A redundancy fund procedure for employees at the Liberty Magona plant in Piombino, Italy, will start from June 7, as reported by local unions after a meeting with the company's management at the end of last week.
The procedure concerns about 550 workers (including temporary workers) and will last at least three weeks. The cause is the lack of material, triggered by the crisis faced by the parent company Liberty Steel and by the decision of ArcelorMittal to block the supply of feedstock, namely coils, to Liberty Magona. This, as previously reported by SteelOrbis, will be forced to shut down its plants despite its good financial situation and full order books.
ArcelorMittal, local unions said, stopped shipments of the feedstock on a pretext, due to unpaid money owed by the Liberty plant in Liège following the bankruptcy of Greensill Capital, Liberty's main financier. According to the unions, there is only one way out of this situation and that is the sale of the plant. The labor unions Fim, Fiom and Uilm are now asking for a meeting with Liberty Group’s owner Sanjeev Gupta and above all with Italian economic development minister Giancarlo Giorgetti to ask him to ensure the necessary supplies for Magona from the Acciaierie d'Italia plant in Taranto, which is jointly owned by the Italian state and ArcelorMittal.
In recent weeks, Sanjeev Gupta has announced a restructuring plan that includes the sale of some non-strategic plants in the UK and France, while trying to rescue the assets of Liberty Primary Metals Australia.