UK’s third largest steelworks moves closer to sale after Official Receiver agrees exclusivity period with preferred bidder for former Liberty Steel business

Britain’s third largest steelworks has edged closer to a sale following Government intervention after it went into liquidation last year.

Last August, the state’s Official Receiver assumed control of Speciality Steel – formerly part of Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Steel empire – after it was forced to liquidate by the High Court.

On Wednesday, the Official Receiver, an arm of the Insolvency Service, confirmed it has entered into an exclusivity agreement with a “preferred bidder” for Speciality Steel UK (SSUK). The identity of the bidder has not been disclosed.

The Official Receiver stated that the process, designed to secure a formal sale, is anticipated to take approximately five weeks as the preferred bidder advances with their offer.

Output at the business, which operates sites across Stocksbridge and Rotherham in South Yorkshire, and Wednesbury in the West Midlands, has been suspended in recent months.

Speciality Steel employs around 1,300 workers, a significant number of whom have been placed on furlough with reduced wages.

Roy Rickhuss, general secretary of the Community union, said: “This is an important moment, and we hope that this milestone – following on from the Government’s intervention last autumn – will help end the long period of uncertainty which our members at SSUK have endured.

“We look forward to meeting with the preferred bidder as soon as possible to hear more about their plans for securing jobs and investing in the business.

“SSUK’s sites are vital strategic assets, and with the right plan in place the business can have a bright future.”

An extraordinary general meeting is scheduled for next month to approve the multimillion-pound deal

Exeter Chiefs are poised to become the latest in a wave of Premiership Rugby clubs to secure fresh investment, with American backing anticipated at Sandy Park.

An extraordinary general meeting is scheduled for next month to vote on proposals that would see an unnamed US backer make a multimillion-pound investment in the Devon club.

The Guardian reports that members will be encouraged to back the motion. The club’s chairman, Tony Rowe, who has financially supported Exeter Chiefs’ rise from the second tier to European champions, has acknowledged he can no longer sustain the club’s funding in the long term, having previously explored and abandoned plans to float on the stock market.

“The proposal is for the members to accept,” Rowe told the Guardian. “At the moment I can’t discuss what that proposal is in any shape or form, other than it is an American investor. They want to get involved in English rugby.”

Should the new investment receive the green light, it would follow energy drinks giant Red Bull’s entry into England’s top-flight Premiership Rugby with Newcastle and the multimillion-pound investment from billionaire Sir James Dyson into defending champions Bath.

Exeter Chiefs’ West Country rivals Gloucester Rugby also appear to be pursuing investment from across the Atlantic, with owner Martin St Quinton stating in promotional material for a fan-focused crowdfunding campaign that the absence of relegation makes the league considerably more appealing to American investors.

The Devon-based club, whose squad boasts the likes of England international Henry Slade and former Wales captain Dafydd Jenkins, recorded losses of £10.3m in their most recent accounts, amid a wave of negative returns across the Premiership, as reported by City AM

Investing in England’s top tier guarantees a portion of the central revenue, 27 per cent of which is channelled to private equity giant CVC Capital Partners, which has recently consolidated its varied sports assets into the umbrella organisation Global Sports Group.

Global Sports Group encompasses CVC Capital Partners’ Premiership Rugby investment alongside shareholdings in the Guinness Six Nations and the multi-national United Rugby Championship.

A review of Premiership Rugby carried out by Big Four firm Deloitte and merchant bank Raine Group concluded that the top flight should transition to a franchise model before the end of the decade, with plans to expand to as many as 20 teams by 2040.

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British SMEs with transatlantic trade links have been warned they face a prolonged and uncertain wait before recovering tariffs wrongly collected by the United States, after Washington confirmed that its long-awaited online refund portal will handle only a fraction of outstanding claims when it goes live next week.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is due to switch on its Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system, known as CAPE, on 20 April. The first phase of the portal is expected to cope with roughly 63 per cent of refund requests. The remaining 37 per cent, however, have been left without so much as a provisional timetable, raising fresh concerns for cash-strapped importers that have been out of pocket for the best part of two years.

John Havard, a consultant at audit, tax and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg, said the scale of the backlog was “extraordinary” and that the uncertainty surrounding the more complex tranche of claims would do little to reassure small and mid-sized businesses that had counted on a swift resolution once the US Supreme Court struck down the tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

“Many of these remaining cases are classed as final tariffs because the goods concerned will have entered the US more than a year before the refund claim is filed,” Havard said. “In such instances the claims procedure is going to be considerably more involved. We are unlikely to hear anything further until government officials next appear before the Court of International Trade to deliver their next mandated progress report.”

The numbers involved are eye-watering. Blick Rothenberg estimates that around 53 million unlawful tariff collection transactions were processed during the period in question, with the total refund bill potentially reaching $166 billion (£132 billion). More than 26,000 importers, collectively responsible for some $120 billion of IEEPA tariffs, have already registered with CBP to receive their money back electronically, following a White House directive requiring all federal payments to be made by electronic transfer.

The rules governing who can actually lodge a claim are tightly drawn. Only the official importer-of-record, or that party’s nominated US customs broker, will be entitled to submit a refund request. Businesses must also hold an active account with CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment before they can receive any money. Havard said there had been “considerable activity” in new account registrations since the Supreme Court’s ruling, suggesting that many firms had been caught flat-footed by the decision.

For those still waiting, there is at least one sliver of good news. In a previous statement to the US trade court, a government official confirmed that interest would be paid on all refunded amounts, offering modest compensation for what is shaping up to be a lengthy delay before cheques actually land.

For British exporters and importers with exposure to the US market, the practical advice is straightforward: ensure ACE registration is in order, confirm which party holds importer-of-record status on historic shipments, and brace for a drawn-out administrative process. The fundamentals of the refund entitlement are no longer in doubt; the mechanics of getting the money back, it seems, very much are.

Luke Sartain, boss of Bristol-based Narwhal Labs, has responded to criticism online about adverts for his AI platform

The boss of a Bristol AI start-up that secured more than £20m in funding from UK investors last week has spoken out after one of its adverts was slammed for being “sexist”, “tone deaf” and “deeply troubling”.

A billboard appeared at Bristol Airport on April 10 depicting a smiling computer-generated woman with the strapline: ‘She outworks everyone. And she’ll never ask for a raise’. Underneath it said: ‘Meet your new AI employee. Always on, never sick and no HR required’.

The advert by Bristol tech company Narwhal Labs is for a new type of AI agent that handles voice, SMS, email and Whatsapp messages. The communications platform – named DeepBlue OS and set to launch next month – is being built in Bristol and has received backing from a host of investors including Jonathan Swann, former director of CFC Underwriting.

According to Narwhal, it is designed to replace “fragmented, human-led response models” with “always-on” AI agents. The chatbot operates 24 hours a day and is able to handle enquiries, such as booking appointments, without the need for a human. It also runs on a utility model with no setup fees or long-term contracts, and pricing is based on usage.

The Bristol Airport advertising campaign also features a male counterpart, but the associated message is focused on efficiency, with the tagline: ‘He’ll find them, call them, and follow up. While you sleep’.

The advert featuring the female AI agent, which has now been removed according to Bristol Airport, has been described as “sexist” and “deeply troubling” by gender experts and garnered criticism on social media.

“We understand the strength of feeling our campaign has generated, and we recognise the frustration it has caused,” Luke Sartain, chief executive and founder of Narwhal Labs told Business Live.

“It was never our intention for the billboards to be perceived as misogynistic or racist, and we take that concern seriously.

“Our billboards depict people from a wide range of demographics. Different genders, backgrounds, and identities, and deliberately so. Because this was never about one group losing out to another. This is something far broader: humans versus machines. The impact will not be selective. It will not discriminate. And the debate it has sparked is exactly the one we need.

“While governments hesitate, the technology is accelerating. When as much as 80 per cent of white-collar work is at risk within the decade, silence is no longer a neutral position. The real question is not whether AI will replace jobs. It’s what we choose to do about it.”

But Dr Ruhi Khan, research officer in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Politics, told the Metro the advert was a “masterclass in encoded sexism”.

“When a tech company takes out a billboard in a major UK airport selling a female AI employee on the grounds that she will never demand fair pay, we have moved beyond unconscious bias in a dataset,” she told the newspaper. “This is the deliberate commercialisation of patriarchy. And this is deeply troubling.”

The advert also drew criticism on LinkedIn, with comments describing it as “misogynistic” and “ill-conceived”.

Mr Sartain, however, told Business Live the argument is more about “defining the role of humans in a world where we are no longer the most efficient option”.

“Can AI outwork a human? The answer is yes, and in more ways than most are ready to accept,” he said. “But outperforming someone is not the same as replacing them.”

Mr Sartain said he would like to see more regulation around AI in the workplace, including mandatory transparency, with consumers and employees having the right to know when they are interacting with AI, not a person.

He also believes businesses deploying AI at scale should be required to invest in reskilling and redeployment for affected workers. And that there should be a framework for coexistence in the workplace, with clear rules around where AI can replace humans – and where it can’t.

“In today’s world consumer expectations are rising, and AI is uniquely equipped to meet them, delivering speed, scale, and consistency that redefine what ‘good’ looks like. At Narwhal Labs, our mission is to help organisations meet those expectations responsibly,” he added.

A Bristol Airport spokesperson said: “The third-party company that arranges advertising at the airport removed the advert after concerns were raised regarding the content.”

A Norwegian green-steel start-up has emerged as the preferred bidder for the former Liberty Steel operations in South Yorkshire, raising hopes of a long-awaited rescue for two plants that have become emblematic of Britain’s troubled heavy industry.

Blastr, a business backed by the Oslo-based renewables investor Vanir Green Industries, has entered a five-week period of exclusive negotiations with the Government’s official receiver to acquire Speciality Steel UK (SSUK), the company that owns Britain’s largest operating electric arc furnace in Rotherham and the downstream works at Stocksbridge.

The deal, if completed, would draw a line under one of the most drawn-out corporate collapses in recent British manufacturing history. SSUK has been in the hands of the official receiver since last August, when London’s High Court stripped ownership from the embattled metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta and declared the business “hopelessly insolvent”.

A successful sale would also hand ministers a rare piece of good news on the steel file. The Department for Business and Trade is already wrestling with the future of British Steel in Scunthorpe, the Chinese-owned blast furnace operation taken into state control roughly a year ago and now widely tipped for full nationalisation. Whitehall officials had privately floated the idea of bolting SSUK on to British Steel to create a single, state-shepherded speciality and long products champion, but sources suggest that option has fallen away under Blastr’s plans.

Confirmation of the exclusivity window came on Wednesday. “The official receiver will look to complete the sale at the earliest opportunity,” the Government said in a terse statement, with officials pointing to the tight five-week runway as a sign that negotiations are already well advanced.

For Blastr, the prize is considerable, but so is the challenge. The company does not yet own or operate a single working steel plant. Its flagship project is a greenfield site in Finland, where it plans to use green hydrogen to produce low-carbon iron and steel — a technology that remains commercially unproven at scale. The business is led by Mark Bula, a steel industry veteran who has held senior roles at large producers in India and the United States, and who is understood to be the driving force behind the push into the UK.

Industry watchers expect Blastr to require substantial external financing to take the Rotherham and Stocksbridge sites across the line. Even so, insiders argue that SSUK itself is a fundamentally viable business, long throttled by the chronic shortage of working capital that plagued the wider Liberty Steel group under Mr Gupta and left the plants unable to buy raw materials consistently. Gupta, whose globe-spanning GFG Alliance has contracted sharply in recent years as cash pressures mounted, fought to retain SSUK to the last, but was eventually overruled in court.

The Rotherham electric arc furnace is a particularly strategic asset. As Britain’s largest operational EAF, it is central to any credible vision of a lower-carbon domestic steel sector and produces the kind of speciality and engineering steels used by the aerospace, defence and oil and gas industries — customers the Government is keen to keep sourcing at home.

The response from the shop floor was cautiously welcoming. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a national secretary of the GMB union and a former steelworker herself, said Liberty Steel employees “have been at the sharp end of years of uncertainty at this point — this needs to be a deal that secures the long-term future of steelmaking in South Yorkshire”. She added that “any sale of SSUK must include due diligence which guarantees ongoing operations and stability of the sites”, a pointed reminder that unions will scrutinise Blastr’s funding package and operational plan closely before offering unqualified support.

For a region that has watched its steelmaking heritage erode over decades, and for a Government anxious to demonstrate that its industrial strategy can deliver more than just holding operations, the coming five weeks will be among the most consequential yet for the future of British speciality steel.

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.