Sanjeev Gupta hunts senior lenders for SA mines | Iberdrola eyes Neoen’s Vic asset s | $1 billion block incoming at Auckland Air port

Good evening,

British businessman Sanjeev Gupta is attempting to raise more debt to finance his embattled steelmaking business in Whyalla, offering lenders security over iron ore mining tenements near the mill.

Gupta’s Liberty Primary Metals Australia has hired specialist corporate adviser Blackbird Partners to seek expressions of interest from senior lenders, according to a six-page flyer seen by Street Talk.

That money, the material says, would be used for a development known as the Magnetite Extension Project 1. The debt would be used to bring into production some 2.5 million tonnes of high-grade magnetite concentrate.

The flyer talks up the Whyalla complex as a “global leader in the Green Steel revolution” as well as the South Australian government’s decision last year to build a $593 million, 250MW hydrogen facility in Whyalla.

There was no mention of the state last month kicking off a beauty parade of advisers to guard its interests in the event Whyalla, or the associated mines, land in voluntary administration. Or, a five-week-long shutdown at its blast furnace. Or, Gupta’s broken promises, including a $500 million electric arc furnace, delayed for two years until 2027. The mass board resignations at Gupta’s many entities across the world were also omitted from the document.

Sources told Street Talk, Liberty’s search for senior lenders is likely to attract the attention of mining royalty investors, keen to see if Gupta would part with a cut of the profits over the mine’s lifetime in exchange for a couple of hundred million before the end of the calendar year.

For Gupta, it could mean a small capital injection that could fund Whyalla’s working capital needs and, more importantly, provide breathing room to engineer a way out of more pressing issues such as his European steelmaking operations, several of which are now shut down.

Read the full story tomorrow and more on the Street Talk page.

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