LIBERTY Steel US CEO Greg Jones shares his plans

Greg Jones was poised to move to the US to take up his new role as LIBERTY Steel US CEO just before COVID-19 hit, and while the transition into his new role hasn’t gone to plan, some things haven’t changed like his respect for the business and optimism for the future.

Watch a video of him talking about the current environment and his plans for the business below:

Transcript

What brought you to your new role leading Liberty Steel USA?

It’s been quite an exciting journey. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a bit of time in the US over the last 18 months, not knowing at the time that this role was going to present itself but when it did I had a bit of knowledge about the business.

And the thing that struck me about spending the time across there was how good the people are, how technically competent people are. You spend time in the operations, people know what they’re doing. There are strong markets, good customers, great products, so when the opportunity presented itself, it was actually quite an easy one from that point of view.

What will you be able to bring from your experience in the Australian business?

The US business and the Australian business are actually quite similar businesses, notwithstanding the different nuances within the market, but the bones of the businesses are very similar, right through the EAF manufacturing, rolling mills, upstream businesses, wire businesses, cut and bend businesses, mesh businesses.

So from that point of view the businesses are very similar and I’ve been lucky enough over the last 13 years to spend a bit of time in each of those businesses. So I’m hopeful that that experience will translate into the businesses in the US.

What is it about the US business that excites you?

Well it is a very special business actually. There’s a lot of things there that are really unique. We have a great brand in Red Brand, but we’re really, really good at what we do. So using that as a basis and pivoting off that and using what we have there, the knowledge that we have, and there’s an opportunity for us to bring these different parts together under one ownership banner and there’s a lot of synergies and benefits that will come through that.
But the best thing that we can do is to continue to support the business, both with the sustaining capital programs as well as growth programs that will help leverage the business into the future.

What are your key priorities?

The key priorities for us is to stabilise the business we have, support the business that we’ve got, make sure that it’s a sustainable business and, as I said before, it’s a great business. So there’s not a lot to do to do that, to just stabilise it and get it in a form that is very sustainable, much more sustainable than what we’ve had over the last 12 months and part of that is supporting the profit-making businesses, working with the businesses that haven’t been as profitable around making sure that we adjust the business models or invest appropriately to make sure that we turn them into profit-making businesses and then using that as a foundation to grow into some of the other markets and operations that we’ll hopefully be looking at.

How has COVID-19 impacted the business?

Yes, so COVID certainly wasn’t on the agenda taking on the role. From a personal point of view it’s obviously just impacted, not being able to travel to the US and take up the role permanently and it’s not ideal, but when you consider how other people have been impacted through COVID it’s manageable, and that probably leads to — probably the biggest learning is people are highly resilient in really difficult situations and we’ve seen that in our people and we’ve seen that in our customers and we’ve seen that in our markets and people’s ability to operate over Zoom or through calls and meetings on a virtual basis has probably been the biggest, I wouldn’t say surprise, but learning, and it really does get us to think about how we’re going to organise ourselves in the future now that we’ve learnt what we’ve learnt through this process.

The other aspect to it though is — I suppose there’s nothing like a crisis to bring out the best in people and it hasn’t been plain sailing by any means; different markets have been impacted in different ways but people’s ability to respond and respond quickly and respond appropriately in difficult circumstances has been quite extraordinary. So I’ve been really proud of the team in the way that they’ve responded through the crisis.

So, what’s next?

I’m really looking forward to getting to the US and meeting more of our people. As I said earlier, the time I have spent there I have been really impressed with the compassion and the competence and the willingness of our people and it would be great to get across and I don’t know what we’ll do in the future, shake hands or bump elbows or whatever it might look like, but looking forward to getting across and meeting more people face to face.