Liberty Steel USA, part of Sanjeev Gupta’s global GFG Alliance has made two key management appointments as it continues its expansion in the USA.

Revansidha ‘Rohit’ Gulve, who led the successful reopening last summer of Liberty Steel Georgetown in South Carolina, is moving from his role as general manager there to become general manager at the larger Liberty Steel Peoria in Illinois.

Both mills are major producers of wire rod, a product in which Liberty is aiming to become a US market leader over the coming year. Liberty reopened the shuttered Georgetown mill in summer 2018 and acquired the Peoria site along with several downstream steel assets from KCI in January 2019.

Over recent months Mr Gulve has overseen the steady increase in output from Georgetown and his new appointment signals Liberty’s intention to deliver strong growth at Peoria also.

Pending the appointment of a permanent replacement at Georgetown, Liberty has engaged highly-experienced international steel executive Marcio Van der Put as acting general manager. Mr Van der Put ran the South Carolina mill under previous owners ArcelorMittal for three years up until 2009 before taking up senior posts with the firm in Brazil, most recently as chief technology officer for long products in that country.

Michael Setterdahl, chief executive of Liberty Steel USA said: “We have made substantial progress since we entered the US market last year and Rohit’s skills and commitment have played a vital part in that. We’re confident he will now bring continued success and growth to Peoria and give added momentum to Liberty’s drive forward in the American steel sector.

“In order to sustain Georgetown’s journey back to full production, we’re delighted to have gained the services of Marcio Van der Put, someone not only with a great wire rod pedigree but who also knows this plant inside out,” he added.

Liberty Steel USA now has total electric arc furnace melting capacity of 1.8m tons per annum as well as 1.5m tons of wire rod rolling capacity and substantial value-added downstream businesses and over 1,300 employees based across Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, New Mexico, Texas, Georgia, Florida and New York City.