Banlaw re-shaping the fuel game

Banlaw is growing rapidly. In the last year, turnover jumped 59% from $13m to $22m. Driving growth is the company’s patented FuelTrack system for monitoring, reconciliation and reporting of fuel use. Its value to clients centres on inventory control of costly fluids.

By offering both hardware and software, Banlaw has a whole-ofbusiness approach to fuel management for mine sites. “We call it from buyer to burn,” Clifton said.

“The real strategic plan here has been to help large diesel users to manage all their fuel inventories. To do that, we have designed a fuel monitoring system that allows [clients] to reconcile all their fuel from the moment it gets on site to the moment that they use it.

“Some mine sites don’t even know what their reconciliation is, they are too busy on production. When we put our system in, it fixes their problems,” Clifton explained. His hunch about fuel costs, which emboldened him to buy Banlaw, was based on his experience in fuel distribution.

“My background is in the oil industry. I had fuel distributions for Shell in Sydney and the Hunter. We used to supply the mines and see the waste and the lack of inventory control. I knew one day that they were going to have issues around this, because fuel is getting more expensive. So we set about designing systems to help them manage it.”

Escalating prices means reducing fuel wastage is a hot topic for heavy users. Banlaw certainly is in the right place at the right time. It now has 72 employees as well as distributors and resellers in 15 countries across all continents.

Manufacturing of refuelling hardware is still done at its head office in Newcastle. Clifton said Banlaw is only now starting to publicise its product and that previous expansion grew from word of mouth.

Until this year, Banlaw has “invested everything we have made back into research and design.” The company has six research and design staff and four software designers. Its product-oriented approach is just starting to pay off now.

Perhaps the most notable goal Banlaw has kicked so far is to supply Barrick Gold in North America, Australia and the Pacific region. It supplies Vale in Mozambique and Fortescue Metals Group in a number of locations. It also counts as customers a range of port, fleet and rail operators including Irish Rail, QR National, Pacific National and DP World.

“We are now seeing the boards of global mining companies wanting to know what the company is doing about managing their second largest cost, fuel and oil and all their hydrocarbons,” Clifton said. And despite recently initiating marketing activities, Clifton said “it is a lot easier to sell our system overseas than it is here.”

Just as the AJM was going to press, Banlaw announced a shake up to its management team. Jeff Barker, whose Singapore-based company Orianna holds a 40% stake in Banlaw, took over the chief executive role from Bill Clifton, who moved to managing director of business development.

Contact: www.banlaw.com