82. Colorbond

In previous posts I have written a little about my work at John Lysaght Australia (JLA), a company I was employed by from 1963 to 1980. I outlined the company’s history from its early days in England, its role in World War II and the rapid development of the Port Kembla factories after the war.   

In this post I will try to explain a little more about JLA’s further development, starting with “Colorbond”, which became one of its most popular steel products. I think that most Australians would be familiar with the name, as it’s advertised frequently on TV.

Almost half of the new homes built in Australia today have Colorbond roofs and, Colorbond is also used for water tanks, fencing, sheds, car ports, feature walls and for many other things. It was first produced in Port Kembla when I was still working there.

In post 77 (“John Lysaght Australia”) I mentioned that Galvanised Iron (which is steel protected by a zinc coating), was a product that was, and still is, ideally suited to Australia’s harsh conditions. It made Lysaght a household name, being widely used throughout the country. To further improve the appearance of the steel on sheds, fences, water tanks and other products, people often added coats of paint, in different colours, to the surfaces, but this was a repetitive and labour-intensive process.

In the 1950s, a new way of bonding paint to the zinc coating of galvanised iron was developed in the USA, which offered the possibility of producing a painted steel product in a manufacturing environment. After much further research, JLA managed to use this new technology and decided to build the first coil painting line in Australia, in Port Kembla. I remember having been part of the team involved in preparing the economic justification for it, and the proposal for the significant capital expenditure that would be involved.

As it states in some of the publicity material: “The new line was the talk of the steel industry, and its new product soon became a firm favourite in the building industry and JLA became a world leader in the technology and manufacture of it.” Several new coil painting lines have since been built in Port Kembla and elsewhere in Australia, including in Queensland. Over the years, the colour range has also expanded from 6 colours to 22 colours.

The new painting lines were not the only new facilities for JLA in the 1970s. A huge Hot Strip Mill was commissioned in 1978. It was the first in the world to use the revolutionary hot coil box for hot coiling the 25mm thick transfer bar, before hot tandem rolling. Know-how relating to this operation was transferred to other steel companies outside Australia.

At the time when I was still working there, Port Kembla was growing rapidly. It was impressive to see it all taking shape and it took visionary managers, in addition to scientists, metallurgists, engineers and other professionals, as well as clever young people and experienced tradesmen, to achieve this transformation.

At the same time as Port Kembla was growing and the older Newcastle factories were closing, a complete new modern factory was being built at Westernport, in Victoria. Most of the planning work for this was done by JLA’s own surveyors, engineers, metallurgists and accountants, who were mainly based in Port Kembla.  

Building a new factory in Victoria meant frequent travel between the two locations. To do this trip by scheduled airline would have meant travelling from Port Kembla to Sydney airport by car, then catching a flight to Melbourne and then embarking on a long car trip from Melbourne airport to the worksite at Westernport. To reduce the travel time involved, we began to use a very small plane that flew from a local airstrip near Port Kembla to another local airstrip near the Westernport site. Although this was a lot quicker, it did not always feel very safe, and this light plane service was referred to by some of us as the “Kamikaze” flight.

Of great interest to me were the 2 big “roll on-roll off” ships, the “Lysaght Endeavour” and the “Lysaght Enterprise”, which were built in 1973 for ANL (Australian National Line) to carry huge coils of steel, each coil weighing up to 10 tonnes. I had hoped to have the opportunity to go on board one of these ships but never managed to do so.

When I was eventually transferred from Port Kembla to the company’s head office in Sydney, my workload changed to such an extent that it negatively impacted my personal life, which resulted in significant consequences for my family and for me. I became far too busy, and, with the benefit of hindsight, I should have set more boundaries and given more priority to my young family.

The main reason that my workload was so heavy was the fact that the company had a complex financial structure. Apart from the main factories, there were steel service centres throughout Australia, as well as offices in each State. The company also had factories and service centres in the USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and several Pacific countries.

Also, during and after the time that I was employed by JLA, there were several changes in its structure. GKN, an English company, was the main shareholder when I joined in 1963, but in 1970 BHP acquired 50%, and in 1979, 100%, of JLA. All these changes meant additional work for me. I was appointed General Manager Finance, which was a challenging position at a time when the company was going through major ownership changes.

I remember that in July 1973 I had to travel to San Francisco with our Chairman and our Managing Director, for a meeting with Lord Brookes, the Chairman of GKN, and Sir Ian McLennan, the Chairman of BHP, to discuss the future of our company. In San Francisco, we stayed in the beautiful Fairmont Hotel for these meetings, but I was there mainly “on standby”, in case questions were raised by the board members.

Later in the same year, there was another, similar meeting between BHP and GKN, which took place in England, this time. I travelled there with the Chief Financial Officer of BHP, and we spent a day together in Bangkok and another in Copenhagen on our way to London, where we stayed in the Montcalm Hotel for 5 nights. The difference with this second meeting in London was that I was invited to the official dinner, at the conclusion of the talks, which was hosted by Lord Brookes. This dinner was the most formal dinner I had ever attended or will ever attend again. Everyone was dressed in black-tie evening clothes. We had earlier been driven, by Rolls Royce, to a formal tailor and hire shop in central London and had been measured for the clothes we were to wear. Two days later everything (the long jackets, striped pants, shirts and bow tie) was delivered to our rooms in the hotel. Looking in the mirror, I had hardly recognised myself. On the night itself, we were picked up by Rolls Royce again and driven to what I think was one of the famous livery halls in London.

Another thing worth mentioning was that, as I was legally the “Principal Accounting Officer”, I had to sign the company’s published Annual Report, which was a glossy, printed brochure of more than 30 pages. These reports may be of interest to some of the accountants among my readers, so I have retained the 1977 and 1978 publications in my files. The 1978 report was referred to in the Australian financial press as an “exemplary annual report”. The Sydney Morning Herald published a long review, on 8 June 1978, a copy of which I have also retained.

I left JLA in 1980, after having been approached, via Price Waterhouse, by an American company (registered on the New York Stock Exchange), for the position of Finance Director, based in Sydney. I accepted this position because I feared that, if I stayed with JLA, I would be transferred to BHP’s head office in Melbourne, which Sue and I had wanted to avoid.

In 2002 BHP was split into two separate entities, BHP Billiton and Bluescope Steel. JLA became “Bluescope Lysaght” and was, in 2013, further rebranded as “Lysaght”.

I know that I have perhaps given too much detail about my life as an accountant in my early years in Australia, but I have done so because those 17 years were a big part (I would call it a “chunk”) of my working life.  

I’m now just an old man who loves meeting his friends on the Sandgate waterfront, where we sometimes talk about the old days and about our past experiences. So, in my 90^th year, I hope that my readers will forgive me if I do, sometimes, elaborate a little too much.

O.P.

P.S. On Sunday morning, 12 October 2025, a new blog post will be published with the title: “James Davis – The Voyage”.