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- [00:01]
A
I'm Daniel James and you're listening to 7am. In 2017, billionaire businessman Sanjeev Gupta rescued the Wyalla steelworks from administration, becoming known as the saviour of steel. There was hope in this small South Australian town that steelmaking and the thousands of jobs tied to it would survive. But since then, Gupta has lost control. The South Australian government forced the steelworks into administration and taxpayers are now underwriting the rescue to the tune of $2.4 billion. Now the sale of the steel works is in its final stages. But the question of whether Wyler becomes the green steel town politicians promised or whether public money is being used to keep an aging steelworks alive remains. Today we revisit an episode with investigative journalist, the former Host of the ABC's Media Watch, Paul Barry, on the billionaire who brought Waiala to the brink and what it would really take to save the town. It's Sunday, June 21st. This episode was first published in January 2025.
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B
So Paul, to start with, tell me a bit about Whyalla and why the still works there are so important.
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C
So it's a town that has 22,000 people. It was going to be much bigger. It's kind of like Canberra. It's sort of laid out very spaciously. Big wide boulevards, trees down the middle, sometimes lots of brick built public buildings and a very, very friendly town. I just got a beautiful welcome when I went there. Whyalla was started back in the 1940s as a shipyard and then in the 60s as a steelworks by BHP. Industrial development in South Australia takes a big step forward with the opening of a huge 40 million pound steelworks in Wyalla. It's the only steel works in Australia that makes the only primary steel works that makes what's called long steel and that is girders, rails, the stuff that is used in the building industry. And if you didn't make it at Waiala, you'd basically have to import it. From these automated smelters and rollers will come the vital steel to feed the hungry growth of Australia's building, car making and engineering industries. Also, the steelworks is very important to the town. Although only about 1100 people or 1000 people now work there. There's something like 4000 jobs in the town estimated to be dependent on it. And that's not far off half the workforce in Whyalla. So if you got rid of the steelworks, if it went bust and wasn't rescued, Whyalla's future would be very much in doubt. I don't know what would happen to it. And now the country's most important new steelmaking planet.
- [02:51]
B
And so what did people who you spoke to in Waiala say about their jobs to you? How fearful are they of the future of Whyalla?
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C
They're incredibly fearful. Whyalla is old. It's like 60 years old, at least. It's desperately in need of investment, desperately in need of maintenance. It went bust back in 2016 when Arrium owned it. And it was then rescued after a year in administration. And, and the guy who bought it, Sanjeev Gupta, was sort of seen as a savior. And it looked like all the problems were solved.
- [03:25]
D
Uncertainty in terms of the future of this plant is now over. We have a lot of work to do together and, you know, a great future ahead. But we need to work together and make changes because this is not currently a sustainable world class plant. It needs to become one. We're close to the finishing line there.
- [03:42]
C
Sanjeev Gupta is a British Indian businessman. He started off as a commodities trader and about 10 years ago he started up buying steelworks around the world. All these steel works were losing money. They're all pretty desperate. They're all competing or struggling to compete against the Vietnamese and the Chinese and the Koreans who turn this stuff out in massive quantities, much cheaper.
- [04:03]
D
We were not just another company looking to make a quick buck out of a distressed opportunity. It's first and foremost a family business. And I regard this as part of my family.
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C
And essentially what this guy, Sanjeev Gupta promised in Waiala was it would all be modernized, it would be expanded, they would use renewable energy, it would make green steel, and there'd be a magnificent future. It's a wonderful feeling for our community. Everyone's feeling the same from business workers, people there that are retired. Everybody's feeling this feeling of relief.
- [04:37]
E
And the more that we're hearing about
- [04:38]
C
Mr. Gupta or hearing about liberty, the better we're feeling.
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B
And so what has happened?
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C
None of that stuff has happened. There hasn't been any investment. The coke ovens have packed up altogether. The blast furnace has been out of action for half a year. It's now back in action again, marginally, but people are getting more and more worried that it's going to go bust quite soon. I talked to a creditor, a guy called Jim Watson, who runs an engineering consulting business. He relied almost entirely on Wyalla for his business and he built it up to a stage where he had 17 people. He persuaded a lot of people to come up, professional people to come up from Adelaide with their families, had A half a million dollar contract coming into early 2024, all going fine, and suddenly the work dries up. There is no work. He has to lay people off. They go back to Adelaide, he won't be able to get them back. He's now laid more people off. What happens to him if the steel works goes down? It's not a good outlook.
- [05:39]
B
And so, as people who rely on the steelworks have been dealing with this, what has Sanjeev Gupta been doing in
- [05:47]
C
the middle of the crisis last year, when all his creditors in Waiala are sort of jumping up and down and not being paid? Gupta is in Sydney buying a 12 and a half million dollars apartment on the waterfront from broadcaster John Laws. He's at the same time, just up the road from there, he's got a $34 million house that he's got plans to renovate at a cost of at least $10 million. And so here's a guy who's bought up a whole bunch of ailing steelworks, promising in all of these places that he's going to transform them. And in each of these places, the story is the same. Basically, the steelworks is now on the brink of bankruptcy. Some of them actually have gone bankrupt. He's being chased by people who are trying to wind up all these companies. Wireless Steelworks has been rocked by revelations. Owner Sanjeev Gupta's overseas offices have been searched by serious fraud investigators. Police wanting more information in their investigations. After the serious fraud officers in the UK launched a probe into alleged money laundering within GFG alliances, he reportedly owes almost a billion dollars to administrators of his collapsed financier. So it's an absolute hot mess. And as the crisis is hitting, all these poor people who work at the plant or who contractors to the plant or who've supplied stuff to the plant who aren't getting paid, he is out there spending like a drunken sailor. So Wialer is, in a way, one of the better ones. It's not quite so far down the tube as the ones in Europe are, but what's happened in Europe gives you a very strong clue of what's going to happen here, which is that promises aren't kept. He keeps on paying the workers for a bit and then eventually it all falls apart and it all goes bust.
- [07:35]
B
After the break, how to bring Wyalla back from the brink. Paul, I suppose there is a bigger question that goes beyond the failures of management, and that is whether or not it is actually possible to make the why Alice Steelworks viable. Will it ever produce steel the way that it used to?
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C
Absolutely. I mean, there is a question about can Australia produce steel competitively? Koreans, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, they invest much more money, have invested much more money. They produce on a much larger scale. We probably can't compete with them. But do you let your steel works go bust and take a town down with it, with 22,000 people? What do you do with them in terms of relocating them or putting them on the dole or finding jobs for them? So it may be that you can't make steel as cheaply as some of these competitors, but there's a cost in giving it up as well. And unless you can find other jobs to go into Whyalla, you're looking at the town that is doomed. So I think there are very strong arguments for trying to save the steel works, and it's not in terms of patching up an old one, it is in terms of building a new one that is powered by renewable energy.
- [08:51]
B
And do you think that that is a viable option for Waiala green steel?
- [08:55]
C
Look, I'm no expert, but the experts tell me that it is because that's the way that steel around the world is moving. All these steel companies are being forced basically to cut their emissions. And so you've got governments around the world which are stepping in, in Britain or in Europe, to fund that transition to green steel. They say that Wiala has a lot of natural advantages. It's got iron ore called magnetite, which is very, very high ferrous content in absolute abundance in the hills nearby. So that's a very important thing. Magnetite isn't a very common iron ore and it's what you need if you're going to get rid of the old traditional coke blast furnaces. You need something with a high iron content. So that's one big plus. It's got a huge supply of iron ore. It's got a railway from where these iron ore mines might be. It's got a railway from the steelworks to customers. It's got a deep water port, it's got massive amount of renewable energy because South Australia, the wind is blowing constantly and the sun shines all the time. And it's also got a workforce, it's got a skilled workforce. So, yes, I think it has a lot of stuff going for it, but it does need commitment from the government, which would have to put in some money. And it needs commitment from an international steel company, which would need to go, yeah, we want to be there. We think this can be done. There is evidence that there are people out there who are prepared to do that. The South Australian government called for expressions of interest in making green iron, which is kind of the previous step to green steel, and that 59 companies, I think it was, said, yes, we're interested. And the South Australian government is also building a green hydrogen plant, which is going to happen whatever happens to Waiala, and that's supposedly going to be online in 2026. So there's a whole bunch of reasons why green steel could definitely work in Whyalla. Not worth giving up now.
- [10:41]
B
Right. But it sounds like for any of that to happen, you would need not only government intervention, government funds, but government. You would need Gupta to go so that another company could come in.
- [10:51]
C
Yeah, damn right. There's no way, as they say, there's no way this is going to happen unless you get the keys to the place. You have to persuade him to step aside and that is unlikely to happen, judging by the way he's hung on to all these other businesses he has around the world. So it's not an easy job to get him out, that's for sure. But I think you do need to get him out because he ain't got the money to do it.
- [11:13]
B
Obviously, a federal election is on the cards in the next few months. How does that complicate the situation?
- [11:19]
C
Well, I think it's very hard to see a coalition government putting a lot of taxpayer money into green steel. I mean, it would involve renewable energy and supporting industry, neither of which the coalition is very keen on. And it's got a policy to rely on nuclear power in 2040. So the chances of Whyalla being rescued and modernized with the coalition in the driving seat, it seems to me, are very slim. So Labour has a problem, which is if this place is to be rescued and its future to be secured, Labour needs to act. That means that it's not just a. Oh, this is an interesting story that's going to bubble along for a bit. This is actually a bit of a crisis for Whyalla because there's only, what, two or three months until the next election? Unless something is done before then, it's really hard to see how this future can be secured.
- [12:07]
B
Paul, thank you so much for your time.
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C
It's a pleasure.
- [12:22]
A
7am will be back tomorrow with an episode on the anti abortion campaign gaining ground in Australian politics and why Hannah Bambrough says one nation is now trying to make reproductive rights part of a much bigger culture war.
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E
I think this is part of a bigger Americanisation of Australian politics and an attack on women's rights in Australia. So I think from that perspective, there is funding that's streaming through influencers on social media to spread misinformation. There's so much conversation at the moment about the manosphere and how much misinformation is being put in front of young men. But but I don't think many people are talking about so much anti contraception messaging that's coming through TikTok and Instagram that is usually funded by church groups and anti abortionists in America.
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A
I'm Daniel James. Thanks for listening to 7am we'll be back tomorrow.
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F
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