ENGINEERING Fri 22/08/2008

Ausenco scores big Brazilian hit

July 28 - August 3, 2008

THE STING from an $A8 million hit from the Lumwana copper project in Zambia should be eased by Ausenco’s $US140 million port contract win in Brazil, according to UBS, “by far the largest ever won by the group, being some four times the size of the Ridgeway Deeps project for Newcrest Mining”, and the first big deal secured since the Australian engineer bought Canadian-based Sandwell in March this year.

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Engineer plants coal flag

June 16 - 22, 2008

AUSENCO has snuck a major coal preparation plant construction deal with Vale in before firing up its new joint venture with American group Taggart Global. CEO Zimi Meka said he was pleased with Ausenco’s entry into the coal EPCM market space, but it was now down to business with Taggart.

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Iron ore next for Ausenco

June 2 - 8, 2008

ASX-LISTED engineering group Ausenco has ticked one of its key expansion boxes with the move into coal via a joint venture with Taggart Global. The JV will pit Ausenco against successful Australian coal preparation plant builder Sedgman, and others, and give Ausenco a chance use its experience in Africa and parts of Asia to develop a coal leg.

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UBS gives Ausenco thumbs up

April 14 - 20, 2008

AUSENCO’S strategic sense has been given a tick by UBS in the wake of it being named the preferred EPCM contractor for Oxiana’s $US310 million Martabe gold-silver project in Indonesia.

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Sea change for Technip

April 7 - 13, 2008

DIRECT shipping ore is a phrase that will take on new meaning at Solwara 1 in Papua New Guinea territorial waters in the western Pacific Ocean, with AIM/TSX listed Nautilus Minerals Inc continuing to progress towards its planned 2010 start-up of the offshore mining project by awarding the US arm of French engineering group Technip a $US116 million contract to build a key part of the seafloor-to-surface mining system.

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Welcome to the big league

March 10 - 16, 2008

HUMBLE, intelligent, highly regarded and highly ambitious. The head of Ausenco, the fast-growing Australian-based engineering firm that has now clearly signalled its intent to become a global sector leader, still maintains that if there isn’t enough room for all the company’s employees under the spotlight he doesn’t want to stand there by himself.

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Austin no lightweight

February 25 - March 2, 2008

A NUMBER of now publicly owned and listed Australian mining service sector companies have failed to deliver on optimistic performance forecasts and their shares are in the doldrums. Many also suffer from not telling their story properly with one CEO recently telling HighGrade, “we’re just a boring microcap”! Sydney-based Southern Cross Equities (SCE) has put up “undervalued” Austin Engineering as a potential lead consolidator in the moribund sector.

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Surprises galore

December 10 - 16, 2007

GEOLOGISTS don’t have the advantage of actually seeing what’s under the ground when they try to put together an accurate resource assessment for the board – and regulators. There is no such visibility barrier for project cost estimators, yet major errors of judgement at this point in the project development cycle are hurting the industry’s credibility.

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Piecing together a solution

November 19 - 25, 2007

AUSTRALIA’S major petroleum company Woodside plans to bring in more than 200 modules of plant for its $A12 billion Pluto gas project in Western Australia as a way around the labour and skills shortages threatening development of some projects in the country’s boom resources region, the Pilbara. CEO Don Voelte said in Perth this week “modularisation” was the building method of the future.

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SKM on the move

November 19 - 25, 2007

THE CREATION by leading privately owned engineering group Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) of a specialised mining group has underlined growing acceptance of alternative mine material movement systems in Australia.

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Metals could add Sedgman shine

November 5 - 11, 2007

AUSTRALIA’S Sedgman is expected to win about a dozen new coal contracts and is seen as having real potential to increase its order book in metalliferous resources, the latter space currently dominated by the likes of Ausenco and Mineral Resources.

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Bateman targets more EPCM

September 10 - 16, 2007

BRITISH-LISTED engineering group Bateman Engineering will step up efforts to diversify its revenue and earnings streams, and reduce costs, after confirming a year of strong growth in the 12 months to June 30.

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SNC buys third Indian firm

September 10 - 16, 2007

SNC-LAVALIN has made its third acquisition in India in two years, buying the New Delhi-based infrastructure and environment engineering firm Span Consultants Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed sum.

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Africa opening up for contractor

August 20 - 26, 2007

AFRICA continues to provide good business for engineering company Ausenco, with the latest $US145 million engineering, procurement and construction management contract for Mineral Deposits’ Sabodala gold project in the West African country of Senegal taking its combined order book on the continent to about $US700 million.

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Making up the numbers

August 20 - 26, 2007

BHP BILLITON is spending $A300 million on a pre-feasibility study examining expansion of the Olympic Dam multi-metal operation in South Australia and has produced numerous presentations and reports on the magnitude and importance of the proposed development. Could all this seriously be threatened by a shortage of engineers?

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Transfield may cast net wider

August 13 - 19, 2007

RECENT rejection by GRD of Transfield Services’ unwanted advances isn’t likely to be the end of the story, with the latter’s keenness to move into the project management space said to be fuelled by customer demand.

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Bateman design has people at the centre

July 16 - 22, 2007

THE “RIGHT” acquisition has given Bateman Engineering’s drive to grow its business in Australia and South East Asia - and its intellectual capacity in one of the world’s major mining centres - a significant boost, according to the company’s regional chief.

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Bateman lines up new targets

July 2 - 8, 2007

TOO EARLY to say, was the response from one of Bateman Engineering’s senior executives to a query about the identity of the company’s latest acquisition target. However, that has not stopped a London-based broker giving the deal its blessing.

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Peer group fresher

June 25 - July 1, 2007

DON’T let the absence of good news fool you: WorleyParsons Ltd is travelling along nicely. Who says? Goldman Sachs JBWere, for one.

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Obscure plant designer grows

June 4 - 10, 2007

LOW profile, slow growing and often overshadowed. That might be an apt way to describe Australian-based engineering group Lycopodium Ltd in relation to some of its more glamorous sector peers. But any negative connotations probably won't bother company executives, or shareholders.

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Coffey to go deeper underground

May 28 - June 3, 2007

A PERCEIVED gap in the underground mining consulting market has convinced Coffey Mining to reinvigorate the project design and implementation arm of the former Global Mining Services business. It believes newly created Coffey Mine Development could become a major operating unit with up to 100 employees within two years.

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VDM builds wide growth vista

May 28 - June 3, 2007

IT’S SO far, so good for VDM Group Ltd’s strategic acquisition model. The company is among a growing band of emerging groups working under a public spotlight intensified by Australia’s engineering construction boom. “I’m strongly of the view that in real terms there is no end to the current buoyant conditions,” says VDM chief executive John Farrell. But, he says, “we’re all on a bit of a treadmill”.

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Coffey's cup is half full

April 16 - 22, 2007

COFFEY Mining is about half way to achieving its vision of being a truly global mining consultancy, chief operating officer Dan O’Toole told a recent gathering in Perth, Western Australia, to mark the bedding down of last year’s Coffey-RSG Global merger and RSG’s 20th anniversary. A big part of the balance of the vision is expected to be in place by the end of 2007.

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Billion dollar Bateman

April 2 - 8, 2007

ACQUISITIONS could help Bateman Engineering NV find another gear in its pursuit of a medium-term annual revenue target of $US1 billion. While it is examining a number of small-to-medium-size businesses, the company also believes it is well positioned to make a major acquisition.

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Runge moves into China

March 26 - April 1, 2007

THE EMERGING global mining consultancy Runge is weighing up options for funding further expansion after reaching its key $A100 million enterprise value target with the acquisition of Sydney-based consulting pair Minarco Asia Pacific and MineConsult. Among the options are an initial public offering, or large private equity funding.

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Bateman builds India hub

March 19 - 25, 2007

INCREASED capacity to take on larger engineering projects has given Bateman Engineering NV chief executive Dr Sivi Gounden confidence to predict a “medium-term” annual revenue target of $US1 billion – more than double current levels. At this stage, investors can expect the bigger version of the South African-based, Dutch-registered, London-listed engineer to have a much stronger Indian flavour.

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Some heartburn for hot Coffey

March 19 - 25, 2007

COFFEY International Ltd chief Roger Olds has rightly been receiving accolades for steering the international engineering firm’s rapid expansion. The latest, a national “Best consulting engineering firm” business service gong from clients in Australia, recognised the company’s diverse service offering – partly a result of its 14 corporate acquisitions in the past three years. But Olds must also contend with some growth hiccups, says an analyst with JPMorgan Securities.

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Taking shape

February 22 - 28, 2007

EMERGING international engineering company Ausenco Ltd is targeting $US10 billion of new base and precious metal projects due to begin development cycles between now and 2010 to maintain its hot expansion pace after nearly doubling revenue and increasing its net profit by 137% in the 12 months to the end of December last year.

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Sedgman builds CHPP dominance

February 15 - 21, 2007

SPECIALISED coal engineering firm Sedgman Ltd is keeping to the growth script outlined in the prospectus for last year’s initial public offering, this week clinching a $A346.4 million project alliance agreement with Anglo Coal to design and build the Lake Lindsay coal plant in central Queensland.

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Stronger Coffey

February 1 - 7, 2007

AN $A80 million rights issue – the first by the company since its 1990 Australian Stock Exchange listing – and robust growth prospects in key markets have positioned Coffey International Ltd to continue its acquisition spree of recent years and report stronger earnings “for the next several years”, according to JPMorgan Securities.

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Growth in the pipeline

January 25 - 31, 2007

WORLEYPARSONS Ltd’s impressive project pipeline could deliver stronger than expected growth for “a number of years”, according to a new investment note by UBS Securities Australia.

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Watershed year for Bateman

December 14 - 20, 2006

BATEMAN Engineering has taken an early lead in the race among engineering groups to build a stable growth platform in India’s mining sector by securing a deal to expand capacity at a zinc concentrator in Rajasthan. The project makes it three-out-of-three in emerging markets for Bateman after it announced a major contract in Russia last week to go with the breakthrough earlier this year in China.

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Three strikes

December 7 - 13, 2006

BHP Billiton has done it again in Western Australia. Three times inside the past decade the major diversified miner has developed big ticket projects in Australia’s premier mining state that have subsequently been shown to bear little resemblance to their respective feasibility studies. Two of them have been absolute shockers, while the third, the Ravensthorpe laterite nickel project, has got away to an ominously bad start.

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Hungry Runge

November 23 - 29, 2006

RUNGE executive director Christian Larsen remembers when private equity fund managers could not, or wouldn’t, distinguish between mining companies and mining service firms. He should do; it was not that long ago.

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SNC-Lavalin to stay a little longer

November 2 - 8, 2006

CONSTRUCTION of the world class Ambatovy nickel project on the island nation of Madagascar is on track to commence in the middle of next year after owner Dynatec Corporation clinched high-level Korean and Japanese backing earlier this week. The $US2.5 billion project will be built by Canada’s SNC-Lavalin, which has worked on Ambatovy for the past two years.

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Right steps building global footprint

October 26 - November 1, 2006

WORLEYParsons Ltd is not just good at building energy and mining projects – it also continues to win plaudits for company-building acumen.

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Hire and hire

October 26 - November 1, 2006

A BEEFED up recruitment program has helped position coal engineering group Sedgman for further growth after it finished the 2005-06 fiscal year with $A600 million of work in hand.

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All go at Lumwana

October 19 - 25, 2006

EXECUTION of the $US407.6 million engineering, procurement and construction contract for the Lumwana copper project in Zambia has marked a further significant step in the emergence of Ausenco Ltd, which sees outstanding growth opportunities in Africa.

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Gateway to Brazil

September 21 - 27, 2006

LEARN the language. Learn about the culture. Know the client well. That’s the advice for engineers and other companies looking to win business in Brazil.

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Strong foundations for growth

September 7 - 13, 2006

RESOURCE-CONSTRAINED: it might sound like an unusual description to fit to an engineering services group working in the mining sector.

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What goes up …

September 7 - 13, 2006

THE PREVAILING seller’s market for most major plant items will make it hard for engineering procurement and construction management (EPCM) contractors to pin down costs for key project building blocks for the foreseeable future, according to a leading Australian engineering services group.

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