BUSINESS RESCUE
Highveld Steel looks after retrenched employees
Highveld Steel has paid about R50m to retrenched employees so far and continues to pay them from rentals from the businesses that now occupy the site outside eMalahleni, says Piers Marsden of Matuson & Associates, one of Highveld’s business-rescue practitioners. Highveld Steel & Vanadium, SA’s second-biggest steel manufacturer after ArcelorMittal SA, was put into business rescue in April 2015 after a prolonged downturn in the steel industry. The collapse of the group, which was majority-owned by Evraz, resulted in the retrenchment of almost 3,500 people, including about 1,800 of its own staff as well as contractors, in February 2016. An initial attempt to sell the business fell through due to soft market conditions and the 50-year-old mill’s significant environmental liabilities. Marsden, speaking on the sidelines of the official restart of the Highveld Structural Mill, says the total amount owed to employees, who are being paid out first, was originally R300m. An additional R150m i...
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