Leighton Contractors

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Australia's Largest Contract Miner

In 1949, a construction company by the name of Leighton Holdings was founded in Western Australia. In 1962, the company was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and now, 50 years since its inception, it has grown into one of the world’s major project development and contracting organisations.

Leighton Contractors, along with Thiess, John Holland, Leighton International, Leighton Asia and Leighton Properties, make up the Leighton Hold­ings Group we know today.

“Leighton Contractors has grown signifi­cantly and diversified, in particular over the last five years,” Craig Laslett, Executive General Manager for the Resources Division of Leighton Contractors said.

“We have six divisions consisting of resources, construction, power and energy, telecommunica­tions, investment and facility management and group services. We have more than 9,000 employ­ees and we have a turnover of over $4.5 billion all operating in Australia and New Zealand.”

Laslett explains that Leighton Contractors began as a civil contractor which has diversified into mining over 12 years ago.

“We’ve grown significantly in the resources sector. We purchased HWE (Henry Walker Eltin) Mining in February 2006, and we’ve basically grown from a small contract miner to become the largest contract miner in Australia. We employ 4,500 people across 22 projects throughout Aus­tralia and New Zealand,” Laslett says.

Laslett says that Leighton Contractor’s mining involvements are made up of three sectors: coal, iron ore and base metals.

IRJ spoke specifically about coal to Steven Keyser, GM for Leighton Mining based on the east coast and mainly serving the Bowen Basin.

Keyser has been with Leighton Contractors for eight years and has worked on some of the company’s major projects in and around Brisbane, Australia.

“In the last two years, I’ve been appointed General Manager of Leighton Mining, which is a business unit of Leighton Contractors’ Resources division. My background is as a mechanical engi­neer,” he says.

“I’ve worked across most states in Australia and on major projects in the resources industry in Western Australia and Queensland with contract values up to two billion dollars.”

“In all of those areas we operate in open-cut and underground mining. On the east coast of Australia and New Zealand we have eight op­erating coal sites and we move about 270 mil­lion tonnes of overburden and about 18 million tonnes of coal for all of our clients,” he says.

“Our contracts vary from pre-strip only to full mining services including statutory responsibility. Seven of our sites are open-cut and one is under­ground. We have clients ranging from indepen­dent operators through to blue chip clients such as BHP Billiton.”

The majority of Leighton Mining’s projects, and hence the Resources Divisions’ coal opera­tions, are situated in the Bowen Basin-a 6,000 square metre area in Central Queensland, Austra­lia, which is particularly known for its mining and coal reserves. The company is ramping up on a number of projects in the region as a result of the positive move they have identified in the market.

“The big story for us is that we’ve come through the global financial crisis while maintain­ing the majority of our workforce and we’ve spent the past 12 months building up for the next part of the cycle,” Keyser continues.

“We still employ apprentices and we still invest in training our people. We’re looking to position ourselves for the next upturn and we feel there will be interesting times ahead. We can see ourselves being in a good position to meet our ex­isting clients’ needs and our new clients’ as well.”

Flexibility, innovation and meeting client demand

Diversification is a key strength showcased by the development of the Leighton group over the past 50 years, and Laslett says that today Leighton Con­tractors offers a complete range of maintenance and operational services for the mining industry.

“We started out by providing all of our mobile plant equipment and tradesmen to service them as well. We provide complete technical services from mine planning and the operational side,” he says.

“We provide a suite of operating personnel and project teams, and we come with Leighton  manage­ment systems which are proven to support.”

Leighton Contractors’ ability to offer flexibility and solutions to typical mining hurdles in an open and cooperative manner presents a strong com­petitive edge for the company’s mining endeav­ours today.

“We are good listeners, and we see our­selves as providing alternative solutions. The big thing about the mining industry is that it’s cyclical, and contractors, by nature, have to be flexible and able to adapt to the requirements,” Laslett explains.

“One of the big things we really offer is inno­vation in terms of looking at things differently.”

Up until June 30, 2009, Leighton Contrac­tors was able to renegotiate contracts totalling approximately A$800 million in what was undeni­ably one of the most difficult financial climates of modern times.

“A lot of our ability is long-term relationships with our clients. That’s one of our key strengths. In a time where a lot of people around the world were losing contracts, we were able to renegotiate three contracts up to that value,” Laslett said.

“It’s good for keeping our people and their job security and giving them a longer-term focus.  We’re very busy tendering at the moment, and we see some very positive signs for the latter part of this year and the next.”

The company’s short-term goal is to stand well-prepared for the next upturn in the cycle.

“One of the key things that we’re looking to do is make sure that we have a good safety platform. Our vision is to ‘Be the Best-Safety’, and we think that the key thing is that a lot of the solutions to those problems are in the field, and we engage our workforce in helping to solve those issues. We think that through good safety leader­ship, we’ll get there,” Laslett says.

“Longer term, we look to develop our people, streamline our systems and processes and be in a position to meet our clients’ demands.”

A company capable of staying staff, client, and future-client focused throughout such tough financial times is surely destined for greatness. Being the largest contract miner in Australia is no mean feat, but it appears to be just the beginning for this major mining player.

www.leightoncontractors.com.au