By Nick Vinocur
PARIS, Nov 28 (Reuters) – The French government has found an
industrialist willing to invest 400 million euros ($516.4
million) to renovate ArcelorMittal’s Florange
steelworks in northeast France, a minister said.
Raising pressure on the group to agree to a sale, Industry
Minister Arnaud Montebourg told lawmakers the interested party
was a private investor from the steel industry who wanted to
inject money into the site with the financial backing of the
French state.
France has raised the prospect of the site being taken
temporarily into state hands if ArcelorMittal refuses to keep
two threatened blast furnaces running.
“(The party) is ready to invest nearly 400 million euros to
renovate this site,” Montebourg told parliament, without giving
the potential buyer’s identity.
Montebourg, who spoke as metal workers protested outside the
National Assembly, said the aim was for the operation to have a
zero cost to public finances and that government stakes in other
companies could be used to finance a purchase of Florange.
He added that France was ready to move ahead with a
temporary takeover of the site if no deal was reached. The
government would compensate ArcelorMittal for the takeover and
let a private industrialist run the steelworks while it looks
for a permanent buyer to operate it.
President Francois Hollande told journalists in Paris that
talks were taking place with ArcelorMittal and potential buyers,
a day after he pressed Chief Executive Lakshmi Mittal to keep
the furnaces running.
“He is waiting for Mr. Mittal to come up with a proposal
other than the site’s closure, or else the government intends to
nationalise it temporarily,” said Edouard Martin, a Florange
union leader camping in front of France’s finance ministry.
ArcelorMittal has so far said it wants to sell only the
idled furnaces and not the entire site, a steelworks that
employs some 600 people in the heart of what was once French
steelmaking country near the German border.
The company has told France’s Socialist government that it
plans to shut the furnaces, which it says are no longer
economically viable, unless a buyer willing to take them over
can be identified by Dec. 1.
Steel industry experts say it would be tough to find a buyer
for the furnaces alone without the adjacent steel plant.
“Discussions are ongoing,” a London-based spokesman for
ArcelorMittal said when asked if the firm would be ready to sell
the Florange steelworks. He would not elaborate.
Earlier, Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said the prospect
of a temporary nationalisation of Florange was a special case
and did not meant that further state takeovers for threatened
factories were being prepared.
($1 = 0.7733 euros)
(Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Editing
by David Holmes)