International entrepreneur Sanjeev Gupta has been awarded a prestigious business award in recognition of his leadership and commitment to revolutionising the steel industry in the UK and beyond.

Mr Gupta, Executive Chairman of the GFG Alliance, was awarded “Business Leader of the Year” at the British Asian Achievers Awards 2017, attended by leaders who have been brought together to celebrate achievement and excellence amongst the British Asian community.

The awards acknowledge inspiring achievements and inspirational role models within the Asian Community in the industries of business, sport, entertainment and culture amongst others.

Sanjeev Gupta was chosen from a shortlist of exceptional business leaders who head up outstanding businesses in the UK.

The award recognises Sanjeev’s inspirational leadership skills, having built up the GFG Alliance from its humble beginnings as a trading operation, run from the student halls of residence at Cambridge University, into a global metals and industrial enterprise, where it is now one of Britain’s largest industrial employers with more than 5,000 staff in its Liberty House and SIMEC groups in the UK and more 12000 globally. Its businesses include the UK’s last aluminium smelter, its largest steel plate mill, largest scrap melting capacity, largest engineering business, one of the largest renewable energy portfolios, and a full licenced Bank.

Underpinning the businesses growth Sanjeev has applied the ground-breaking GREENSTEEL business model, which involves collecting and processing steel scrap generated domestically, melting it and refining it using their own renewable energy and feeding it to their own downstream engineering plants making products for consumption domestically.

Sanjeev Gupta is taking this model and using it to turnaround the steel industry globally, having recently completed a takeover of South Australia’s Arrium steelworks, he has since committed more than $1 billion to revitalizing the works.

On being awarded the Business Leader of the Year, Sanjeev Gupta said, “This has been an extraordinary period for our group as we pursue our GREENSTEEL vision for a resilient, high-value metals industry. It is hugely encouraging for our work to be recognised in this way by our peers in the industry and it motivates us to pursue this mission even more vigorously. I am proud and humbled to receive this award on behalf of all our staff who have been part of this mission.”