Broken Hill Proprietary history

Mining has been a part of Broken Hill since 1883 when the first sign of wealth was discovered by Charles Rasp, who then set up the BHP mine with the Syndicate of Seven.

Ltd (BHP) in August 1885 when the company was floated on the stock exchange in Melbourne, its headquarters to the present.

As a result of the 1892 slump in world silver and lead prices, BHP decided to scrap a work-practice agreement with the AMA and to prompt a showdown with a union movement it openly regarded with contempt.

Delprat had become BHP's general manager in 1899 and under his careful but imaginative stewardship BHP's productivity rose steadily.

Guillaume Delprat, a Dutch engineer and chemist whom BHP had brought to Australia from Europe, provided the solution to the problem of treating sulfide ores with his invention in 1902 of the flotation process.

The union movement disagreed with this analysis and in 1905 militants urged the NSW government not to renew BHP's leases at the Big Mine.

Another who benefited was Philip Charley, the young jackaroo who first recognised silver chlorides near Rasp Shaft (pegged by McCulloch). His ongoing involvement enabled him to import a 1907 Silver Ghost – the first Rolls Royce in Australia.

Early in 1909 the AMA launched a new strike.

Baker designed the new plant along the latest United States lines, the whole project being financed out of an increase in share capital, two debenture issues, and the sale in 1915 of BHP's Port Pirie lead smelter to the Broken Hill Associated Smelters Company for £300,000.

The 1920 seamen's strike convinced BHP that it had to control its own shipping.

In 1921 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.

With other mining companies, BHP formed Broken Hill Associated Smelters when the export of lead concentrates to Europe was interrupted during the First World War; BHP sold its shareholding in 1925.

He placed particular emphasis on the replacement of old machinery, with the result that by the end of the 1920s BHP was operating one of the cleanest, safest, and most cost-effective steel plants in the world. Thus the Depression which began in 1929 and so devastated other Australian industries left the steel industry comparatively unscathed.

In 1935 BHP's only competitor in Australia, the struggling Australian Iron & Steel Company (AIS), sought a merger with its larger rival.

In 1938 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.

The famous BHP (Broken Hill Proprietary) company left Broken Hill in 1939 and since then a total of 14 different mining companies have made Broken Hill their home and their fortune.

In January 1940 BHP agreed to establish a shipyard at Whyalla: the keels for two Royal Australian Navy patrol boats were laid even before the blast furnace was completed.

Despite exploratory work and expansion of iron ore mining in the Middleback Range west of Whyalla, not until 1958 did the government and BHP reach agreement on the construction of a steelworks at Whyalla.

The Australian government's lifting in 1960 of its prewar restrictions on the export of iron ore encouraged BHP to enter the field once again as a prospector.

In 1964 the first well was commissioned in the Gippsland Basin area off the coast of Victoria.

In 1976--77, BHP acquired Peabody Coal's Australian assets, thereby gaining a 60 percent interest in the Moura and Kianga coal mines in Queensland.

Blainey, G, The steel master: A life of Essington Lewis (Melbourne: MacMillan, 1981)

In 1984 BHP bought the United States mining and construction company Utah Mines Ltd. from General Electric.

Loton advanced to chairman in 1991, at which time John Prescott succeeded him as CEO. While remaining focused on BHP's core businesses, Prescott aimed to broaden the conglomerate's global reach.

By 1992, it ranked 10th among the world's oil companies, and petroleum had become a significant contributor to overall profits, which totaled US$900 million on revenues of US$12 billion in 1992.

Thompson, P and R Macklin, The big fella: the rise and rise of BHP Billiton (Sydney: William Heinemann, 2009)

In 2012 the company shelved plans to expand its massive copper–uranium–gold–silver–lead mine at Olympic Dam, but continued to investigate the option.