Message from the Chairman: 2011
In three years Fortescue has transitioned from First Ore on Ship to a Company reporting revenues of some $5.5 billion dollars. Yet our company’s growth has only just begun.
Growth in the strength of our culture. Growth in the ability of our people. Growth in the depth of our leadership team. Growth in our capability. Growth in the global importance of our resources and infrastructure to the world steel industry. In short, well planned, well funded, exciting growth. Growth of a massive new resource supply and delivery asset base, wrought from only new discoveries and serious innovation in all aspects of implementation.
With a strong executive team and three years of careful planning behind us, the time was right for me to transition to non-executive. I owe a great debt of gratitude to all our staff, Board members and Shareholders. Also, for some years, our Company has made meaningful philanthropic contributions at negligible cost to Shareholders, but through our reputation, leadership and logistics, we have made measurable difference.
One of my most satisfying moments came only months ago when a group of Fortescue team members from all parts of our business gathered in Port Hedland - the home base of our Vocational Training and Employment Centre (VTEC) - to celebrate the achievement of our Summit 300 target. The achievement of this commitment was cause for celebration and the smiling, excited faces all around me showed just how much passion and energy had been poured into this effort.
The real power of this achievement and our ongoing commitment to training and guaranteed jobs for our first Australians was shown on the sidelines of the celebration. Speaking with the men and women who had trained and secured jobs with Fortescue, I asked them one question. “What difference has getting a job made to your life?” Almost as one they answered, “everything”.
Such individual empowerment is a key part of our values platform. The same sense of achievement that is evident from our VTEC graduates extends through to our operations teams and beyond to the Perth office. These values drive such milestone achievements as the completion of the new Christmas Creek mine, the commissioning of the new rail spur and the ramp up of production that delivered the 55 million tonne (mt) run rate in June 2011. Our core values have provided the environment to achieve great outcomes that are reflected in our past year. Going forward it is the continuation of these values that will deliver our expansion and operational ambitions.
With the operations team on track, the Board approved expansion plans to take Fortescue to the next level of production up to 155mt - a target known internally as T155. It’s with a mix of expectation and excitement I can report that the integrated development of T155’s mining, port and rail operations is rolling out rapidly, according to plan and budget. We will continue to report the key milestones in the coming year.
The key to our growth plans is utilising the world-competitive infrastructure platform that Fortescue has established over its Pilbara tenement footprint. A footprint that, put simply, has no parallel in the global mining industry. 85,000km2 of the most prospective and profitable iron ore mining region in the world, dwarfing the size of all competitors. It has already yielded 10 billion tonnes (bt) of iron ore resources and the exploration team tell me that we have only just begun. Should the world’s growth economies continue to indicate that our independent supply of competitive high quality iron ore is required to sustain their minimum growth plans, our exploration target is to shore up the Company’s Reserve and Resource base to underwrite a 355mtpa iron ore production platform, and then leave the rest to our best-of-industry development, finance and implementation teams.
The integrated Fortescue team has the energy and foresight to both create and optimise these opportunities. A recent example is the announcement in February of the discovery of more than one billion tonnes of high grade Brockman iron formation at Nyidinghu, neighbouring Cloudbreak, a significant and valuable addition to Fortescue’s growing resource portfolio. Its development plans, as you would expect, are already advanced.
I look forward to continuing to share the journey with you as Fortescue realises its full potential to grow its contribution to the Australian economy and the developing world. As we evolve into one of the world’s foremost mining companies, I thank God and all our people for rendering the previously thought impossible possible, and creating the platform that is facilitating Fortescue’s massive growth.
Andrew Forrest