GFG Alliance to merge its Liberty Steel businesses by year end

The family-owned alliance led by Sanjeev Gupta has said that Liberty Steel Group, which altogether employs 30,000 people in 10 countries, will be incorporated by the end of this year through a merger of GFG’s upstream and downstream steel manufacturing, mining and distribution businesses around the world.

Liberty Steel Group will be the eighth largest steel producer outside China, with operations stretching from Australia, continental Europe, the US as well as the UK.

Liberty Steel has operations in multiple locations in the UK, including Scunthorpe, Newport, Hartlepool and Stocksbridge.

Although individual businesses will retain a high degree of autonomy, consolidated accounts will be produced and a united strategy will be developed.

At the heart of the group’s mission will be an ambition to build on GFG’s existing GreenSteel strategy to aim for net carbon neutral status by 2030 – placing Liberty Steel Group on a pathway to become the first carbon neutral steel company in the world. This will include exploration of the best use of new technologies such as hydrogen generated from renewable power to produce steel.

The GreenSteel strategy focuses on using electric arc furnaces to recycle scrap steel rather than producing all material from scratch, as well as using renewable sources of energy.

Steel from recycled scrap using fossil fuel based energy generates less than a third of the CO2 emissions compared with primary steel making, with the benefit dramatically increasing to almost zero emissions with the use of renewable power.

Liberty’s plants already recycle three million tonnes of scrap steel annually, with investment underway in electric arc furnaces in the UK, Australia and the United States.

Speaking at World Steel Dynamics’ European Conference in Milan, Italy, today, Sanjeev Gupta, Executive Chairman of GFG Alliance, said: “We are creating a new force in steel with the size, scale and agility to forge a path towards a sustainable future for our steel businesses and the communities in which we operate. Our integrated group will stretch around the world, with a financial and governance structure suitable for an intercontinental business of our size.

“Steel is the building block of modern life and the GFG Alliance has always put sustainable strategies at the heart of its business model. We recognise that becoming carbon neutral by 2030 is a very ambitious target but we have firm foundations already with our GREENSTEEL strategy in motion, and with technical viability of hydrogen usage for direct reduced iron now proven it gives us the confidence that such developments allow us to aim even higher with our goals.

“As a responsible business, the legacy we pass on to future generations is every bit as important as our bottom line. Liberty Steel aims not just to produce top-quality steel but to be an agent of change in the industry. In doing so, we can open the door to the re-industrialisation of the developed world by reviving and restoring often neglected industry.”

Liberty House Group www.libertyhousegroup.com