State Govt upbeat on Arrium’s future
Arrium’s South Australian steel operations and the regional centre of Whyalla can survive and thrive despite the company’s current woes, SA Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis says.
The State Government is increasingly upbeat about the future of Arrium after the company’s administrators announced they aimed to successfully restructure the group, starting with the Whyalla steelworks.
Koutsantonis says he’s heartened by the comments and is confident the plant is viable, jobs can be saved and Whyalla can “thrive into the future”.
He says what is needed now is for the state and federal governments, Arrium and the company’s lenders to co-operate on a package to make improvements to the Whyalla plant.
“We’re not talking about redundancies, we’re not talking about wage efficiencies,” he said.
“We’re talking capital improvements that actually make the operations much more efficient, which is really what Arrium needs.”
Paul Billingham, of administrators Grant Thornton, said restructuring Whyalla would increase the value of the company’s assets, significantly improving the return to creditors and encouraging the prospect of a groupwide recapitalisation.
Billingham said Arrium already had several projects under way to improve efficiencies at the steelworks which were being successfully driven by the local management team.
Stay informed, daily
“Our joint aim is to now swiftly bring together all key parties in a collective effort to save Whyalla,” he said.
Koutsantonis said the administrators had clearly uncovered that Arrium and the state government had been working with local management over the past six to 12 months to come up with a solution.
“What we’re going to need now is co-operation between the commonwealth government and the state government, the administrator, and most importantly Arrium’s creditors, to come up with a deal so that Arrium can eventually trade out of trouble rather than enter into a cheap fire sale,” he said.
AAP
