Whyalla steelworks owner Sanjeev Gupta promises no more job cuts with blast furnace to be operational in 'days or weeks'

Facing the fire, GFG Alliance Chairman Sanjeev Gupta travelled to Whyalla this week to see first hand. Progress on fixing the steelworks' troubled blast furnace as the heat rises on his global metals empire. “It's very difficult, tedious when a blast furnace is shut and you're trying to bring it back, and it's constantly lancing, it's very frustrating.” The furnace has been offline for almost six months this year, plunging the steelworks into a loss-making business at the same time. Several of Mr. Gupta's steel mills in Europe have shutdown, while creditors in the UK purse the steel magnate for hundreds of millions of dollars related to the collapse of financer Greensill Capital. “It feels like the walls are closing in on GFG Alliance, is your entire global operation on the brink of collapse? Sanjeev: Look, Harvey, I think it's important to sort of break that up.” “Our business in Australia is profitable overall, despite Whyalla's problems, which we can talk about.” “Europe is facing the perfect storm; it's got its issues which started with the war and they're continuing.” GFG owes mining royalties to the South Australian government, and debts to mining contractors while some local Whyalla suppliers have struggled to get paid by GFG in recent months. “For a long time the company's had a policy that the Whyalla contractors. The Whyalla supply chain are prioritised, so by and large, actually the issue is not that they're not getting paid, the issue is there is a lack of work and the lack of work comes from the blast furnace hasn't been working.” 48 jobs were cut at the steelworks in August and soon after, Mr Gupta bought a 12.5-million-dollar harbor-side Sydney mansion. “My commitment to Whyalla does not get impacted by the purchasing of an apartment in Sydney.” By the businessman's own admission GFG has lost more than 1.3 billion dollars since taking over the Whyalla Steelworks in 2017 and still he's promising a more than 1 billion dollar investment to decarbonise its operations. “The future is green iron and green steel, and we have all the ingredients in Whyalla to make it a success more than anywhere else in the world.” “But the missing piece at the moment is energy, which in the long term is basically, is hydrogen.” And that's where the state government comes in and its plans to build a hydrogen power plant at Whyalla. The future, though for GFG and the steelworks starts with fixing the current coal fired blast furnace and run it at full capacity. “If we're going to run full the operations we'll need more people not less people, there's no cuts coming at the steel plant.” For an embattled town perhaps a glimmer of goods news from the chairman who says he's the right person to be in charge. “Who's going to lose 1.3 billion dollars? I mean, I'm not trying to claim that is a claim to fame. It is fragility and we need to fix it, and we are fixing it. The right path for most shareholders would be to do what others are doing, to shut it down and save money and build arc furnace, that's not my path and we will stick to our path.” A promised pathway to prosperity that's facing rising challenges day by day.