company.
Grigor claims Forrest had long been angry that the two men had thesame number of shares in Anaconda even though Forrest had done most of the work in advising the aspiring nickel producer. To this day, Grigor has a bad taste in his mouth over his decision to sell the shares at $1.30 just before they soared.
A separate disagreement between the two men over Anaconda shares ended up in the NSW Supreme Court in early 1997. Grigor will say only that the pairresolved the dispute over a bottle of scotch, and he is no longer bitter towards his old partner. They even catch up occasionally for a chat these days. “Andrew had a favourite term, ‘Let’s bury the hatchet,’” says Grigor, who credits Forrest with teaching him plenty about business in the 1990s. “He doesn’t like to bear grudges.”
6.
DREAMS IN THE DESERT
I’ve met a lot of managing directors, but I don’t think I’ve met a more self-evidently enthusiastic and dedicated managing director than I’ve met in Andrew Forrest.
—JOHN HOWARD
Andrew Forrest got involved with a two-bit company called Anaconda Nickel because nobody else dared to touch it. In 1993, two Perth mining identities– prospector Peter Salter and metallurgist Geoff Motteram – were desperate to find someone who would underwrite a public float of the company, which had some old tenements in the burning desert north of Kalgoorlie. After failing to convince almost every financier in Perth to back their plan, Salter and Motteram flew to Sydney to try their luck with Forrest at Far East Capital.
Anaconda’sproblem at the time wasn’t Motteram, who was respected in the industry after stints with big mining companies, including BHP and Western Mining Corporation. Rather, it was the presence of the burly Salter – or “Salty Pete”, as he was known around Perth. Salter had a colourful history in the city’s business and horseracing circles, having been declared bankrupt in the 1980s. He would later be bannedby the corporate regulator ASIC from serving as a company director for three and a half years for his role in a failed bottled-water venture. Salter returned to business only to be sacked as chief executive of a Perth-based gold explorer over a sexual harassment case a few years later.
Always keen on a gamble, Forrest was willing to overlook Salter’s tarnished reputation and embraced hisplan to develop mining leases near the abandoned town of Murrin Murrin, in Western Australia’s northern Goldfields. The relationship between Forrest and Salter would break down two years later in a haze of drunken punches, but for a brief time the pair shared a common vision of creating a wealth-generating oasis on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert.
Reclining in his office chair, Forresttold Salter and Motteram that Far East Capital would underwrite the $6-million float of Anaconda. The money raised from investors would be spent on drilling tenements that had been pegged during the 1960s nickel frenzy by a company called Australian Selection, which eventually discarded them due to the frighteningly high costs and technical complexities involved in extracting what are known asnickel laterites from the ore.
Up until that point, all nickel in Western Australia had been produced from sulphide ores, which are relatively high-grade and quite simple to process before being sold. The lower-grade laterite ores are weathered rocks found near the surface, which are easier to mine but far more difficult to treat. As a metallurgist, Geoff Motteram was aware of a little-understoodextraction method for nickel laterites called high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) which had been pioneered in the 1950s at Moa Bay in Cuba. American mining giant Freeport built the Cuban plant but the project disappeared from public view when Fidel Castro seized control of the country in 1959, nationalising the nickel industry and naming one of the Moa Bay plants “Ernesto Che Guevara” afterthe Marxist revolutionary
Grigor claims Forrest had long been angry that the two men had thesame number of shares in Anaconda even though Forrest had done most of the work in advising the aspiring nickel producer. To this day, Grigor has a bad taste in his mouth over his decision to sell the shares at $1.30 just before they soared.
A separate disagreement between the two men over Anaconda shares ended up in the NSW Supreme Court in early 1997. Grigor will say only that the pairresolved the dispute over a bottle of scotch, and he is no longer bitter towards his old partner. They even catch up occasionally for a chat these days. “Andrew had a favourite term, ‘Let’s bury the hatchet,’” says Grigor, who credits Forrest with teaching him plenty about business in the 1990s. “He doesn’t like to bear grudges.”
6.
DREAMS IN THE DESERT
I’ve met a lot of managing directors, but I don’t think I’ve met a more self-evidently enthusiastic and dedicated managing director than I’ve met in Andrew Forrest.
—JOHN HOWARD
Andrew Forrest got involved with a two-bit company called Anaconda Nickel because nobody else dared to touch it. In 1993, two Perth mining identities– prospector Peter Salter and metallurgist Geoff Motteram – were desperate to find someone who would underwrite a public float of the company, which had some old tenements in the burning desert north of Kalgoorlie. After failing to convince almost every financier in Perth to back their plan, Salter and Motteram flew to Sydney to try their luck with Forrest at Far East Capital.
Anaconda’sproblem at the time wasn’t Motteram, who was respected in the industry after stints with big mining companies, including BHP and Western Mining Corporation. Rather, it was the presence of the burly Salter – or “Salty Pete”, as he was known around Perth. Salter had a colourful history in the city’s business and horseracing circles, having been declared bankrupt in the 1980s. He would later be bannedby the corporate regulator ASIC from serving as a company director for three and a half years for his role in a failed bottled-water venture. Salter returned to business only to be sacked as chief executive of a Perth-based gold explorer over a sexual harassment case a few years later.
Always keen on a gamble, Forrest was willing to overlook Salter’s tarnished reputation and embraced hisplan to develop mining leases near the abandoned town of Murrin Murrin, in Western Australia’s northern Goldfields. The relationship between Forrest and Salter would break down two years later in a haze of drunken punches, but for a brief time the pair shared a common vision of creating a wealth-generating oasis on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert.
Reclining in his office chair, Forresttold Salter and Motteram that Far East Capital would underwrite the $6-million float of Anaconda. The money raised from investors would be spent on drilling tenements that had been pegged during the 1960s nickel frenzy by a company called Australian Selection, which eventually discarded them due to the frighteningly high costs and technical complexities involved in extracting what are known asnickel laterites from the ore.
Up until that point, all nickel in Western Australia had been produced from sulphide ores, which are relatively high-grade and quite simple to process before being sold. The lower-grade laterite ores are weathered rocks found near the surface, which are easier to mine but far more difficult to treat. As a metallurgist, Geoff Motteram was aware of a little-understoodextraction method for nickel laterites called high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) which had been pioneered in the 1950s at Moa Bay in Cuba. American mining giant Freeport built the Cuban plant but the project disappeared from public view when Fidel Castro seized control of the country in 1959, nationalising the nickel industry and naming one of the Moa Bay plants “Ernesto Che Guevara” afterthe Marxist revolutionary
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