The Gupta family, whose wider interests include the international energy, metals, industrial and trading groups SIMEC and Liberty House, has acquired Caparo Tubular Solutions, a core division of Caparo Industries plc, which went into administration in October.

The family made the announcement today (Saturday November 28^th) after concluding talks with administrators PwC. It is hoped the deal will help preserve almost 350 jobs within Caparo’s Tubular Solutions division, a leading UK manufacturer, distributor and supplier of advanced tube components and parts for the automotive and aerospace industries.

Liberty sees the multi-product Caparo tube businesses, headquartered at Oldbury in the West Midlands, as a major complement to its own hot rolled coil production, centred in Newport, South Wales.

Sanjeev Gupta, Chief Executive of Liberty said: “There are many natural synergies between our hot rolled coil production business and Caparo’s design, manufacture and distribution of steel tube and various specialist engineering products.  They are established customers for our product and we have, in fact, looked at them in the past about the possibility of integrating the two businesses in order to help create a comprehensive and robust new model for the steel sector in the UK. We now aim to achieve that objective.”

“I believe that, despite the current difficulties being encountered by the UK steel industry there is a future for the sector in Britain, if we can develop more efficient business models based on streamlined integrated production, processing and distribution. This, together with the new initiatives now supported by the Government to lower energy costs for energy intensive industries, provides an opportunity for UK steel once again to be competitive. Caparo Tubular Solutions was a fundamentally profitable business with substantial, sustainable value, and we were very attracted to its highly-skilled management and workforce, extensive distribution network and top-quality customer base.”

Liberty recently restarted hot rolled coil production at its rolling mill in Newport, South Wales. The company imports steel slab through Newport for rolling on site but is also considering the possibility of producing slab from domestic steel scrap at the same plant, which has an existing arc furnace.