Paul Barry

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 steelworks 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 turned this stuff out in massive quantities much cheaper.

Essentially what this guy Sanjeev Gupta promised in Wayala was it would all be modernised, it would be expanded, they would use renewable energy, it would make green steel and there would be a magnificent future.

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 Wyala 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.