Aaron Johansen
In order to run one of Australia’s major coal export terminals, Aaron Johansen has had to direct the efforts of six mining companies towards a common goal.
Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group (NCIG) was established by six mining companies who had plans to develop new mines and increase exports from their existing mines. At the time, these mining companies had concerns about the ability of the coal logistics chain to enable this planned increased production to be exported to markets in Asia. While each company can be regarded as a competitor, NCIG provided the means and external funding to set up the port infrastructure required to export 66 million tonnes of additional coal through the port of Newcastle.
CEO of NCIG, Aaron Johansen, explains: "We set up the capital structure of the company in a way that allowed any shareholder, if they wanted to, to fund their own share of the terminal. One of the shareholders, BHP Billiton, financed their share of the terminal through their finance arm, while the remainder was externally funded through various banks and other institutions from around the world. Our capital and business structure is unique: We were the first coal terminal and possibly the first infrastructure asset to set up in this way."
"It allowed us to finance the full construction of the terminal, costing $2.5 billion in total. With external financing, our shareholders then provided support of that financing through take-or-pay-style arrangements, in which they commit to pay a toll charge associated with an entitlement to export capacity over time. Through these arrangements, our shareholders gained a level of certainty around access to the port capacity required for their expanded coal production, whilst NCIG gained the confidence around future revenue streams required to fund the terminal."