Tata's UK Steel assets can be saved, says Sanjeev Gupta

Prime Minister David Cameron's government has said it is working to broker a deal with potential buyers after India's Tata Steel put its British operations up for sale last week

Sanjeev Gupta, a potential buyer of Tata Steel’s British assets, is meeting Britain’s business secretary on Tuesday to discuss his plan to turn around the struggling operations without the loss of thousands of jobs.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s government has said it was working to broker a deal with potential buyers after India’s Tata Steel put its British operations up for sale last week, threatening thousands of jobs.

Read more from our special coverage on "TATA STEEL UK"

• Tata Steels plan to restructure UK biz credit positive: Moodys

Gupta, head of the Liberty House Group which has bought other steel assets in Britain, told BBC Radio he believed the business could be saved but said he had not yet carried out due diligence or held talks with the sellers of the business, which includes the huge Port Talbot site in Wales.

“Many of them are lossmaking at the moment but we believe they can be turned around,” he said.

Cameron’s government has faced criticism over its response to Tata’s decision, a move that has put 15,000 jobs at risk and exposed the government to accusations of failing to protect the industry from high energy costs and cheaper Chinese imports.

Gupta said he was looking at the broad concept of the business and believed the majority of it could be saved. He said the blast furnaces were the biggest problem but that staff could be retrained to modify the plant.

“We have an alternative suggestion which is to still make hot metal but to make it from local raw material rather than imported raw material, so it's a change of technology rather than ending liquid steel making,” he said.

“If we get involved in Port Talbot we will only do so on the basis that we are confident there will not be any mass redundancies.”