ArcelorMittal has finalized the sale of Georgetown Steel to U.K.-based Liberty House, which announced plans to reopen the mill and resume production this spring.

A press release said that Liberty House—which is part of the GFG Alliance, a global metals, industrials and energy group owned by the British Gupta family—plans to re-hire 125 former employees and gradually increase the workforce to 250. The group is targeting a major share of the U.S. market for home-produced wire rod, demand for which is projected to grow substantially during 2018.

Of note, the release said that the purchase was "the first in a series of strategic North American acquisitions and new projects targeted by the group founded and run by British industrialist, Sanjeev Gupta." The company is already in discussions regarding the acquisition of other major U.S. steel assets and new greenfield projects, which it expects to announce this year.

Georgetown Steel, based in Georgetown, South Carolina. has a storied history. Founded in 1969 by German industrialist Willy Korf, it one time had as many as 1,500 employees. It had multiple owners, including the government of Kuwait in 1984 and the International Steel Group in 2004. It was bought in 2005 by Lakshmi Mittal. The mill closed in 2009, and following the Mittal merger with Arcelor, it was reopened by Arcelor Mittal in 2011, only to be closed in May 2015.

The 600,000-sq-ft plant, which has wire rod capacity of 680,000 metric tons, will resume serving the construction and automotive markets. The release said that the plan is to re-start melting and rolling this spring "as the first step in GFG’s ambitious investment plans for the American steel industry."

"Securing the Georgetown furnace and mill is a major milestone for us, marking our first major step in the USA," said Sanjeev Gupta, executive chairman of the GFG Alliance. "The melting and rolling facilities here give us a formidable entry to the American market and provide a strong platform for expansion. We see major prospects for the metals industry here." He added that the company plans to employ its GREENSTEEL sustainable strategy that it already uses in the U.K. and Australia.

Gupta said that customers have been in contact, and that "we’re keen to get back up and running as quickly as possible." He added that support from the town council, the state government and the union was important in making the deal work. "We look forward to rebuilding the business and bringing quality industrial employment back to the site and to the local and regional supply chain."

John Brett, president and CEO of ArcelorMittal USA, said that the goal throughout the process has been to maintain the Georgetown steelmaking operation. "While bittersweet for ArcelorMittal, we are hopeful that today’s announcement is a celebration for Liberty Steel and GFG Alliance, the United Steelworkers and the Georgetown community. We appreciate the patience of all of our stakeholders while we finalized this important transaction."

In a report in the SouthStrandNews, Gupta compared the Georgetown mill to Liberty House’s first steel plant in Newport, South Wales. "The first mill in the U.K. will always be important to us. ... That is where our British journey started," he said. "It was a shutdown plant as well," he added. "And we restarted it, and it’s a great success now. And that led to everything else we’ve done in the U.K. So Georgetown is the foundation of what we will do in the U.S."

At its website, Liberty Steel notes that has seven specialist businesses manufacturing steel products such as ingots, billets, blooms, slabs, bars and narrow strip, as well as hot rolled coil, pipes and tubes, structural hollow sections, plates, de-bar, wire, rod and more.

Fort Wayne Metals (FWM) has acquired G&S Titanium (G&S), a company in Wooster, Ohio, that specializes in titanium and specialty alloy wire and bar drawing.

A press release said that G&S, founded in 1979, produces titanium medical bar and wire from 0.031 in. to 0.669 in., titanium beta alloy spring wire, strain hardened bar up to 2.5 in. and shaped and clad bars in a range of titanium and specialty alloys. The company will remain in its current facilities and operate under the name G&S Bar and Wire, LLC.

The acquisition, the release said, will allow Fort Wayne Metals to better support critical applications in the medical device industry by adding new products and capabilities to their portfolio. "Over the years, we have continually expanded our range of products and services in the realm of titanium and specialty alloys," said FWM Chairman and CEO Scott Glaze. "G&S is helping us increase our footprint even further, which will allow us to serve our customers better – for example by providing them with larger diameter materials. We’re well familiar with the quality G&S provides and the deep technical knowledge of their people, and look forward to learning from each other as we grow together."

An ISO 9001, ISO 13485 and AS 9100 registered company, FWM notes that it has more than 1,000 full-and part-time employees at its corporate headquarters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and operations in Columbia City, Indiana, and Castlebar, Ireland.

The Belau Submarine Cable Corporation (BSCC) and NEC Corporation (NEC) announced the completion of a new submarine cable that will connect the Republic of Palau to Guam and onward connectivity to Asia, North America and the rest of the world. A press release said that the Palau Spur will interconnect with the existing SEA-US submarine cable—which connects the Philippines and Indonesia to the west coast of the U.S. via Guam and Hawaii—from a branching unit located between the Philippines and Guam. The Palau Spur has an initial design capacity of 500 Gbps. NEC is supplying some 200 km of cable for the project, including a pre-lay shore end of about 7 km. "Yesterday, this island nation was still dependent on satellite communications, but from today, this new cable will bring information at the speed of light, improving the quality of life for those living in and traveling to Palau," said Toru Kawauchi, general manager of NEC’s Submarine Network Division." Palau, an archipelago of over 500 islands that is part of the Micronesia region in the western Pacific Ocean, has a population of about 21,700 people.

LS HongQi Cable & System, the local manufacturing unit of LS C&S in China, announced that it has won a Kuwait cable deal worth approximately $53 million. Per reports in The Pulse and The Korea Herald, the deal signed with the Ministry of Electricity and Water in Kuwait calls for LS HongQi to provide extra-high voltage underground cables. They noted that this represents the first such order that the company has secured from the Middle East. LS C&S acquired a 91.5% stake in LS HongQi in 2009. The new contract for LS HongQi amounts to more than half of all the company’s last annual revenues. The company, at that point, had mainly covered local cable demand. "LS HongQi C&S has strived to clinch deals in the overseas markets," said Myung Roh-hyun, CEO of LS C&S Asia. "The company expects to log additional deals in the overseas markets." In other news, LS C&S reported that it has won an order for aerial cables worth $60 million from Bangladesh. A press release said that the cables are to be provided on a turnkey basis in which it will be is responsible from cable production to pylon construction. The project is to start this year and be completed by June 2020. "The new project would serve as an opportunity for us to aggressively participate in aerial cable projects overseas," said Myung Roh-hyun, chief executive of LS C&S. The company has so far clinched orders worth more than $100 million, including a $46 million contract in Bangladesh it signed last September to add more underground cables in urban areas.