Liberty Steel, part of British businessman Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, has restarted the first phase of production at Adhunik Metaliks and Zion Steel following the acquisition of the steel businesses in February.

Both the companies started production early this week after six months of preparatory work at the site after the previous owner fell into administration, said Liberty Steel in a statement on Thursday.

Liberty House had paid about ₹425 crore to acquire Adhunik Metallics and its subsidiary Zion Steel in an insolvency driven process in February. Both Adhunik and Zion had defaulted on its loan of over ₹5,000 crore in 2017.

Adhunik has an integrated steel plant located at Chadrihariharpur in Odisha. The plant has sponge iron facility, blast furnace and electric arc furnace steel-making capability with 0.5 mtpa capacity, ferro-alloy plant and a 34-MW captive power plant.

The sites produce alloy steel products for the automotive, energy, engineering and oil and gas sectors besides selling sponge iron and billets.

The company has employed 1,500 local people since May to undergo extensive repairs before the formal production restarts.

Liberty Steel provided salaries to employees once they were fully deployed on the site and 50 per cent salaries to those waiting to start work as part of the gradual restart.

An agreement to this effect was signed between the management, multiple unions and the government authority.

Sanjeev Gupta, Executive Chairman, GFG Alliance, said it was five years since he started his industrial journey with the restart of operations at the first steelworks in Newport, UK.

”We have shown the same commitment to industrial communities in India by retaining and paying local workers as we restarted operations and bring the Adhunik and Zion steel works back to life,” he said.

Adhunik will be integrated into the wider Liberty Steel Group family in the near future, he added.

Uday Gupta, Managing Director, Adhunik, said with the progressive restart, the company can now look forward to take the operations to the next level.