300 Oldbury and Bilston Caparo jobs saved

It was announced earlier today that 333 jobs in total have been saved at the steel group.

PwC spokesman David Jetuah said around 300 of the jobs being saved were in Oldbury and Bilston. But he said the administrators could not give a clear breakdown of the number of posts at each site, as many workers were based at multiple locations.

Administrators PwC said the Caparo Tubular Solutions business had been sold to the Gupta family, whose interests include the Simec and Liberty House groups.

Caparo Tubular Solutions includes the businesses of Caparo Precision Tubes Oldbury, Caparo Tube Components and Caparo Accles and Pollock also based in Oldbury, Hub Le Bas in Bilston, and the Caparo Tubes Tredegar asset in Wales.

Robert Moran, partner at PwC leading the Caparo sales process, said: "The sale of Caparo Tubular Solutions is a major boost for the Midlands economy, the employees of Caparo and more widely for the UK steel industry.

"This deal preserves all 333 jobs at Caparo Tubular Solutions, which manufactures, distributes and supplies advanced tube components and parts for the automotive and aerospace industries in the West Midlands and South Wales."

A total of 488 Caparo workers have been taken on through sales of the group's business units since it went into administration last month.

Matthew Hammond, Midlands region chairman for PwC and lead administrator, said: "We are delighted to have made further substantial progress with this deal. We had targeted selling a number of the Caparo businesses during November.

"Our deals team, led by Robert Moran with corporate finance support from Neil Sumner, has successfully concluded transactions in November which preserve businesses and employment."

Russell Farrington, GMB regional organiser, said: "This is a sliver of good news for workers in the steel industry.

"GMB warmly welcome this for the Caparo workers we represent in the West Midlands. We have made progress on the energy prices front for the UK steel industry. We now need action on dumping."

The new owners say they are confident the steel industry still has a future in the West Midlands and beyond.

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."