Sanjeev Gupta, a billionaire Indian-born British businessman who has built an empire through buying various previously unwanted steel mills and processing plants around the world, was in Newcastle yesterday to celebrate a century of steel wire making at the Newcastle wire mill, which was previously part of the OneSteel business and before that part of BHP's Newcastle steelworks.

Almost all of the plant's 350 employees were on hand for a ceremony held in a giant marquee that survived the battering to it handed out by Monday evening's torrential downpour and wild winds.

Mr Gupta, who has made a handful of visits to Newcastle since buying the Whyalla steelworks and the rest of the Arrium and One Steel businesses for $700 million in 2017, spoke about the importance of the centenary of production, and his determination to see the business grow and prosper.

"This facility has produced wire to help protect Australia, from producing barbed wire for Allied forces in World War I to the anti-submarine nets lining Sydney Harbour during World War II," Mr Gupta said.

"It has also helped to build Australia. The state's tallest building, Sydney Tower, is supported by hundreds of metres of roping wire manufactured right here."

Mr Gupta is a third-generation businessman, and his Liberty Steel company is part of a broader organisation, the GFG (Gupta Family Group) Alliance, which also includes his father's energy and resources company, SIMEC.

Questions have been asked recently in the financial media about Mr Gupta's entrepreneurial use of debt, but he was adamant yesterday that the overall business was in good shape, as were his Newcastle interests and Whyalla.

The Australian Financial Review reported two months ago that Mr Gupta had "transformed" GFG Alliance from being "an obscure commodities trading outfit" to an "industrial powerhouse with $20 billion" a year in turnover.

But it noted borrowings of $2.2 billion - with a potential interest bill of $660 million - to buy AccelorMittal's European steel plants, and described its attempts to raise $475 million in corporate bonds for InfraBuild (the Australian business) as "disastrous".

It said the family was "forced" to put in $150 million of its own money because it could only sell $325 million worth of bonds, and then at an "eye-watering" interest rate of 12 per cent.

In an interview with the Newcastle Herald, Mr Gupta played down the concerns about the amount of debt in his business, and said "family run" companies were much less likely to get into trouble than public companies listed on stock exchanges with investors wanting "short-term" profits.

"Steel is my life," Mr Gupta said.

"It's not something I have adopted recently. I was born with it. Some of my earliest memories are of running around my father's and grandfather's steel mills.

"Steel was once the backbone of industry but it's been neglected in the developed world, and we see real opportunity in Europe, in the United States and in Australia to take the industry forward, to use recycling and to invest in new technologies."

The Newcastle wire mill is fed from an adjacent bar mill, which receives its steel from Whyalla and Infrabuild's electric arc furnace steelmaking plant in Sydney.

Mr Gupta acknowledged that the bar mill could turn out more product than it was, and the managing director of the wire mill, Greg Jones, said building the market to sell more wire products was the key to increasing the rod mill's output.

Having worked for OneSteel for a decade before Mr Gupta arrived, he said spending on the wire mill had increased since then, as InfraBuild worked to revive the business.

He said they had substantially increased "incremental capital" on the plant, replacing machinery and improving systems, such as an LED light fitout that improved the lighting and saved $500,000 a year on power bills.

Mr Gupta acknowledged that the cost of railing steel from Whyalla to Newcastle was "an issue", saying "it's what we inherited".

"The wire mill is absolutely making money," Mr Gupta said. "Some parts of the business are very good and others require more investment, which we take as an opportunity."

Mr Jones said Infrabuild employed about 1200 people in Newcastle, with another 1000 contractors on top of that.

Like many industrial businesses in the Hunter, Infrabuild's wire mill has a substantial number of long-term employees in its workforce.

Lawrence O'Toole, of Morpeth, said he had began at Mayfield 40 years ago as a boilermaker at BHP, moving across to the wire mill when the steelworks shut in 1999 and handling various "line management" roles since.

A daughter, Jacqui O'Toole, also works at the mill, having begun two years ago at the same time that Mr Gupta was buying Arrium out of its insolvency.

"It's a good team of people to work with, you want to come to work here," Ms O'Toole said.

Mr O'Toole said the family had lived on a farm at Morpeth since the 1860s, and his forebears had also worked industrially when things got tough on the farm.

"My father was a farmer but he also worked on the Hexham Bridge, building it in the 1950s," Mr O'Toole said.

"Steel has created a lot of wealth for a lot of people in the region."

Mr O'Toole said it was "a bit depressing" to look across at the flat empty space where the BHP steelworks had once stood next door and he was only half joking when he said: "Maybe Sanjeev could buy it and make something out of it."

While you're with us, did you know the Newcastle Herald offers breaking news alerts, daily email newsletters and more? Keep up to date with all the local news - sign up here

IN NEWS TODAY