Article: Shane Condon's steely resolve over rail link

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Shane Condon's steely resolve over rail link
Article from: The Courier-Mail

Robert Macdonald

July 09, 2008 12:00am

SHANE Condon is about to find out just how committed some of the world's biggest steelmakers are to his grand plan for a 3400km rail line linking West Australian iron ore and Queensland coal.

He says 18 of them have already signed confidentiality agreements to know more about his scheme, which also proposes 12 iron ore smelters, half at the Pilbara end of the line and the rest at the eastern end, at Abbot Point, north of Bowen in Queensland.

Within the next two weeks, Mr Condon will be sending interested parties a pre-feasibility study of the proposal along with an invitation to chip in $10 million each for a full-blown, $150 million feasibility and environmental assessment for the project officially known as Project Iron Boomerang.

He will follow up in August and September with "mini summits" in China, India, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, in a bid to raise $150 million for the feasibility study.

"The indications are very, very strong. They couldn't be better," Mr Condon said during a recent interview in the Brisbane offices of East West Link Parks, the private company he set up three years ago to pursue his dream, developed "after 10 years of thought".

"I'm very happy to say I think we'll be oversubscribed," he said.

Mr Condon

said the Chinese had been sufficiently interested in the project that he could have gone to the federal government a year ago, to seek major project status, but he was aware of foreign investment sensitivities.

"We've done it the hard way," Mr Condon said, adding that in the past two years he had knocked on the doors of 26 steelmakers and five national governments.

Mr Condon, who made his money in seafood and meat exports out of the Northern Territory and Queensland, said the feasibility study should take a little over two years, followed by 3? years for construction, with the aim of finishing by 2014.

The current cost estimate is $12 billion: $7 billion for the rail line, $2 billion for rolling stock and $3 billion for the land for the smelter precincts.

East West Line Parks has so far invested about $7 million in the project, raised both from private investors and loans from Mr Condon and long-time friend and associate, developer Jim Handford, who has been involved with property developments like Paradise Point on the Gold Coast.

"But BHP says it would have cost them $70 million to do what we've done," Mr Condon said.

"We've hardly adjusted the business plan in the past three years. And that's the sign of a good plan."

Other supporters of Iron Boomerang include ANZ economist Saul Eslake, described by East West Line Parks as "leader, economics, marketing and business, media and political" and David Russell, QC, serving as corporate legal business facilitation adviser.

Within the next couple of months, Mr Condon and his backers will discover whether those who can actually make it happen in fact share their dream of a cross-country rail line and not one, but two massive industrial complexes on the east and west coasts of Australia.