British tax authorities have filed a winding up petition against Liberty Steel’s business making pipes in northern England in the latest sign of the pressure on the metals empire controlled by the tycoon Sanjeev Gupta.
Court filings list HM Revenue and Customs as the petitioner in a winding up petition against Liberty Pipes (Hartlepool) that was filed on Tuesday.
The listing suggests that the petition relates to an unpaid VAT bill. However, Liberty said thateverything the business owed to HMRC had been settled, and that there was no threat to the Hartlepool operations, which continue to operate and employ 178 people.
A spokesperson said: “Liberty Pipes Hartlepool has no outstanding payments due to HMRC. We are in touch with HMRC to have the petition removed.”
The petition is nevertheless the latest sign of the increasing financial pressure on Liberty Steel, which is a key part of Gupta’s GFG Alliance, an informal group of metals and energy companies stretching from Australia via Singapore and Romania to northern England.
Gupta’s companies have been in trouble since the 2021 failure of Greensill Capital, which collapsed after lending GFG about $5bn (£3.7bn). Gupta has been engaged in long-running talks with the administrators of Greensill, who are trying to recover the money.
Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner visit the Liberty Steel pipe mill in Hartlepool, County Durham, in 2021. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty
GFG has been under investigation by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office since 2021 in relation to the Greensill financing. The company and Gupta have denied wrongdoing. Gupta is also being prosecuted by Companies House over the failure to file accounts for more than 70 UK businesses – including those of Liberty Pipes (Hartlepool). He has pleaded not guilty.
Other key parts of Liberty Steel’s operations in the UK face the prospect of closure unless they can find new funding. An insolvency hearing postponed to later this month will decide the fate of Speciality Steel UK, which employs 1,450 people in South Yorkshire at an electric arc furnace at Rotherham, and another factory in Stocksbridge, near Sheffield. The Guardian revealed last month that ministers are considering stepping in to prevent those sites from closing should they fall into administration.
The Hartlepool factory in County Durham has the capacity to make 250,000 tonnes of pipes a year, to be used by oil and gas pipelines as well as structural hollow sections for buildings.
However, its operations are likely to have been disrupted by difficulties in other parts of the business, as it has previously relied on plate steel sourced from Liberty Dalzell, a plate mill in Motherwell, near Edinburgh. The Guardian revealed in May that Dalzell had not produced any products since July 2024.
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The last accounts filed for the Hartlepool company, for the year to March 2020, showed a small profit. The accounts also showed that despite the profit, the company had net liabilities of £4.7m, and suggested that it was reliant on its Singapore-incorporated parent company, Liberty House Group, to keep operating.
A source close to the company denied that it was in financial difficulty and blamed “administrative errors” at HMRC. They added it was currently working on a North Sea carbon capture pipeline.
HMRC was approached for comment.