selling off, selling out

You have to be concerned when a company proudly displays this image on their website. I don’t think I have seen a more blatant disregard for the earth and if I were them, I would be ashamed to admit to this act of environmental violence.

Grange Resources is setting up a magnetite mine at Wellstead which they intend to have operational by 2012. As a major part of its operations it will need to transport the magnetite concentrate in slurry form via a buried pipeline from the Southdown mine-site into the Albany port area where it will be treated ie ‘dewatered in a filter plant prior to stockpiling’.

The company’s website declares that ‘Grange will require a reliable power supply for the concentrator, slurry pipeline pumps, mine site facilities, concentrate filtration plant at Albany, port material handling facilities, and return waterline pumps’. It will also need what the company calls ‘water solutions for the project’ - in the order of 85 litres a second which it says will come from ‘pit dewatering from groundwater and rainfall inflows; on-site rain water runoff capture; on/off-site groundwater extraction, and treated waste water from the Water Corporation’s Albany Tree Farm. This is starting to sound a bit intimidating. Read more about the proposal here.

Part of that project, in collaboration with the Albany Port Authority, is to ‘dig a ditch through King George Sound, dump the spoils at the entranceway and fill in an historic, beautiful little cove forever’. For more on this and to add your resistance click on the links in the sidebar or here and have a look at Save Our Sound. According to a recent ABC article also there is growing concern from the community. The article mentions the fact that jobs will be created etc but that once again lifestyles and smaller businesses may be disadvantaged. Not to mention the beauty of our coast.

But here’s the rub, yes, many jobs will be created - but at what cost? And who will we be working for? I did a company search because Grange has been on my radar for a while in relation to its operations in general. Of course I was not surprised to discover that the board of directors is made up of 2 Australians and 3 Chinese men, one of whom is the chairman, Xi Zhiqiang. The rest: Neil Chatfield (Deputy Chairman), Russell Clark (Managing Director), Cheung (Clement) Ko (Non-Executive Director, Guo Wei (Non-Executive Director)

I checked the list of shareholders and you guessed it, the Chinese have a huge stake in this. A company called Shagang International Holdings Limited has 40.43% (465,151,278 shares) Another Chinese company called Shagang International (Australia) Pty Ltd owns another 6.33%, so in total the Chinese own nearly 47% - which technically means that the company is still Australian owned, however if you check the shareholder register, you will see that a Singaporean investment company owns another share (call me paranoid). Shagang’s corporate statement declares: ‘we are striving for greater progress through innovative and creative notions’ - which means what? In reality their involvement (investment) in Grange will help bypass the reluctance of lending institutions to fork out because of the ‘global credit crisis’ and speed development of the Southdown iron ore project in Western Australia. China's steelmakers, including Sinosteel Corp., are investing in Australian producers of the raw material to gain supplies amid record prices ie they are trying to gain control of the market and will eventually drive prices down.

This insanely justified rape of the planet for money and possessions just keeps on going. Regardless of whether the economy goes belly-up again or not - we will all be left with the mess.

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