Martin Feld  0:09  
Hello, and welcome to Voices of BlueScope, the podcast where we go behind the scenes of BlueScope to meet the people who create strength every day. I'm your host, Martin Feld' thank you for joining us. In this episode, we're featuring a one-on-one interview with Robin Davies, the new Chief Executive Australia and New Zealand at BlueScope. Robin took the time to share his personal background (growing up in Wales) and his experience as a longtime BlueScope employee. He also elaborated on what excites him about this expanded role—now and into the future—and how it is already enabling him to reconnect with many people across the company. Let's shift to the interview now.

Robin Davies  0:54  
Things probably start working on our family farm, in terms of maintaining and keeping large agricultural machinery going... is probably the early kind of childhood and teenage kind of memories, and then obviously subsequently studied mechanical engineering and then started a career in the steel industry in 1996. You know, you actually move into a more professional environment with lots of resources, much larger assets and you know, capability around you. You're very autonomous, let's say, when you're working in a family kind of business and have to be very resourceful in terms of getting things going—lots of very long hours and hard work hasn't kind of stopped probably in the steel industry, but yeah, typically got more people around you, higher consequences, and yeah, you got more support around you, I would say, is the key thing that characterises the change.

Martin Feld  1:45  
You mentioned the family farm there. What can you tell us about growing up on that farm and what was your exposure to some of the machinery or things that you saw there?

Robin Davies  1:52  
Look, I think it was part of a sort of contracting kind of business, which is a lot of harvesting for neighbouring kind of farms, so harvest kind of season's got a high-intensity time of the year; you've got to get a lot done in a short period of time, you know, the condition of the equipment is important, and the reliability and runtime was very important to the family business and lots of our neighbouring farmers were very dependent on you getting the job done on time. So, lots of these things kind of flow on into later life and the importance of people depending on, you know, equipment to perform and good service levels and getting a good job done for a customer. So, yeah, those things stood out for me early on and having to fix, and repair and maintain equipment in relatively intense environments.

Martin Feld  2:40  
So, it taught you some early interesting and useful lessons about performing on time and efficiently.

Robin Davies  2:47  
It did, yeah, it did.

Martin Feld  2:49  
Fantastic... now, your first day in the steel industry, what can you tell us about that? What was it like entering this industry that's carried on through your career?

Robin Davies  2:57  
Early memories of British Steel, you know, it's a... the steel industry has, you know, gone through its kind of commodity-cycle challenges all around the world, and you know, British Steel would have gone through more than its fair share of economic kind of cycles, changes to the operating footprint, plant closures, redundancies, and you know that probably showed up in the form of ageing kind of assets, businesses in various levels of let's say, 'distress' from a financial performance point of view—if I think, looking back. So, you know you had to be quite resourceful and driven to find ways of maintaining and operating kind of equipment. And yeah, like, but fond memories of learning from some great kind of engineering kind of people around me, some people that probably took me under their wing earlier on...

Robin Davies  3:50  
I probably turned up with a lot of enthusiasm and drive and willingness to learn. I was probably a complete nightmare in lots of ways for lots of people I worked for at the time, but you know, they did spend time and show lots of patience to impart their knowledge on me. You know, I was able to get involved in more and more complex and challenging situations as it, as it went forward. So, the more, the more I took on, the more the people around me put me in control of, and it was a great early kind of learning, kind of part of my sort of career, so yeah, really fond memories, very intense... lots of long days and nights. And you know, my partner, who's now my wife, probably didn't see a lot of me in those days before having children, so I'd spend long days working in the steelworks, but look, you know, really fond memories of those early, early days.

Martin Feld  4:43  
Now, British Steel, that's quite some time ago in the globetrotting of your career. So, what was the next step from British Steel? Where did your travels and your roles take you?

Robin Davies  4:53  
So, I think obviously British Steel became 'Corus' as it sort of joined with Hoogovens, the Dutch steel-making business, and then was acquired by Tata Steel in 2008, so that was the kind of the transition of that organisation, which was, which was quite significant. And then I came to, in 2008, travelled to be the maintenance superintendent (or asset manager) for the steel-making facility in New Zealand Steel. I did a motor-home tour with my family around the North and South Island of New Zealand, had a couple of job interviews, one being with BlueScope, and was appointed as the slab-making maintenance superintendent in January 2008. So, that was my first sort of step into working for BlueScope, and yeah, obviously, then many different roles within New Zealand Steel, Pacific Steel, North Star and then back to New Zealand Steel, then in 2020. So, yeah...

Martin Feld  5:52  
Moving to New Zealand, what were the things that stood out to you and what was maybe different about working in that industrial setting from where you had come from in British Steel? What was different about being in New Zealand?

Robin Davies  6:02  
Look, from a, from a cultural-alignment point of view, New Zealand's a pretty easy country to kind of slot into from a work and sort of lifestyle-culture point of view. Yeah, there were sort of tinges of old British Steel that, you know, seemed to kind of permeate the organisation. You can imagine the steel industry in New Zealand, to a large extent, was set up by lots of expat British people that came and helped them build the steelworks here back in the '60s, so, it has got a, you know, connections back to, let's say, the UK in lots of kind of ways. Yeah, there are some similarities from the older British Steel kind of model, let's say, early on, but I think as time goes on, businesses evolve, and again, I would probably suggest that the business in New Zealand is very different to the one I turned up in, sort of 18 or so years ago. I think businesses and culture has to evolve to stay competitive and stay relevant, otherwise you're kind of left behind pretty, pretty quickly, so...

Martin Feld  7:05  
Interestingly, about New Zealand as well, and we'll get to things, I suppose, later on in this interview—before we finish about the electric arc furnace that's been developed there, which is very exciting for New Zealand Steel, and even globally across the whole business—but what interested you about the unique nature of the iron sands and the business there? I mean, were you surprised by what you saw in how they actually create steel?

Robin Davies  7:27  
Yeah, look, I think from, obviously I turned up working in the steel-making facility, which was... so, the steel-making part of New Zealand Steel (and downstream from there) is fairly typical of sort of global steel-making. The, you know, the basic-oxygen kind of process is very similar to how New Zealand Steel does that, but the iron-making kind of process, as you point out, is still probably unique in the world. It's based on having some very specific, local raw materials in the form of iron sand and thermal coal and a process that was developed by the sort of the pioneers of this business back in the '60s to use domestic raw materials, which were pretty cheap back in those days, and has meant that that business has (the iron-making part of the operation has) been able to maintain a very low-cost kind of DRI process, as we refer to it today, for many years. So, it's certainly been a strategic asset. It's an asset that is very energy-intensive and maintenance-intensive comparatively to sort of the blast-furnace or the electric-arc-furnace process, so, there are some trade-offs. I have deep admiration for the people that thought up and built and commissioned our existing iron-making process; it would have taken a huge amount of patience and resilience to get that going, and it's still quite a challenging process today (after 40 years) to maintain and run that process, yep.

Martin Feld  8:54  
And of course, we recently had the big 60th anniversary of New Zealand Steel last year, as of this recording, which was very exciting, and a great time to reflect on a lot of the things that make that business very interesting. What did that mean to you to be in New Zealand for this major anniversary?

Robin Davies  9:10  
These milestones are very significant, and in steel-making terms, you know, 60 years is relatively, you know, short, if you think about it, the global kind of aspects of that, but in terms of a relatively young country, 60 years was very important, you know, to the development of New Zealand's economy... back in those days, when they were, you know, they were think-big projects, where, you know, the government were intent on building its own sort of capability to help support a growing economy. You know, it built an aluminium smelter, an oil refinery, a steel... a steelworks. So, there were some very strong intentions from the government of those days, and you know, like I say, the people who developed and built the steel-making process here, a small-scale steel-making industry in a small country has really taken some effort. Yeah, look, it's great to be part of the 60-year milestone, and I guess at the same time be contemplating what the future shape of the business looks like. You know, I think, always, if you're standing still, you've got to be very careful that you're not going backwards. And I think we needed to make a change in part to the iron- and steel-making kind of process, which, where the electric-arc-furnace opportunities come from, and it sees us set up a sustainable steel-making future for the New Zealand business.

Martin Feld  10:28  
You mentioned before, North Star, in your history, which also, as we record in 2026 is celebrating its 30th anniversary, I recall, which is, which is fantastic. Congratulations to North Star! How did you end up at North Star and what can you tell us about your time there? What were the interesting things that you learnt and the challenges there?

Robin Davies  10:47  
Look, I was running a P&L part of New Zealand Steel for Pacific Steel. When we acquired Pacific Steel, I was the general manager of that business and I guess at the time I was keen to pursue, you know, larger P&L roles within the BlueScope organisation, and you know, I was very fortunate to be asked to go and be the president of the North Star business, you know, with almost a unique kind of business model and culture. It started as a joint venture, as you know, with BHP and Cargill, set up, you know, in the mid 90s, and people like John Nowlan and others were heavily involved in the building of that kind of business, and again, huge admiration for the people that sort of thought about the business model, and built that business and went through very difficult early years to kind of get going. But they are, you know, a remarkable group of people who run that business in the way that they do, like again, you just get this appreciation of the scale of the market, the scale of the industry.

Robin Davies  11:45  
There's some really significant contrast from, you know, I came from the UK, which is a reasonably large steel industry with all that comes with that, and then coming to New Zealand, it's a much smaller country with a much smaller footprint, and then back to a, you know, the US was 100-million-tonne steel market with vast sort of manufacturing kind of businesses, you know, still a very active automotive industry, which is where, you know, where and why North Star was built, essentially just south of the Detroit car-manufacturing operations and significant amount of scrap available in that kind of region. And the team thought carefully about the business model and the location, and to this day, 30 years on, is still absolutely the right place to have that electric-arc-furnace business, and as you know, we've gone on to expand that asset based on a successful business model, and it obviously benefits from, you know, the regulatory supportive nature of the US, but again, what the team have done there to expand that asset and get it to the throughput levels that they have is a real credit to them.

Robin Davies  12:53  
Obviously, it's the North Star business, as we know, is a very strong contributor to the overall profitability of BlueScope. So, it's a really, really successful business, and yeah, I was, you know, honoured to be working there for the, for the three years. A great group of people to work with, just very straightforward, hard-working kind of people who were a pleasure to work with, actually... so it was, yeah, fond memories in that working sense...

Martin Feld  13:18  
That's great to hear. And personally speaking, what was it like to move your family to the United States, in what is a very different area from what you would have been experiencing in New Zealand?

Robin Davies  13:28  
It is a very different area. I guess, probably my family have, you know, used a little bit of moving in the sense of we moved to New Zealand when my eldest two sons were one and three, not that they remember too much about that, but you know, then moving them to live in Toledo, Ohio, you know, when they were, when they were relatively young, they thrived living there, learnt how to play American football and ice hockey, and all of those things, they probably wouldn't have done living in this part of the world, and experienced substantial amounts of snow and ice, which also, they wouldn't have experienced too much in New Zealand. But look, they made, you know, great friends who they, they're still in contact with and it is just a very different sort of lifestyle, which I think, you know, for anybody, you know, moving around the world, just gives you new perspectives and makes you adaptable to all sorts of situations, so, as you say, could not be a more different place to go and live and work, from, say, rural New Zealand to the industrial heartland of the US. I have fond, very fond memories of living and working in Ohio.

Martin Feld  14:31  
Yeah, and you bring those experiences with you and you've brought that experience back to New Zealand. What was the path from having moved to the US and all those great experiences that you mentioned with the great people there, to returning to New Zealand and assuming the leadership position there?

Robin Davies  14:46  
Yeah, look, I think I actually came back from North Star, it was time for me to come back to New Zealand at the time, you know, to sort of see some of my family through their sort of schooling years, let's say, in one in one place, keep them in one place, at the same time for a little while. And yeah, so I came back into the sales-and-marketing role in New Zealand Steel for a little while, so that was a little bit of a step out from, you know, largely P&L and manufacturing sort of roles, so you know, going into the pure sales-and-marketing function, I learnt a lot during that period, and then I was obviously able to take up the chief-executive role, then a couple of years later, when I took over from Gretta, when she went into the climate-change-and-sustainability role.

Robin Davies  15:28  
So, I've been very fortunate to have worked in different parts of the world, in different markets, and operate with different steel technologies and regulatory environments, and you do, you learn a lot from that, and hopefully then you can apply that to each new situation that you come across, whether that's, you know, in the US, in New Zealand, you know, it turns out that the electric-arc-furnace technology was was an appropriate transition for this business, so, you know it certainly suited the situation: an opportunity to decarbonise.

Robin Davies  15:59  
You know, having worked in the sort of downstream paths of markets in the UK and New Zealand, and then, there are many of those experiences, and sort of that are relevant in the, in the Australian context, you know, having spent some time over with the ASP team over the last couple of months, getting myself up the curve and spending some time in the downstream business and seeing what the, you know, channels to market and products that we kind of develop there, it turns out that I've got experience of some of that from my time in the UK, when I ran a downstream business for... for Corus, you know, roll-forming, and decking and those kind of things. So, it turns out that's quite relevant to what we do in ASP. So, after just about 30 years of working in the steel supply chains, and you know, upstream and downstream in different parts of the world, you inevitably tick up experiences then that turn out to be relevant into the new job, so whilst I certainly wouldn't claim to be across all of what I need to be for the ASP role, it turns out there's quite a bit, sort of, that's in that 'experience tool-bag', if you want to put it that way, that that's very helpful for that, for the new role, so...

Martin Feld  16:00  
Wonderful, and I'm glad you brought up the ASP (or Australian Steel Products) element of this, because we are speaking about your expanded role across both New Zealand and Australia. Is there something that excites you the most about having this massive extra element to the role?

Robin Davies  16:46  
Yeah, look, it's, it's hugely exciting to be part of, you know, what really has been the core BlueScope for, you know, since its inception. So, being part of the historic business that it is, is exciting in of itself. I follow in the footsteps of some very illustrious sort of predecessors. You know, there's huge depth of capability within the business across all of the, all of the functions, the manufacturing business, and the downstream aspects of it. So, you know, the channels to market, the fact that we are as integrated as we are in the Australian steel sector is very exciting, you know, and I think the steel industry in Australia is at a, you know, a little bit of a transition kind of point, where there's broader industry opportunities that are in play that I think BlueScope can certainly play a larger role in as well, you know, in addition to the existing kind of footprint, potentially.

Robin Davies  18:16  
And I think it's got great sort of channels to market, customers, the BBC business is particularly exciting in terms of how it sort of creates those sort of solutions for the market, and I guess we've got our distribution channels as well as a very capable manufacturing kind of footprint. And then equally it has very challenging situations around energy, you know, availability of natural gas, in particular, and, you know, the sort of safeguard mechanism that challenges us from an emissions-reduction point of view (long term). So, there's some really exciting opportunities on one hand and some quite challenging topics to kind of navigate and negotiate over, over the coming years, so, you know, playing a part in all of that is exciting and challenging in an equal, equal path, probably.

Martin Feld  19:10  
Thank you so much. That's given such a great, comprehensive view, not only of the businesses that you're running and dealing with, but also how you approach things personally. As we wrap up this interview, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you'd like to cover? Anything that you're excited about in the future or what it means to work with the business? Anything personally you'd like to mention?

Robin Davies  19:27  
Oh, look, I'm really excited to work with the Australian lead team and their team members. There's a huge capability there, so I'm excited, from, you know, by learning from them and kind of helping us kind of develop as a team overall. It is interesting: after a reasonable amount of time in BlueScope, you end up developing a reasonably kind of strong network from just working on different projects with people; so, it is interesting as I kind of contemplate starting a new role, I'm actually reconnecting with numbers of people that I've worked with over the time. And, I worked with Dave Scott in New Zealand, I've worked with Chris Page for in New Zealand, I've worked with Mark Scicluna, you know, on the North Star expansion, when we were both in different roles at the time. And just to mention a few, obviously the manufacturing team I'm fairly familiar with, so it is, it's great to see how those networks developed over many years, then help you kind of get going more quickly than you otherwise would, so, I think, you know, certainly encourage everybody to sort of foster their kind of business kind of networks, because they really sort of help later on in your career. So, yeah, I think that's, that's something that struck me in the last month or two.

Martin Feld  20:37  
Well, Robin, thank you so much for sparing the time to speak with us today on Voices of BlueScope. I know that many people know you already, but for those who don't, or maybe within Australia, or around the world who listen to this show, I think it's a great opportunity for employees and external audiences alike to get to know you in this role.

Robin Davies  20:52  
Oh, that's great, Martin. It's been great to take part in this and yeah, looking forward to kind of getting to meet people—as many as I can, quickly as I can. So, it's exciting times!

Martin Feld  21:06  
We hope that you enjoyed our interview with Robin, and we appreciate the time that he gave to this podcast. To learn more about the topics that were discussed, view the show notes for this episode in your browser or podcast app. For example, you'll find a link to a recent project-update video on TVBlueScope that shows progress at the New Zealand Steel electric arc furnace, featuring narration by Robin Davies and Tania Archibald. Thank you for listening to the Voices of BlueScope podcast. Until next time!