Lind, Poole and Urquhart sold out of the syndicate before the company made any significant finds. Unemployed miners from around the country were attracted by the promise of Broken Hill. Most of the population of Silverton moved there, as did many Cornish miners from South Australia.
The town of Broken Hill sprang up at the base of the hill, with Argent Street as its main road. In just six years the population neared 20, The directors made fortunes splitting their shares and floating different companies, and profits flowed on to shareholders. However, there were challenges: the sheer size of the lode 7.
Despite these difficulties, Broken Hill went on to become the largest single source of silver, lead and zinc in the world. The company began operating its own smelters at Port Pirie, South Australia, in Nine years later, it acquired iron mining leases for Iron Knob, South Australia, whose ore proved to be of such high quality that it led to the development of the Australian steel industry.
In the opening decades of the 20th century, production at the Broken Hill lode plateaued and the company directors decided to focus on iron- and steel-making. The directors selected Newcastle as their base and started building a major steelworks with money raised by a call for capital. It is the largest mining company in the world. The National Museum of Australia acknowledges First Australians and recognises their continuous connection to country, community and culture. Charles Rasp, Argus , 19 August Early mining Indigenous people have been mining in Australia for tens of thousands of years.
Pure silver from the mines at Broken Hill. Not discouraged Rasp was not discouraged and together with co-workers David James and James Poole registered a acre mineral claim on the hill. Syndicate of Seven McCulloch convinced Rasp to take on more partners and organised some of the station hands to immediately peg off claims.
Geological conundrum Mining on the Broken Hill was initially not a great success and shares in the enterprise changed hands many times between pegging the claim in and floating the company two years later. Broken Hill takes off Unemployed miners from around the country were attracted by the promise of Broken Hill.
Argent Street, looking south, Fortunes are made The directors made fortunes splitting their shares and floating different companies, and profits flowed on to shareholders. Throughout the s and beyond, Billiton Plc experienced considerable growth. Its portfolio included aluminium smelters in South Africa and Mozambique, nickel operations in Australia and Colombia, base metals mines in South America, Canada and South Africa, coal mines in Australia, Colombia and South Africa, as well as interests in operations in Brazil, Suriname, Australia aluminium and South Africa titanium minerals and steel and ferroalloys.
The Mozal aluminium smelter uses Aluminium Pechiney AP35 technology to produce standard aluminium ingots. Mozal also developed and operates a dedicated berth and other port terminal facilities at Matola, the port of Maputo. Mozal 1 was launched in It was officially opened on 29 September The Mozal 2 expansion project was approved in June and expanded the output of the smelter from to tpa of primary ingots.
The first aluminium was cast at the expansion project on 7 April The smelter now has a total capacity of approximately tonnes per annum. Mozal sources power from Eskom via Motraco, a transmission joint venture between Eskom and the national electricity utilities of Mozambique and Swaziland. Tariffs are fixed through to and will be linked to the LME aluminium price thereafter.
The joint venture has a year right to use the land, renewable for another 50 years under a government concession. BHP Billiton occupies significant positions in major commodity businesses, including aluminium, energy coal and metallurgical coal, copper, manganese, iron ore, uranium, nickel, silver and titanium minerals, and has substantial interests in oil, gas, liquefied natural gas and diamonds.
Mozal is Mozambique's largest company. Despite the decline in the value of aluminium exports, the ingots produced at the MOZAL still account for well over half of Mozambique's export earnings. As a percentage of all commodity exports, aluminium fell from 61,4 to 54,7 percent. The central tenet of the BHP Billiton business model is that its diversified portfolio of high quality assets provides stable cash flows and an enhanced capacity to drive growth.
It will continue to invest in the future and have a deep inventory of growth assets. Its operations and investments are designed to ensure the Group remains stable in the long term and responsive to market volatility in the short term. To achieve this, it aims to own and operate a portfolio of upstream, large, long-life, low-cost, expandable, export-orientated assets across a diversified geographical and commodity base, and pursue growth opportunities consistent with its core skills by:.
BHP Billiton has a The right for reconnaissance, exploration projecting and exploration and exploitation of mineral resources is obtained pursuant to the following mining titles and permits: reconnaissance licences, exploration licences, mining concessions, mining certificates and mining passes.
Mining titles and permits are granted on the basis of first-come, first-served priority. It is stated in section 6 of that Act that any person, national or foreign, with juridical capacity can be the holder of a reconnaissance or exploration licence. Delprat had become BHP's general manager in and under his careful but imaginative stewardship BHP's productivity rose steadily.
Delprat and BHP's directors insisted that an important factor in the company's success was the flexibility that the free contract system of employment allowed amid fluctuating and uncertain world metals markets. They were staunch believers in loyalty to the company, hard work, and self-help, and held that these virtues rather than socialism or unionism were the real allies of the Australian worker.
Two years later BHP announced that it could no longer honor the remainder of its existing wage agreements on the grounds that plunging metals prices made these unworkable. Early in the AMA launched a new strike. This time BHP stood alone, its intransigence and stubborn refusal to deal with the union having alienated it from the other Broken Hill companies.
The strike was marked throughout by exceptional violence and intimidation of scab labor brought in by BHP to work the mine. When Australia's Arbitration Court ruled against the company, the latter appealed to the High Court, unsuccessfully. BHP's response was to delay the opening of the mine and then reduce the number of workers employed.
Delprat and his fellow directors had already perceived that the Big Mine's days of economic productivity were numbered. Rather than buying new leases and opening new mines they decided that BHP's future lay in steel manufacture.
At that time Australia possessed no steel industry and there was considerable skepticism both in Australia and abroad as to whether such an industry could be established successfully in a country far removed from the world's traditional steel markets and with no appreciable industrial base.
Delprat, however, was certain that a local steel producer could quickly capture a growing local market still dependent on costly imports from the United Kingdom and pointed to the advantages that Australia and BHP possessed--cheap energy in the form of large and accessible coal fields in NSW, and the company's own sizable and high-quality iron ore deposits at Iron Knob in South Australia. On the advice of a U.
Newcastle was also connected by rail to Sydney, Australia's largest city and manufacturing center. BHP acted swiftly to forestall the setting up of a proposed state-owned steelworks. Baker designed the new plant along the latest U.
Steel production commenced in April Wartime demand for armaments and sheet steel ensured production at full capacity and guaranteed the steel mill's early years. At Broken Hill, however, inflation during World War I worsened conditions, producing strikes in , , and , the last of which was settled in the unions' favor, resulting in a new hour work week and a rise in wage rates.
By this time, however, BHP's energies were focused on its expanding steel business and the Big Mine played a progressively smaller role in the company's calculations, closing altogether in and thereby ending BHP's association with Broken Hill. In Delprat was succeeded by Essington Lewis, a mining engineer who had joined BHP in the first decade of the century and risen swiftly in the corporate hierarchy.
Lewis continued the policy of supporting the establishment of secondary manufacturers who would use BHP steel in their products, thus creating new customers for the company and new industries for Australia. The short-lived postwar steel boom was followed by a scramble for shrinking world markets. BHP suffered several handicaps in the race.
The most serious of these was its having to serve a small home market with a diverse range of products, thereby failing to obtain the economies of scale achieved by its foreign competitors. In addition, freight costs for export had soared due to the postwar shortage of shipping, and rises in the price of coal were reducing BHP's margins. Lewis campaigned for protection, and the William M.
Hughes government eventually imposed import duties on imported steel. The seamen's strike convinced BHP that it had to control its own shipping.
This belief led to the foundation of BHP's fleet of dedicated ore carriers. Despite import duties, foreign steel was still managing to undersell the local product.
BHP announced that it would have to shut down capacity unless the steel unions--chiefly the Federated Ironworkers Association FIA --were willing to accept wage reductions. This acceptance was not forthcoming and in May temporary closure of the Newcastle mill for a month was followed by a total shutdown lasting nine months until a ruling of the Arbitration Court compelled BHP to reopen it. Terrible hardship had been caused in the Newcastle area, and union leaders and elements in the Labour Party began to call for BHP's nationalization.
After this difficult start Lewis launched a program concentrating on improving the efficiency, safety, and cleanliness of the steel plant, all concepts closely linked in Lewis's mind and to which he attached the greatest importance.
He placed particular emphasis on the replacement of old machinery, with the result that by the end of the s BHP was operating one of the cleanest, safest, and most cost-effective steel plants in the world. Thus the Depression, which began in and devastated other Australian industries, left the steel industry comparatively unscathed. Just as control of shipping was essential to reduce freight costs, so Lewis reasoned that ownership of coal would make BHP independent of the demands of the mine owners.
BHP, therefore, began to buy up coal mines, a foretaste of the great expansion of its coal interests in the s and s. Although BHP entered the Depression with an unusually small debt burden--Lewis disliked paying for new machinery with borrowed money--and an efficient steel operation, it was not immune from the effects. A collapse of world prices in steel, silver, and lead forced BHP to reduce production levels and lay off large numbers of mill workers.
The Big Mine was shut down until a rise in metals prices made reopening worthwhile, and from until BHP did not pay dividends to its shareholders. The company viewed with distrust the economic policies of Scullin's Labour government, which it regarded as populist and shortsighted. This attitude was mollified when the government sought to stimulate local industry by imposing a new round of duties on imports, and devalued the Australian currency to encourage Australian exporters.
These measures, in tandem with BHP's underlying financial strength and Lewis's policy of low-cost selling, ensured the company's survival. BHP's opponents attacked the merger as monopolistic and called for an official enquiry. The issue became intensely political with two future Australian prime ministers, John Curtin and Robert Menzies, respectively, attacking and defending the merger. This and other investments in the years immediately prior to World War II were paid for by four major restructurings in the company's capital base.
In BHP became embroiled in another political battle when union labor refused to handle cargos of iron ore destined for Japan, at that time engaged in a brutal and aggressive war in China. BHP's insistence on carrying through its contractual obligations aroused strong emotions in Australia and Attorney General Robert Menzies's defense of BHP's action earned him the unflattering sobriquet of "pig-iron Bob.
In Menzies appointed Lewis Director General of Munitions with the responsibility of harnessing the nations' entire manufacturing industry to the war effort. Lewis applied to this demanding job all the energy and concentration that enabled BHP to achieve the new targets set by his wartime planning. New blast and open-hearth furnaces were built at Port Kembla and a shipyard was established at Whyalla.
Comparatively far removed from the area of battle, BHP's mills suffered no physical damage during the war, but were subjected to brief and ineffectual shelling of Newcastle by a Japanese submarine.
The company lost two of its ore carriers, however, to enemy torpedoes. Japan's frighteningly rapid advance into Southeast Asia up to Australia's not-so-distant neighbor, New Guinea, in , served to quell union antagonism toward BHP. As this threat receded, the unions renewed their attacks, culminating in a protracted strike in late , which began at Port Kembla and then drew in coal miners and seamen, rapidly assuming the proportions of a national crisis.
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