Tata Steel is in talks to sell its European long products business to an investment group in a move that could safeguard 4,700 jobs and keep open several British plants threatened with closure.

Tata said it had entered exclusive talks with Greybull Capital to sell a number of plants including its steelworks in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and mills at Dalzell and Clydebridge in Scotland that are being mothballed.

Other sites included in the talks are mills in Teesside and northern France, an engineering workshop in Workington, Cumbria, and a design consultancy in York. Tata has been trying to sell the long products business, which makes railway track and steel used in construction, amid a supply glut and tumbling prices.

The company, which owns the remnants of what was formerly British Steel, announced in October that it planned to cut almost 1,200 jobs at Scunthorpe and shut the mills in Dalzell, in Motherwell, and Clydebridge, in Cambuslang , near Glasgow. Tata’s decision underlined the crisis facing the British steel industry after the closure of the Redcar steelworks on Teesside earlier that month.

SOURCE: theguardian.com