Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue is making hundreds of white collar workers across the globe redundant in a move he says will better enable the company to realise its green energy dreams.
Fortescue will make about 700 of its workers redundant, despite a healthy iron ore price. But Mr Forrest told The West Australian the job cuts are not an indicator the green energy side of the business is faltering.
“Job cuts are always heart-breaking, but in terms of our direct workforce it’s a bit over 4 per cent and it comes out of the streamlining and simplification of Fortescue to ‘One Fortescue’, not operating cost driven,” the executive chairman said.
“There’ll be ebbs and flows within the business . . . but Fortescue energy is the reason why we have a decarbonising Fortescue Metals.
“We are streamlining this place to ensure we are the go-to company by governments and companies around the world as the world’s most efficient mining company.”
Mr Forrest did not divulge if the jobs cuts were predominantly on the iron ore or green energy side of the business.
It is also not known exactly how many of the job cuts are WA specific. Mr Forrest said the wave of redundancies in WA was “proportional” to Fortescue’s global workforce, which is predominantly based in Perth, and the vast majority of the axed jobs are white collar roles.
The West Australian made queries to Fortescue three weeks ago about rumours of looming job cuts, somewhere in the range of 1000 people and largely centred on the Perth office. This assertion was rejected by a spokeswoman at the company at the time.
There were about 11,700 people working at Fortescue at the start of 2023.
Fortescue launched into the new world of ‘green energy’ four years ago and embarked on a huge recruitment drive to build out what was then Fortescue Future Industries to about 1100 staff.
There has been a laundry list of executive departures from Fortescue’s, particularly within its green energy arm, over the past 12 months.
Fortescue is now again reshuffling its leadership team. Apple Paget, who has been the acting chief financial officer for the past 11 months, will now move into the role permanently and also take over as company secretary.
Phil McKeiver will step down as company secretary but will remain as Fortescue’s general counsel.
Mr Forrest says Mr McKeiver also offered to resign as the company’s general counsel in “recent days”, but that offer was rejected by Fortescue’s chief executive Dino Otranto and Fortescue Energy chief Mark Hutchinson.
This came in the wake of court revelations that Fortescue was spying on the wives and children of former Fortescue scientists-turned-green hydrogen rivals.
“In line with the value we have of character, of humility, our (general counsel) did resign,” Mr Forrest said.
“And the CEOs elected to reject that resignation . . . they took the view Phil is an extremely good counsel.”
Among the flurry of moves chief corporate officer Shelley Robertson will be elevated to the vacant chief operating officer role.
Ms Robertson formerly ran Mineral Resources’ energy division.
Fortescue is in the process of shifting from its namesake head offices on Adelaide Terrace to a St Georges Terrace office once occupied by US oil and gas giant Chevron.
The move is set to be complete in the coming weeks.