Ex-BHP executive Jimmy Wilson to lead grain co-op CBH

West Australian co-operative CBH has appointed former BHP Billiton iron ore chief Jimmy Wilson as its new head.

Former BHP Billiton iron ore chief Jimmy Wilson

Australia’s largest agricultural company and biggest grain exporter, the $3 billion unlisted West Australian co-operative CBH, has appointed former BHP Billiton iron ore chief Jimmy Wilson as its new head.

Mr Wilson, who will take the helm of the export-focused CBH Group in October, is expected to make reducing the cost of transporting grain from WA’s sprawling wheat belt to port by train his first priority.

Freight, storage and port charges in Australia for grain, while lowest in Western Australia, are more than $60-$75 a tonne — making supply chain costs the single largest cost item for grain producers who sell their wheat for around $300 a tonne — yet are significantly lower for Pilbara iron ore exports where Mr Wilson has deep experience.

Mr Wilson is also tipped to focus on re-energising and modernising the corporate structure of giant CBH, which early last year became the focus of a quasi-takeover battle by a renegade group of its own disgruntled growers who pushed for the co-operative to be part-sold to rival Graincorp and listed on the ASX, releasing value to growers.

Ironically, it is understood Mr Wilson first became acquainted with the CBH at that time, as he was approached by the rebel ringleaders of the Australian Grains Champion challenge to see whether he was interested in becoming CEO of any newly listed vehicle if the corporatisation bid was successful.

At the time, Mr Wilson had just departed BHP’s top ranks — where he had achieved big productivity gains while expanding the WA iron ore business — after coal boss Mike Henry was appointed to run Australian mining.

The South African-born Mr Wilson was also the most senior BHP representative on the board of BHP’s Samarco iron ore joint venture in Brazil when its tailings dam burst in November 2015 killing 19 people and causing widespread environmental damage. He is one of 22 people (including eight former and current BHP staff) charged last year with “qualified homicide”, the Brazilian equivalent of manslaughter, over the disaster.

The CBH co-operative — owned by the state’s 4200 grain growers via a nominal $2 shareholding each — owns dozens of silos, a state-of-the-art rail fleet, four export ports and a 50 per cent stake in the Interflour flour milling business in Indonesia, Vietnam, The Philippines, Malaysia and Turkey.

It transports, stores, markets and ships 90 per cent of WA’s 15 million tonne grain harvest and is Australia’s biggest wheat exporter.

CBH chairman and grain grower Wally Newman said CBH had done its due diligence and was comfortable with Mr Wilson’s involvement with the Samarco case.

BHP said last November it would “fully support the defence of each of the individuals indicted”.

The case is unlikely to come to court quickly.

“We’re very comfortable with BHP’s position on that subject; they say (the charges) are unfounded (and) we know that wherever Jimmy has worked, he has a reputation for being strong on safety,” Mr Newman said yesterday.

“We were privileged to get him. With the $750 million expansion in our network .... he was a very obvious fit.”

Mr Wilson has taken a considerable pay cut from his previous iron job, where his annual remuneration exceeded $4m.

The salary of chief executive Andy Crane, who signalled his slow departure from CBH early this year after apparently losing the support of its board, is less than $1m.

Mr Newman said that with CBH operating as a co-operative, the focus now is on reducing costs for its growers.

“We’re competing with the Russians, the Ukraine (on world grain export markets); it’s highly competitive out there and we’ll never exceed their crop production, so we just have to do it smarter,” Mr Newman said.

“So we need someone like Jimmy to lead that; he’s got an eye for how we can do it all better without spending a lot of money — fine tuning the business and getting even more out of it.”