| ONE of the many stories surrounding Andrew Forrest is from his high school days in Perth as rugby player. As this particular story goes, Twiggy was training with his school’s Second XV team on the same oval as the visiting England U/19 team that happened to be on tour in the former colonial backwater. Then as now, Perth is not exactly a rugby powerhouse and it wasn’t then back in the early 1980s. But that didn’t stop Twiggy trying to persuade his teammates to take on the Poms then and there. History doesn’t record if he was successful.Fighting above his weight has been a hallmark of Forrest’s career over the past two decades, with billions of dollars raised and two significant projects in different commodities developed from scratch.
And in both cases Forrest was uncannily prescient and well ahead of the pack.
Regarding nickel, Forrest saw the writing on the wall in terms of stagnating supply options, and identified laterite nickel being the future of the sector. Despite the ‘major hiccups’ at Murrin Murrin – and it should be borne in mind that Forrest won a court case against that project’s engineers – his nickel thesis remains equally valid some 15 years later.
Similarly, and even more ambitiously, has been the case with Forrest’s stunning iron ore push. Back in 2002 Forrest glimpsed a global opportunity the hallowed domain of the majors – iron. And so in early 2003 the Fortescue Metals Group journey began.
Billions of dollars later, and with a mine, railway and port infrastructure in place, the new force in the global iron ore market is continuing to evolve.
Forrest is now increasingly playing in the world of geopolitics, with Japanese and Korean parties potentially being brought into the fray after FMG’s recent setback with mooted Chinese financing its aggressive growth plans. It is hard to imagine the BHPB and Rio Pilbara iron JV taking place without FMG now in play as the monopoly breaker.
Find out the latest from Western Australia’s own iron man when Forrest addresses the Sydney Mining Club in November (and what the English said about his football offer).
Not to be missed! |
