Britain’s tax authority has withdrawn winding-up orders against large parts of Liberty Steel, controlled by Sanjeev Gupta, the commodities tycoon.
Thousands of jobs were at risk after HM Revenue & Customs filed petitions at the High Court last month to wind up Speciality Steel UK and three other Liberty Steel businesses.
Plants that could have been affected include the electric arc furnaces at Rotherham in South Yorkshire and the high-value processing plant at Stocksbridge, which supplies the British aerospace and automotive industries.
Liberty Steel said yesterday that HMRC had withdrawn the petitions and further funding had been injected into the business to secure continued operations.
Liberty Steel is the UK arm of Gupta’s GFG Alliance, which has been scrambling to arrange financing after its main lender, Greensill, the supply chain finance firm, went bust last year.
Neither Liberty Steel nor HMRC has disclosed how much tax was unpaid.
Jeffrey Kabel, chief transformation officer at Liberty Steel, said: “We’re pleased to report good further progress in our negotiations with creditors including UK’s HMRC.”
Separately, 209 jobs are at risk after the company failed to find a buyer for Liberty Pressing Solutions, in Coventry, which supplies the automotive sector.