Tata Steel’s southeast Asia unit sale falls through

Tata Steel has failed to sell a 70pc stake in its southeast Asian steel business, Natsteel, to China's state-controlled Hesteel.

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Tata Steel has failed to sell a 70pc stake in its southeast Asian steel business, Natsteel, to China's state-controlled Hesteel.

The deal, announced on 28 January, could not be concluded because of a lack of approvals from the Hebei provincial government.

Tata Steel's southeast Asian operations include units in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia, with total saleable steel production of 2.23mn t in the April 2017-March 2018 financial year. The company did not provide its southeast Asian output for 2018-19.

Tata Steel will immediately start the process of finding a new investor for its southeast Asian business.

Tata Steel has been growing its capacity in India through greenfield and brownfield expansions to meet the growth in demand from the country's construction and automobiles sectors over the past decade.

But the company is finding it difficult to offload holdings in its struggling European and southeast Asian operations. A proposed merger between Germany's Thyssenkrupp and Tata Steel's European operations did not go through because of regulatory objections.

source: Argus Media