Business update as we near the close of the 2022 calendar year

With the end of the 2022 calendar year fast approaching, I wanted to provide you – our customers – with an update on our business performance, particularly given some of the recent media announcements and interest, along with our ongoing safety commitment and recent recycling campaign focus.

Performance and strategic growth

InfraBuild has continued to perform strongly through the first quarter of FY23.

Our management team is working hard to maintain momentum and its strong operating cadence with a focus on workplace safety and wellbeing, operating productivity and working capital invested, at a time when the market is normalising after a prolonged period of global supply chain disruption.

On the back of continued strong performance and following the repayment of our ABL in September, we have recently announced our intention to raise new finance to support the ongoing liquidity of the business and fund the strategic acquisitions of Keystone Capital Industries, Johnstown Wire Technologies and Georgetown Steelworks. You can read more detail about this in our recent media release.

These intended acquisitions are the right long-term fit for InfraBuild and would combine two businesses with a shared mission for sustainable steel production and strong market positions in the Australia and the USA. They will allow Infrabuild to build on core competencies, expand our existing US-based recycling operations, diversify revenue streams and tap into the robust US infrastructure market.

Safety

Our commitment to safety – for our people, customers and all stakeholders – is steadfast.

We have continued our safety improvement, with a 31% improvement in our TRIFR for Q1 FY23 (compared to Q1 FY22). This is an excellent and pleasing result and the culmination of a shared focus and commitment over the past three years to make a positive safety change in our business.

Our Safety Connect program, which encourages proactive safety intervention behaviours, continues to deliver improvements for our business and keep our people safe.

Recycling

Steel is a building block of society; our transport network, our hospitals, our schools, our stadiums and cinemas and our homes are built on foundations of steel. And steel will continue to play an essential role in helping shape our nation’s future.

We recently celebrated National Recycling Week (7 – 13 November), to recognise the important role we play as Australia’s largest vertically-integrated steelmaker and recycler.

Each day we work or support the work of our colleagues to recycle scrap metals and upcycle it to produce new steel via our electric arc furnaces.

Across our 26 recycling sites, we source scrap metals from households, local government, mining, demolition, automotive and waste companies. In the past year, these facilities have recovered about 1.4 million tonnes of recycled metals across the country to then be processed and used to make steel billets at one of our two electric arc furnaces at Laverton in Victoria and Rooty Hill in New South Wales. The billets are then used to manufacture products which are used in everything from bedding springs and agricultural fencing to the reinforcing in large scale projects, which in recent years has included the Sydney Metro and Brisbane’s Cross River Rail projects.

We’re very proud of the work we do to lead the way. We’ve been using electric arc furnace-based processes to manufacture steel as part of our operations for almost 40 years. As the steel industry pursues a decarbonised future, many steel manufacturers around the globe are either transitioning or preparing to transition to the same EAF-based process. And we’re continuing to look at ways, including the transition of our operations to renewable energy contracts, to further our own decarbonisation journey.

Thank you once again for your continued and ongoing support and patronage.

Stay safe,

Dak Patel

Interim CEO of InfraBuild