streeter

At 69, Streeter takes a road less travelled

ANDREW BURRELL THE AUSTRALIAN NOVEMBER 23, 2013 12:00AM

Terry Streeter, at home at City Beach in Perth, says he has always been a risk-taker, prepared to take a gamble if he sees genuine value.
TERRY Streeter made his first fortune by getting out of bed at 2am each day to sell fruit and vegetables before returning to his real love -- mining -- and hitting the jackpot through the $3.1 billion sale of Jubilee Mines in 2007.

The publicity-shy Streeter, one of the great stalwart characters of Perth's mining scene, has since become more diversified than perhaps any other individual Australian resources investor, with interests in nickel, iron ore and coal spread across Western Australia, Queensland, Brazil and Africa.

But this week marked the end of an era for Streeter, who retired as chairman of Perth-based nickel miner Western Areas after 13 years at the helm.

After building the company from its original $5 million float in 2000 into a successful producer with two high-grade nickel mines and a market value of $435m, Streeter announced he was stepping down to focus on the emerging end of the mining game, including his growing overseas interests.

The Yorkshire native, however, won't be selling his 12 per cent stake in Western Areas -- worth a handy $53m -- and insists he won't be deserting Australia.

That's because one of his many speculative plays -- a move into the Queensland coal sector -- is helping to keep the 69-year-old particularly energised, averting any thoughts of retirement. Streeter's Fox Resources last year bought 17 coking coal tenements from US mining giant Cliffs Natural Resources, some of which neighbour those being explored with success in recent months by billionaire Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting and listed explorer International Coal.

The tenements cover more than 10,000sq km across the Galilee, Styx, Bowen and Maryborough basins, and mark the first time Streeter, who owns almost 20 per cent of Fox and chairs the Perth-based company, has invested in coal. "I'm a risk taker," Streeter tells The Weekend Australian in a rare interview about his life and career.

"If I see some value, I'll take a risk where I think a lot of people won't."

Streeter is convinced that demand from Chinese steel mills for coking coal will remain strong for many years.

And with most of Fox's coal tenements close to the regional centre of Bundaberg, he is confident that a common stumbling block for many miners -- a lack of access to key infrastructure -- won't be a problem.

"The infrastructure and the availability of getting into these particular drilling areas is easy," he says.

"It's only about 15 minutes up the road from Bundaberg. We hired a car there from the airport and we drove around the particular area plotting out the drill program, and we got back to Bundaberg and we filled the car back up -- it was less than $10 worth of petrol."

Yet Streeter is clearly frustrated that the local investment community is reluctant to back the mining industry, even after the election of Abbott government brought greater political certainty.

"We've got over (the global financial crisis) and we've got over the political situation here, but it's still not registering," he says. "You can put out good results and you still don't get an awful lot for it. And to IPO anything at the moment, I think, is just a disaster.

"It's unfortunate because I think the Australian investment community should be supporting these industries because it's a valued part of the Australian economy.

"If this was England or Germany, they'd love to be in a situation like us, to have all these resources that we have."

Streeter is an old-school investor. He eschews technology -- he rarely uses a computer and says he has never sent an email -- and reminisces about a simpler bygone era in business.

"Back then, if you wanted to know a little bit about the market, you just went down to the stock exchange and watched the pencillers," he smiles.

"I think that's another reason why I think the market has disintegrated: because the personal touch has gone out of it. I like to do business in a personal way, I don't like to do business on the phone."

Streeter, who maintains a cracking seven-day-a-week pace, has been around long enough to remember Australia's previous mining booms and the larger-than-life characters they have spawned.

In fact, his first of many bets on the market occurred during the great Poseidon boom of the late 1960s when a youthful Streeter put $700 into a stock called Great Boulder Mines, which had a promising nickel deposit in WA.

He had already watched the shares race up from 35c to a peak of $7 within a few weeks, but he plucked up the courage to buy 100 shares.

Streeter, who doubled his money when he sold the shares for $14 each, learned a valuable lesson from that first trade: risk can bring great rewards.

A few years before that plunge, Streeter had arrived in Sydney after deciding to leave Britain because, as he puts it, "a lot of my friends were getting girls pregnant, getting married, getting a flat and a job in a factory".

He also wanted to live in a country with a warmer climate.

Moving to Perth in the 1970s, he continued to invest in the mining sector before, by his own admission, he was almost wiped out in the 1987 stockmarket crash.

When his accountant told him he needed to invest in a cashflow business, Streeter bought a fruit and vegetable wholesaler in Perth and built it into a large-scale company, securing lucrative contracts with the big airlines.

In the 1990s he returned to the mining game with his cornerstone investments in Jubilee Mines and Western Areas.

Xstrata's purchase of Jubilee in 2007, just before the global financial crisis, delivered a stunning windfall to Streeter, who at one stage owned 14 per cent of the company.

Like many miners, Streeter was horrified at the Rudd government's decision to introduce the resource super-profits tax in 2010.

But unlike many others, he followed through on his threat to invest overseas in response to the RSPT, setting up an office in Rio de Janiero and acquiring some promising iron ore assets in Brazil through his private company, Riverbank Resources.

Streeter also has exposure to iron ore assets in Gabon through the listed Waratah Resources.

"That's another reason why the resource sector here should be supported a lot more by governments and investors: because people will go elsewhere -- we will invest in other countries," he says.

"This is not the only place where you can get iron ore, this is not the only place where you can retrieve gold, it's not the only place you can retrieve coal."

After the Jubilee sale, Streeter's fellow key shareholder, Kerry Harmanis, quickly developed a taste for surfing, meditation and yoga. But Streeter remained in the industry and says he is working as hard as ever on developing new projects.

"My sons say, 'When are you going to stop, Dad?'," he says.

"I say, "Well, I'm not because I enjoy what I'm doing. I want to see companies succeed.

"That's my job -- to support genuine companies who can get somewhere in the end and stand on their own feet. It's like a child -- you look after them until such time as they can stand on their own feet and start giving you cheek."

- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/at-69-streeter-takes-a-road-less-travelled/story-e6frg9df-1226766424611#sthash.8kM7wVNA.dpuf