Tata Steel has agreed to sell its Specialty Steels business for £100m
Tata Steel UK has agreed to sell its Specialty Steels business to industrials group Liberty House for £100m.
The sale includes several South Yorkshire-based sites, including steelworks at Rotherham, Stocksbridge and Brinsworth, as well as operations in Suzhou and Xi'an in China.
The deal will secure the jobs of about 1,700 people directly employed by Specialty Steels working in the aerospace, automotive and the oil and gas industries plus "thousands more in the supply chain and regional economy", Liberty said.
The Indian conglomerate will help secure the future of Specialty Steels and the Port Talbot-based supply chain, Bimlendra Jha, chief executive of Tata Steel UK, said.
"Like our former Scunthorpe-based long products business which we sold last year, we will be handing over a business which has been transformed following difficult decisions to restructure and re-focus on higher-value markets," he said.
Read more: Tata Steel to finalise sale of Scunthorpe plant to Greybull Capital
Completion of the deal, which will make Liberty one of the largest steel and engineering employers in the UK is subject to regulatory clearances.
Sanjeev Gupta, executive chairman of Liberty said the steel business will "flourish" as part of the group. “I am proud that we are acquiring a world-class business with a very skilled workforce and broad range of high-value products."
Tata Steel UK is in discussions with the British Steel Pension Scheme trustee and the Pension Regulator to develop a structural solution for its UK pension scheme in the coming months.
Read more: Tata and unions agree to rescue plan for the Port Talbot steel works
Earlier this week, Tata posted its first profit in five straight quarters, bringing in 2.32bn rupees (£27.8m) compared with analyst predictions of 1.74 rupees.