The steel group Ascometal France, put up for sale by the Swiss Swiss Steel, announced this Friday April 26 that it had received takeover offers for all of its five sites, which employ a total of around 1,200 employees.
Among these offers, the Italian Acciaierie Venete, which came forward in December before withdrawing, is once again offering to take over the “automotive cluster“of the French group, which employs around 700 employees in Lorraine and Marais (Loire), an Ascometal spokesperson told AFP.”This is good news well received by management“, he congratulated himself.
All these offers are accompanied by conditions precedent, the spokesperson underlined, while the courts have given themselves until the end of June to designate the buyer(s).
Ascometal was placed in receivership at the end of March
“The challenge in the coming weeks is to lift these suspensive conditions but also to obtain improvements to these competing offers.“, he explained. “The company is experiencing difficulties and has significant financing needs. We must be able to continue to invest in industrial tools (…) in the context of a European steel market in crisis“.
Following Venete’s withdrawal, Ascometal was placed in receivership at the end of March. The commercial chamber of the Strasbourg judicial court had given potential buyers until April 25 to come forward.
Venete’s proposal covers the same scope as in its first offer, namely three of the group’s five French production sites, in Hagondange (Moselle), Custines (Meurthe-et-Moselle) and Marais (Loire), as well as as the Ascometal Special Steels Research Center (Creas) in Hagondange.
These sites specialize in the manufacture of special steels with small diameters, less than 80 millimeters, mainly for the automotive industry.
The Fos-sur-Mer site (Bouches-du-Rhône) is the subject of a takeover project by its employees, already announced on Thursday, as well as an offer from another Italian industrialist, Marcegaglia, which only concerns part of the activity and employees. The site employs around 330 people.
Finally, the Dunkirk factory, which employs 170 people, is the subject of an offer from the Spanish Sidenor, which offered in 2017 to take over the entire company.
Sidenor is also proposing to take over the Custines site, thus contradicting Venete’s takeover offer.
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