Whyalla, South Australia.
Ascoval, based in Saint-Saulve in northern France and which has around 270 employees, was placed into an ad hoc receivership process last year.
The plant uses Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) technology and has the capability to produce 600,000 tonnes of steel blooms, billets and other forged products annually from recycled scrap metal. Ascoval will use recycled steel, including recovered scrap rail, to supply Hayange, creating an integrated French Greensteel rail business. Together with Hayange, the plant will create an integrated value chain and become LSG’s first steel business in France which provides the platform for further Greensteel production and product developments in France.
Under the transaction, GFG Alliance intends to develop Ascoval as a Greensteel hub and to drive Hayange into new markets through strong engagement with European rail companies seeking to make their networks carbon neutral.
LSG says the Greensteel model will transform the steel making through increased use of steel recycling in EAFs, application of low carbon and renewable energy sources to power industrial processes and use of hydrogen instead of coking coal as a reducing agent for iron ore through direct reduced iron plants to remove CO2 emissions from steel making. LSG’s Greensteel strategy is a key pillar in GFG Alliance’s aim to become carbon neutral by 2030.
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