In December 2018 , Sanjeev Gupta flew into Whyalla, the South Australian town built around the steel mill and surrounded by salt bush. Welcomed with a steel workers’ parade, hailed as the town’s unlikely saviour, Gupta - virtually unknown in Australia, let alone Whyalla before he popped up as a possible buyer for the failed Arrium assets - had arrived.

“It was a big day,” says Eddie Hughes, the local member of state parliament, who worked at the steelworks in the 1980s washing steel of impurities.