Andrew Liveris briefed on $45 billion Australian steel project

THE Territory man US President-elect Donald Trump named to head an American manufacturing council has been briefed on an ambitious $45 billion Australian steel project

Donald Trump named Territorian Andrew Liviris to head an American manufacturing council. PICTURE: Getty Images

THE Territory man US President-elect Donald Trump named to head an American manufacturing council was briefed on an ambitious $45 billion Australian steel project in September.

Darwin-born Andrew Liveris was approached through local intermediaries to discuss project Iron Boomerang which would deliver processed steel to the global market.

Iron Boomerang regional project director and former Territory politician Roger Steele made the connection through Mr Liveris’s Australian family members.

The project’s founder and managing director Shane Condon said Mr Liveris was specifically targeted because of his NT link.

“There is a very old Darwin network and it is very powerful,” Mr Condon said. “We thought of him as a world business leader and this is a very big project and we needed someone to think globally ... a free thinker like him. Behind Rupert Murdoch he is one of the top exports out of Australia.”

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The audacious Iron Boomerang plan is to build five steel mills in the Newman area of Western Australia and five steel mills in the Bowen Basin in Queensland. The mills would be connected by a 3300km railway shipping coking coal and iron ore meaning there would be no empty backload. The resources would then be processed and shipped globally as steel. Mr Condon said the project received positive feedback from Mr Liveris following the briefing.

“He didn’t discourage us,’ he said. “We are not going to leave him alone given his new role.”

Mr Liveris, who is the head of the Michigan-based Dow Chemical Company, was born in Darwin in 1954 and attended Darwin High School until he left for Brisbane in 1970, where he went on to eventually study chemical engineering. Mr Trump made the announcement during a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he introduced the 62-year-old, a dual US-Australian citizen, after he accepted the appointment. The panel to promote US manufacturing will be “tasked with finding ways to bring industry back to America”, Mr Trump said.

In a 2009 interview with the NT News, Mr Liveris said he was fiercely proud of his Territory roots.

‘‘I travel around the world and whenever people ask me where I’m from, I say, ‘Darwin, Australia’,” he said.