How "highly credible" is corporate ownership of the Whyalla Steelworks?
Written by: Ned K. on 22 February 2025
(above: Malinauskas and Whyalla Steelworks workers Source: InDaily)
With the Whyalla Steelworks in administration, large corporations are circling to see how much profit they are likely to make if they successfully bid to buy the Whyalla Steelworks. Corporations from Germany, South Korea, India along with Australian-based BlueScope are reported to be interested in buying and operating the steelworks.
BlueScope is being promoted by SA Premier Malinauskas. In the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper on 21/2/2025, Malinauskas is quoted as follows:
"There is no secret about the fact that I've been talking, along with other members of our team, in the state government, to a range of potential owners, and BlueScope is only one of them. But let me say this, BlueScope a HIGHLY CREDIBLE (writer's emphasis) Australian publicly - listed company and I look forward to news emerging in coming days and weeks about how our relationship with BlueScope in Whyalla might be deeper again."
Malinauskas is a popular leader among the local capitalists and big event-based capitalists in SA with his brand of "bread and circuses" capitalism and his general confidence and belief in capitalism.
To him, GFG Alliance was just a rotten tomato in a good "crop" of big businesses and BlueScope is not only a ripe tomato in the crop, but "highly credible"!
BlueScope's "Highly Credible" Record?
A closer look at the history of BlueScope makes the highly credible label an illusion.
•BHP-Billiton owned Whyalla steel works and in July 2002 it split off its steel assets creating BHP Steel.
•17 November 2003 BHP Steel re-named BlueScope, perhaps a marketing ploy as BHP-Billiton was known as ruthless exploiter of workers across its international operations
•2004 BlueScope merged with US corporation Butler Manufacturing which had twelve steel manufacturing plants in the USA, Mexico and China at the time.
•October 2011 BlueScope, which owned Port Kembla Steelworks, closed its No 6 Blast Furnace reducing production capacity by 50%!
•In 2012 BlueScope set up a new coated steel plant in the large industrial area of east India, Jamshedpur.
•In 2019 BlueScope expanded its capital investment in the USA by $1 billion
•In August 2019 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) started a civil case against BlueScope and its then CEO Jason Ellis for engaging in "cartel conduct"
•In December 2022 the Federal Court of Australia found BlueScope and its CEO guilty of attempting to induce 8 steel distribution companies in Australia and an overseas manufacturer to enter agreements to fix and/or raise the level of pricing for flat steel products
•In July 2020 BlueScope was fined $30,000 by SW Environment Protection Authority for failing to comply with dioxin air emission limits six times over two months of March and April.
•BlueScope current Managing Director is quoted in the Adelaide Advertiser on Saturday on 21/2/2025 as saying BlueScope was a "net beneficiary" of US tariffs on imported steel and 45% of BlueScope" earnings" came from its US steel plants. He added that at the moment BlueScope is in the "early stages of a $200 million cost-cutting blitz to reap returns" (returns = profits)
•At the same time, Albanese is on the phone to Trump to plead for exemption on tariffs on steel imported from Australia!
•BlueScope US plants produce 3 million tonnes of steel a year. BlueScope exports 200,000- 300,000 tonnes of steel to the USA
Other corporations competing with BlueScope to make profits from the Whyalla Steelworks will no doubt have their own histories in their relentless search for profits or they call them "earnings".
The only short-term solution to benefit the Whyalla community and Australian people as a whole is for the steelworks to be a government owned entity. The only longer-term solution is for major industries and services to be owned and run by the people in an independent, socialist Australia.
