Andy Greig charts second act after masterminding Bechtel projects
Former Bechtel boss Andy Greig has chosen to look for emerging mining success after years of building the industry’s biggest projects.
US President Donald Trump’s office hosts a bust of former British prime minister Winston Churchill, the infamous Diet Coke button and, improbably, a five billion-year-old fossil from the Pacific Ocean floor.
The nickel, cobalt, and manganese nodule found its way into the Oval Office after a pitch by The Metals Company, an ambitious deep sea miner helmed by Queensland executive Gerard Barron.
It hit Trump’s sweet spot, with the President signing an executive order to fast-track US critical minerals exploration in international waters and putting the US toe-to-toe with China as an emerging mining battleground.
Watching this unfold in Brisbane was Andy Greig, who stepped down as Bechtel’s global mining boss a decade ago and has forged his own impressive path since.
After years dealing with blockbuster commodities such as iron ore and copper, Greig was drawn to critical minerals and the challenges of deep sea mining as the next frontier of mining.
He joined The Metals Company board in October 2022, and is also chairman and largest shareholder in tin and critical minerals miner Elementos.
“One of the things that really surprises me is that none of the major terrestrial mining companies have engaged in this yet,” Greig says, referring to seabed mining.
“If you’re producing nickel or cobalt or copper or manganese, we’re going to do it with a much smaller environmental footprint.
“We’re going to do it without disrupting rainforests. We’re going to do it without disrupting communities, and we’re going to do it at a much lower cost than current production.”
While scraping the ocean floor for minerals has attracted the ire of environmental groups, it’s a bet Greig is happy to take.
“Gerard has been plugging away at developing this industry for a decade and I have to say having a scrappy Queenslander at the front end of a brand new industry is pretty neat,” he says.
“Likewise to have Elementos as a real small start-up with a handful of staff on the ASX living in Brisbane, which could produce 10 or 15 per cent of Europe’s tin needs is special. It’s a good feeling.”
Greig has pulled off a few coups in his own career. Close to home, the most visible piece of infrastructure came through Bechtel’s construction of all three LNG export plants built by Shell, Origin Energy and Santos in Queensland 15 years ago.
Plenty have questioned the wisdom of building three rival gas facilities side by side, but the development from scratch of a major new export industry from the state still ranks as one of his proudest achievements.
“That was a big bet,” he says. “Three lump sum contracts to build $30-odd billion worth of infrastructure. I look back at it with pride: we trained thousands of people, paid a good wage and everyone was safe.”
And what of the claims the LNG plants have sucked away too much gas from the domestic market?
“Some people back then said there should be one plant or three,” he says. “Well, again, that’s not a matter for us. If it’s one plant, we’ll build it. If it’s three plants, we’ll build it. And we did.”
After 35 years at Bechtel, Greig was keen to keep his eye on the mining industry but he’s also established an impressive second innings in the tech start-up space.
He set up ACAC Innovation in 2015, when he retired from the engineering giant, after identifying a gap in available capital for very early-stage start-ups. ACAC has invested in more than 40 start-ups to date with the company now run by his son, Bryce, a former litigation lawyer and construction contracts manager.
Greig clearly gets a kick out of backing smaller-scale projects, many of which have been dreamt up from innovation hubs in Queensland. He points to the Healthcare Logic software business, founded out of the Gold Coast, and online marketplace Muval, established in Brisbane.
“My research discovered that right at the very front end where it was just people working out of the garage, there really wasn’t a lot of funding available. So I committed $10m to setting up a fund,” he says.
ACAC, with Greig still a director, has invested roughly $25m – “somewhat over budget”, he quips – with the typical investment between $100,000 and $1m for stakes that range from 10 to 30 per cent.
“We help the founders with advice and somewhere to work. And then they either fail or succeed, and off they go.”
The business is a significant departure from Greig’s former life overseeing some of the world’s biggest infrastructure projects. But spending time with good ideas and smart innovations has proved a fruitful combination.
“It gives you a real balance, because you’re just helping so many young people. And then from an economic perspective, these 40-odd companies created hundreds of jobs.
“They’re all in Australia, most of them in Queensland. And it’s just the feedback system. For me, it’s fantastic.”
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