News GFG on board as joint major sponsor

Jul 7, 2007
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Impresssive guy. He mentioned in the video that he's looking to at least partially float the Whyalla steelworks in the future. I hope he's in it for the long term and not doing the private equity makeover thing.
 

Alberton Proud

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May 24, 2012
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I've been reading a lot of articles and watching a lot of videos, as well as the BBC Wales video/story I linked on the previous page, the last month since I found GFG's re-branding strategy video and found those articles from the AFR and Financial Times I posted on page 4. Thought it was time to put some of the info up here and join some dots.

Sanjeev Gupta is into vertical integration and looks like he wants to be the 21st century Andrew Carnegie and some.

He might not be a Scottish-American like Carneige, but he has substantial land holdings in Scotland - his JAHAMA Estates and its JAHAMA Highland Estates subsidiary, is the 5th largest private land holder in Scotland, he owns two hydro power stations and aluminium smelter operations in Scottish Highlands and they have large land holdings around those facilities, and I have no doubt he wants to be a big player in the USA steel production market and other businesses in the USA. Finance no doubt will be one of them as well.

Hopefully like Carnegie he becomes a philanthropist once he has had enough of business and down the track we become a regular long term part of his philanthropic activities.

He told his wife he will spend 2 years in Australia in late 2017 and you see them getting ready to depart for Sydney at the end of the BBC Wales story. Since he purchased that steelworks in Newport, Wales in late 2013 - ok since he reopened it in 2015, he has been on a massive buying spree to get vertical integration, benefits of economy of scales, synergies and to become a very diversified group, almost like GE is. High level of diversification only works if the CEO really understands all components and drives it.

That's why GE grew rapidly for 20 years under Jack Welch 1981-2001, (CEO and Chairman) when others who went into the diversification strategies in the 1980's and early 1990's failed and either went belly up, or cut back to its core business. Double digit interest rates and high debt levels also had its impact over most of that 20 years on those entrepreneurs.

Low interest rates and interesting financing methods by his Australian business partner Greensill Capital, founded seven years ago by Lex Greensil originally of Bundaberg, he seems to have avoided the traps of the 1980's entrepreneurs so far, who seemed to buy anything on a whim, once the western world went through huge financial deregulation and the banks easily lent money out, so they maintained their market share at any cost.

No Jack Welsh, and GE is struggling with its wide diversification strategies. Share price is a third of what it was 2 years ago, but market capitalization has plunged over the last 20 years. It was USD$12 bil when Welch took over in 1981 and started to greatly diversify. It hit peak value of $594 bil in August 2000 and was around $450 bil in 2001 when Jack Welch retired and handed over to Jeff Immelt a week before September 11 in 2001. It was $394 bil in October 2007, only $153 bil in October 2017 when Jeff Immelt was forced out a few months early on his planned retirement. In October 2018 Immelt's replacement John Flannery was voted out as CEO and chairman by the board, and current CEO and Chairman Lawrence Culp is the first outsider ever appointed to these positions. The market cap is now about $90 bil in Feb 2019.

GE since Thomas Edison's days has only had 12 CEO's and 11 Chairmen and until September 2018 was the only company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index that was there when it was created in 1896 with 12 stocks, and from 1907 when it was the Dow Jones top 30 stocks. Who knows how long it will be around for in its current form.

I reckon at the end of this year, Gupta will move back to UK or even USA as he continues to make large purchases in Europe and USA. If he wants big operations in USA then he will have to move there, especially as he said in his interview with Ticky Fullerton on Monday night, that he is looking at entering the capital markets in the USA later in the year. That will require him to spend a lot of time there and analysts will not like his opaque group structure and financing methods so he will have to sell that to them as well as change it, no doubt.

So well done to Koch and the club for engaging with him and catching him before he leaves Oz, and for signing the 5 year sponsorship / partnership deal. :thumbsu: :thumbsu:

Hopefully there will be a lot of set and forget components to the $$ side of this deal, with the opportunity to expand and link it to companies within the GFG group - eg like the SIMEC Zen Energy products I mentioned yesterday, in a post in the Lets Talk Ports Part 2 thread as well as the community stuff.

So Gupta spent $700 mil to buy Arrium's 3 divisions in Oz in July 2017 with official signing, 31st August buying;
1. Arrium Mining -The mines in the Middleback Ranges in Eyre peninsula that has magnetite iron deposits used in Whyalla steelworks (most desirable ore body) and hematite iron ore deposits that they ship to China. These export sales to China caused massive problems for Arrium's cash flow when low iron ore prices hit in 2015.

2. Arrium Mining Consumables - grinding media supplied to the global mining industry

3. OneSteel Steel & Recycling, comprising manufacturing distribution and its recycling businesses at Whyalla and around 200 sites all over Australia. The recycling business supplies scrap metal to foundries, smelters and steelworks in Australia and internationally

Then in December 2018 in front of the PM, federal opposition leader, Premier and state opposition leader, apparently the first time this has ever been done, he announced expansion plans for production to go from current 1.1~1.2 million tonnes capacity to 1.8 million tonnes to get Italian and Chinese consortium to help build these new facilities. This was a $600 mil announcement as GFG Alliance Whyalla (old Arrium You Tube site) put out this video.

You can see plenty of vertical integration and synergies in this video of the existing GFG group assets which included buying a coal mine for coking coal needed to make steel and that mine in Tahmoor is within 50km of Wollongong and Port Kembla, from Glencore in January 2018. The value of this deal wasn't announced, but it was estimated at $500m deposit and means 340 jobs in Tahmoor were secured.





Also announced in December 2018 at that big presser in Whyalla was that they would do a feasibility study into expanding Whyalla to a next generation steelworks which will probably take close to two years to do the feasibility study, and if that gets the go ahead, then there is another $700 mil investment.

Cheap energy will be the key driver for this to happen and GFG's energy division have announced they want to build 1 gigawatt of dispatchable renewable energy and they have started building the first of those projects, the 280MW Cultana solar project near Whyalla.

The Cultana solar farm will be built by SIMEC ZEN Energy, the company of which Gupta’s GFG Alliance now holds a 51 per cent stake. It will produce 600GWh of electricity a year from 780,000 solar panels. GFG's SIMEC bought that 51 per cent stake in ZEN Energy in September 2017 for an undisclosed amount.

In December 2017 it won a contract with the South Australian government under which the firm will supply at least 80 per cent of the government's energy needs until 2020 from wind and solar power and storage. Then from November 2020 SIMEC Zen will supply all of the SA government's energy needs for five years from the proposed $650 million, 150-megawatt Aurora solar thermal concentrating plant in Port Augusta. The state government contract win marked the first big deal for SIMEC Zen since it signed off on a $700 million solar, battery and pumped hydro storage project in October to deliver power to the re-named Liberty OneSteel works in Whyalla.

Cultana started to be built in August 2018 and all up the a cost of and 1 gigawatt generation facilities GFG want, will cost all up about $1 bil. Payback will take maybe 8 to 10 years but then the on going running cost of renewable generation will be bugger all compared to fossil fuels and selling power into the grid will probably mean net energy costs will be negative at certain times of the year. And a lot of the infrastructure needed will be built with GFG Alliance materials that the group manufactures.

The pumped hydro renewable plant you may have heard that SIMEC Zen Energy are going to do a feasibility study on near Whyalla, will be situated at one of the mine sites in the Middleback Ranges that GFG purchased from Arrium.

As Gupta said when he bought the Tahmoor mine from Glencore;
“Through this purchase, we secure and de-risk an important feed for the Whyalla Steelworks.
“This, together with our iron ore mines in South Australia, now makes GFG the only fully-integrated Australian steel producer, whether from iron ore and coking coal to primary steel, or from scrap metal and renewable energy to GREENSTEEL.”


ergo what BHP used to do at Whyalla and Port Kembla for over 40 years!!







And if you are going to build all this at Whyalla and surrounding areas you need more people and Whyalla is expected to expand to 80,000 people by 2040. In the video produced by the Whyalla Council you will see there is plenty of infrastructure needs.

GFG vertical integration can be seen all over this video. GFG have a property division which owns commercial, industrial, agricultural and residential properties and has a development arm. If you are going to employ a s**t load of people doesn't it make sense that they use your bank?? They have a banking and financial services division Wyelands Bank Plc which if they get an Oz banking licence could provided- "the bank is also a provider of competitive retail deposits and savings services" - in Oz just like the UK. Lend workers and others in Whyalla them money to buy homes, that are built with a lot of GFG products, developed by GFG real estate arm and use GFG energy. Also small contractors supplying GFG could get financing from GFG's bank.

They need to train the work force. They have the GFG Foundation "which aims to address the growing skills gaps in industry and enable young people and experienced workers to reach their potential. In the UK - "Working with respected partners such as the Industrial Cadets programme, inspired by HRH The Prince of Wales and delivered by the Engineering Development Trust, the Foundation aims to help improve the prospects of 5,000 people over a three-year period."

I can see a major major upgrade of TAFE in Whyalla and scholarships handed out for STEM subjects degrees just like BHP used to do. There have an engineering services division which will no doubt make its way to Whyalla in some form.

https://www.gfgalliance.com/an-integrated-approach/engineering/
"Liberty Engineering is an international manufacturer of automotive and engineered solutions, with sites located in the United Kingdom, France and UAE. It combines the expertise of 15 businesses across 18 locations and delivers a range of products and services to customers mainly in the automotive commercial vehicles, yellow goods, motorsport, general engineering, aerospace, defence and construction sectors."

"Liberty Engineering is also one of the largest privately owned engineering enterprises in the United Kingdom and a major supplier to all domestic and global automotive and off-road sectors which includes powertrain, body in white, trim, chassis, interiors, braking and control electronics, as well as engineering, testing and advanced vehicle solutions, provided to customers such as JLR, Ford, Renault, Nissan, Peugeot and many others."

GFG bought 2 major businesses in France in late 2018. Liberty acquired the French manufacturer of aluminim wheels AR Industries and Liberty acquired Aluminium Dunkerque, the largest aluminium smelter in Europe. Gupta has talked about getting into the downstream automotive parts manufacturing - more than just wheel hubs. I've read in a couple places he wants to eventually get involved with electric cars. More vertical integration.

When SIMEC ZEN Energy signed a deal with French firm NEOEN in May 2018, - " for a 15-year power purchase agreement for SIMEC ZEN Energy to take most of the output from NEOEN’s Numurkah Solar Farm in northwest Victoria. This 100 MW renewable energy project is owned and developed by NEOEN and already supported by a 38 MW Green Certificate Purchase agreement by the Victorian Government "- it was signed at Kiribilli house in the presence of Turnbull and French President Emanuel Macron, the day he told Turnbull. your wife is delicious.

In the interview on Ticky on Monday night, Gupta talked about how he spent time at Versailles last year with Macron after he purchased French manufacturer of aluminum wheels AR Industries, and Europe's largest aluminium smelter at Dunkerque. I have no doubt that the French built subs in Osborne will be built with Whyalla steel made to DCNS' specifications and there will be a close relationship between GFG and the French, and another link to Port Adelaide area.






And from GFG Alliance's You Tube page you can see how busy they were around the world in 2018 and what's on the agenda for 2019 as Gupta welcomed back staff to work in early January.






I think Andrew Carnegie was reborn in the Punjab about 47 years ago.


What a dodgy bastard

Just pay ya bills

:rolleyes:
 
I've been reading a lot of articles and watching a lot of videos, as well as the BBC Wales video/story I linked on the previous page, the last month since I found GFG's re-branding strategy video and found those articles from the AFR and Financial Times I posted on page 4. Thought it was time to put some of the info up here and join some dots.

Sanjeev Gupta is into vertical integration and looks like he wants to be the 21st century Andrew Carnegie and some.

He might not be a Scottish-American like Carneige, but he has substantial land holdings in Scotland - his JAHAMA Estates and its JAHAMA Highland Estates subsidiary, is the 5th largest private land holder in Scotland, he owns two hydro power stations and aluminium smelter operations in Scottish Highlands and they have large land holdings around those facilities, and I have no doubt he wants to be a big player in the USA steel production market and other businesses in the USA. Finance no doubt will be one of them as well.
.

He has done what the workers wanted to do (and weren't allowed to do) in buying the money making industries. What happened in the UK was that the Tories wanted to break unions and their companies wanted to buy cheaper foreign products (in exchange for the financial sector being based in London and the South East).

This meant mills and mines that still made money were forcibly closed so that more money could be concentrated in and around London (e.g. the UK buys Polish steel and the Poles base their banking system in London).

The likes of Gupta are coming in and sweeping up these industries in areas of high unemployment.

In Wales a few were bought out by the workers, but they had capital issues (of course).
 
Because the mines weren't in the capital right?

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Email from club today about new merchandise. No GFG badging, curious. A non-logo major sponsor? Or just weirdly premature manufacture of goods?
 

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Jun 12, 2012
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Email from club today about new merchandise. No GFG badging, curious. A non-logo major sponsor? Or just weirdly premature manufacture of goods?

Definitely the latter, but it’s a liberal use of “new” as these items have been available for months. I don’t think we’ll see any GFG-branded gear until mid season so that they can clear the bulk of the OAK only merchandise.
 
I would like to think you know me better then that OGC, I do not sook about SFA. But I would like to know what we are receiving and what we are expected to do for it in return. If others don't give a toss that's fine. Asked a simple question to those that are far closer to Alberton then I.

Especially given our track record with major sponsors since SCOTT’S and Vodafone pulled the pin.

Bianco unable to meet payments due to the of-bloody-course timing of the GFC, MyATM, Soaring Securities, VIP (unders), Renault (unders, then bolted despite the partnership being a raging success for them), double-OAK for not much more than an extra carton of milk.

The way some people carry on about criticism and hard questions you’d think we were Manchester United fans bemoaning the fact the premier league trophy isn’t bolted to the floor in the club foyer for the first time in 25 years.
 
Jul 7, 2007
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Especially given our track record with major sponsors since SCOTT’S and Vodafone pulled the pin.

Bianco unable to meet payments due to the of-bloody-course timing of the GFC, MyATM, Soaring Securities, VIP (unders), Renault (unders, then bolted despite the partnership being a raging success for them), double-OAK for not much more than an extra carton of milk.

The way some people carry on about criticism and hard questions you’d think we were Manchester United fans bemoaning the fact the premier league trophy isn’t bolted to the floor in the club foyer for the first time in 25 years.
When we land Red Bull a scientific study will be published proving it's more carcinogenic than plutonium mixed with asbestos.
 
When we land Red Bull a scientific study will be published proving it's more carcinogenic than plutonium mixed with asbestos.

Kappa = sweatshops staffed exclusively by 8 year old Quentins
 
Community camp at Whyalla starts.
















Not sure if this was part of the sponsorship deal but the club Ambassador gave a community concert last night in Whyalla along with a few other Oz music legends.


 
Kappa = sweatshops staffed exclusively by 8 year old Quentins

This already happened though. Remember when we got guernseys made super late for the final and there was media coverage about how the business turned it around on time - then the whole LOOK IT WAS DONE IN SWEATSHOPS PORTS ARE SLAVE TRADERS narrative was born.
 
This already happened though. Remember when we got guernseys made super late for the final and there was media coverage about how the business turned it around on time - then the whole LOOK IT WAS DONE IN SWEATSHOPS PORTS ARE SLAVE TRADERS narrative was born.

Lol yeah, “why didn’t you get ISC to make them at the drop of a hat in all those local textile factories that don’t exist!”
 
Lol yeah, “why didn’t you get ISC to make them at the drop of a hat in all those local textile factories that don’t exist!”

"Why didn't you use Trims Farken!?!"
 
Oct 1, 2014
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Was at the dinner tonight in Whyalla. I was sitting next to Dan Houston. Gotta say top bloke had a good chat with him. Boyd Woodcock i like him a lot too. I am chuffed that i got to meet legend Russell Ebert for the first time and Hamish. I can't believe how big Hayes is up close. Kid is gonna be huge. I really had a great time thanks Port Adelaide and the Westies footy club for putting on a good dinner for us. Oh and Jack Watts is a friendly lad too.
 
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Whyalla News photo gallery of yesterday

https://www.whyallanewsonline.com.au/story/5910999/the-power-visit-whyalla-photos/?cs=1550#slide=1


https://www.whyallanewsonline.com.au/story/5910999/the-power-visit-whyalla-photos/?cs=1550#slide=1
Mr Lycett, whose grandparents live in Whyalla, said it was a great opportunity to ‘give back’ to country kids. “I grew up in Ceduna...so I can definitely relate to these kids living in a country area. Seeing the joy on their faces brings back memories of myself being a kid at school,” he said. “To see them happy today was really good.” The players also spoke about the importance of staying in school and pursuing university after completing their SACE.

Mr Lycett, who is undertaking a university course while playing in the AFL, said having an outlet outside of football had been hugely important for him. “It took me a few years to realise that if I did something outside of football it kind of takes your mind off all the pressures that come with footy,” he said. “Enjoying things outside of footy like university and fishing really takes your mind off of what can be a pretty stressful environment.”

The shirts worn by the players featured the GFG Alliance logo, with Chairman Sanjeev Gupta having signed a sponsorship with the club. Mr Lycett said it was great to have Mr Gupta on board, describing him as a ‘really nice guy’.
.......
The clinic concluded with an autograph-signing session and was followed by a Sportsmans Dinner at the West Whyalla Football Club. Port Adelaide will interact with around 10,000 kids around the region as they visit Port Augusta and surrounding areas.
https://www.whyallanewsonline.com.au/story/5910999/the-power-visit-whyalla-photos/?cs=1550#slide=1
 
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