Administrator says it wants to secure a buyer by the end of the year

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The workers at the Whyalla steelworks in South Australia have been likened to television action hero "Macgyver" for using their ingenuity to keep the site running. That's the impression of the administrators KordaMentha who have issued an update on the operations.

Transcript

00:00The administrators have been briefing steelworkers, creditors and unions on the state of the plant

00:07and its future sale.

00:08It revealed that when Quartamenta took control of the plant from owner GFG Alliance, the

00:13steelworks had only $8 million in the bank.

00:16Previously it was revealed that the business was losing $1.5 million a day.

00:21The administrators have also found 20 critical failure points where the company does not

00:25have redundancies in place, saying workers have had to institute MacGyver-like solutions.

00:31They're like the old character from the 80s, the MacGyver, who'd use chewing gum and sticky

00:35tape to keep the business together.

00:38It's not quite that bad, but they're the sort of examples, they're using their own intuition

00:42and capital to keep the business going.

00:44Concerns had been raised about the steelworks being overly reliant on another GFG subsidiary,

00:50Infrabuild, which was receiving 80% of the steel product in the form of billet.

00:55Administrators would not confirm whether the steelworks are still selling that billet

00:59at a loss to Infrabuild.

01:01The acting South Australian Premier also travelled to Wayala to announce that up to 100 new jobs

01:06could be brought on across the steelworks and its associated mines.

01:11That is a big turnaround for Wayala and for the steelworks.

01:16From an outfit that was shedding jobs and shedding hours for people working there, now

01:23saying, in order to run this place properly, we need to have more people employed and we

01:27need to go out into the market and get those people.

01:30So far, 34 creditors have been paid a total of almost $7 million under a government rescue

01:36package announced in February.

01:39The administrators are hoping to sell the business by the end of the year and have identified

01:44up to 12 interested parties.

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