JOHANNESBURG: Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium, South Africa’s second-largest steel producer that went bust last year, has “reinvented” its assets in a bid to generate revenue to pay its creditors and the 1 800 employees who have been retrenched.
Joint Business Rescue Practitioner, Piers Marsden, told Evraz creditors at an annual general meeting on Friday about plans to reignite economic activity in eMalahleni by converting assets into an industrial park. The creditors include the SA Revenue Service. Highveld, which closed shop and retrenched about 1 800 employees, needs revenue as it owes employees R300 million in retrenchment packages.
Marsden said the company was prioritising retrenchment packages and so far had paid R30m to employees. He said Evraz also had to repay the Industrial Development Corporation’s R150m loan settling its debt with employees and R2.3 billion to creditors, including a R689m claim by the taxman, which the company has disputed.
“We plan to re-invent the company’s assets into an industrial park with several operators on site. We are trying to make the best of a very bad situation, and we do not want a situation similar to that of the Blyvoor Mine, whose assets were stripped and taken over by illegal miners after it closed down,” Marsden said.
