In 2009 Alex Fraser has been in business for 130 years – a significant achievement for any private company and particularly when you consider the enormous changes over the past century. There have been major shifts in raw materials usage and demands; there has been a crippling depression, two World Wars and some tough times that have punctuated the journey of the company to the present day. 

Alex Fraser, the company’s founder established the business in 1879 and was at the helm of the organisation for 44 years. The company began as a firm of metal brokers in Queen St, Melbourne. It was a lucrative and mercurial business controlled by the Melbourne Metal Exchange (M.M.E.) of which Alex Fraser himself was a founding member. He had previously worked on the London Metal Exchange prior to coming to Australia. Prices fluctuated on an almost daily basis. Alex Fraser and his fellow M.M.E. members controlled the entire output from Barrier Mines as well as other important mines throughout the country, silver, lead, zinc and tin being the principle metals.

In 1909 Archibald McCallum McKellar began working as a clerk for Alex Fraser. He was an adventurous 27 year old Scotsman who had made the decision like many early migrants, to achieve his fortune in the Colonies. In 1920 Alex Fraser decided to retire and return to his country of birth, so Archibald McKellar and Rivers Le Gould, the company accountant, took over the shareholding in equal shares. By this time Archibald had some 11 years experience in the business and proved to be a shrewd and well liked businessman. Archibald and Rivers Le Gould relocated the offices to Flinders Street where the famous Fletcher Jones store stands today.

Some years after the departure of Alex Fraser, Rivers Le Gould died, which left Archibald McKellar with four new partners – Rivers Le Gould’s four sisters. During the depression Archibald bought out the Le Gould sisters and became sole owner of the company and relocated the business directly opposite to 14 Viaduct Buildings or Banana Alley, as it is now known. During the 1930’s Archibald married Minnie Finlay – a young Australian woman of Scottish parents and had three children, Peg, Archibald John and Nancy.

In 1941 Archie (Archibald John) McKellar was still attending Melbourne High School. After he had completed his leaving year and then his honours year (later to become matriculated and HSC) like so many other 18 year olds, he joined the Army, before being recruited by the RAF (Royal Air Force).

After the Second World War Archie returned from service as a Liberator pilot and ultimately joined the business in 1950 when his father’s health was failing. Archie also married his wife Marie Deacon during this year. (They had four children: Alexandra Marie 1951 (Zandy), Archibald James 1953 (Jamie), Robert John 1955 (Robbie) and Peter Callum 1959 (Peter)).

In 1951 Archibald McKellar Snr died, leaving Archie to take over the management of Alex Fraser Pty Ltd. Business was very tough, there was very little margin and tough competition in the tin and lead business and he set new targets and looked for new opportunities as he went. He identified that the dross and residues business was lucrative before establishing a thriving army surplus materials and equipment recovery business that was to sustain the company for some years. Guns were turned into hydraulic rams, silver was liquated from various items of war surplus, Rolls Royce Merlin fighter engines were stripped down to deliver, among other things, pounds of silver from their big end bearings. Ships propellers made of manganese bronze were bought and resold along with a vast array of redundant equipment.

Alex Fraser was a pioneer in recycling in a number of areas, being one of the first companies to recycle and re-granulate plastics and to dry nylon. But scrap metals and demolition were the primary corporate activities during the 1960’s and 70’s.

In the 1970’s the third generation of McKellar’s joined the business – Jamie in 1972, followed closely behind by Robbie in 1973 and Peter in 1977. With the knowledge the company now had in various metals and salvage, Alex Fraser Pty Ltd moved into the demolition business, dismantling and recycling hundreds of redundant buildings, factories, gas works, power stations, and other structures. The recycling business had become something that Alex Fraser Pty Ltd knew quite a lot about and was to be the way the company would head in the future.

It was not until the early 1980’s that Alex Fraser Pty Ltd was to embark on one of its most significant and ambitious projects and set the course for the future of the business and one of the most significant sustainability initiatives ever seen in Australia.

Every demolition job produced steel, timber, bricks, rubble and other reusable salvage. But most projects also produced large quantities of concrete rubble – one of the biggest contributors to landfills around the country. Jamie reasoned that as it consisted of aggregates, sand and cement, with the correct processing, it could be returned to that state again and reused. He had no idea at that time that the concept would become the future of the business.

Jamie said:
“It was an airy-fairy idea that initially seemed too hard. The
problem with crushing concrete was invariably that it had
steel reinforcement. So the idea fizzled at the time. We had
broken up concrete for re-use – E.g. The Preston Gasometer,
which was used as base for a soccer stadium. This was probably
the first project where we instigated such practice.”

In the mid 1980’s Jamie attended ConExpo, a Machinery Exhibition in Las Vegas U.S.A. to his amazement his dream of concrete recycling was already in existence. He managed to get an audience with some operators who knew the pitfalls and they were only to happy to help and pass on some background information.

The Vickers Ruwolt project in Richmond Victoria – 15 acres of buildings (50,000 tonnes of brick and concrete), was to represent the most significant turning point in the history of the company. For it was here that decisions were made that would change the whole focus and future direction of the company. A crusher was purchased and a draftsman appointed to draw up some plans to their specifications. Within 12 weeks the plant was built and operating at the Vickers Ruwolt site.

Jamie said:
“It took a long time to realize the true potential of what we
had started and at that point we did not know to what extent
we would take it. We were just delighted that we had put
100 tonnes through this machine in a day and it had worked.
We crushed the entire 50,000 tonnes.”

The plant was moved to the Gilbertson’s Meatworks site in Footscray and then onto Alex Fraser’s Recycling Centre in Port Melbourne. The development of the concrete recycling operation was to be the most significant ever made by the company.

Concrete recycling – or C&D recycling (construction and demolition materials recycling) as it is now known, saw the company grow from a few people, to over 200 people working in six major recycling centres in Victoria and Queensland. The enormous amount of research and development work took more than a decade to achieve. It was not an easy task to get Governments, councils and contractors to recognise and support the use of recycled C&D material, but in 1992 Alex Fraser Pty Ltd formally received Vic Roads accreditation.

Following the final accreditation of the crushed products, Alex Fraser Pty Ltd came up against another hurdle from those responsible for purchasing crushed material for a variety of road, buildings, engineering and civil projects. Where before the excuse had been – ‘We cannot use your products, because they haven’t been Vicroads accredited’, it was now ‘just because your products are Vicroards accredited doesn’t mean we have to use them’. The team at Alex Fraser Pty Ltd knew if the venture was to be a success, they had to win a major project.

At that time, the biggest project in Melbourne, was the Western Ring Road project, a huge stretch of freeway that linked the Princess Highway in the south west of the city with the Hume Highway and beyond in the north. Alex Fraser tendered to Thiess and won the job – with orders for a total of 175,000 tonnes of class 2 cement stabilized road base. Quality control was strict to say the least. The project was important and the performance of the material had to be first class.

The turning point had been reached the first stage of the Western Ring Road was a huge success. Orders flowed in from a broadening market and production increased to full capacity. Before long the company also picked up the order for what is probably Australia’s most technically precise roadway, the Albert Park Grand Prix track, as well as the foundations for Melbourne’s Crown Casino, and another section of the Western Ring Road.

In 1995 Alex Fraser Pty Ltd won the Gold Banksia Environmental Award – Australia’s foremost environment achievement award for its recycling initiatives. This win had many direct outcomes. Firstly, it gave the organisation the recognition it deserved and needed if it was going to progress as planned. It also opened doors, brought about discussions and stimulated the planning that ultimately saw establishment of the Queensland business – Queensland Recycling.

1998 turned out to be a massive year for Alex Fraser Pty Ltd. Initially the company won the City of Wyndham Business Award, which, although certainly of a much lesser profile to that of the Banksia, was deemed no less important due to our site locations. The council officers suggested that we had a great story to tell and that we should enter the “Telstra Small Business Awards” Alex Fraser Pty Ltd won the Telstra & Victorian Government Small Business of the year as well as the National Award – AusIndustry National Manufacturer of the year, for the best Manufacturing Organisation (with fewer than 100 employees) in the Country! These awards opened doors for the company and Alex Fraser Pty Ltd had never looked stronger.

In the year 2000 the company was encouraged to enter the Prime Ministers Environmental Awards. Alex Fraser Pty Ltd won the “Australian Business Award for Environmental Leadership” a huge honour and recognition for the company’s journey to that stage.

In 2006, the global John Swire & Sons group purchased 51% of the shareholding in the Alex Fraser Group. This will ensure the continued growth of the business. Both companies have a similar heritage and entrepreneurial culture and are poised to develop and lead the way in a number of important sustainable industries in the future. (For more information about John Swire and Sons please visit www.swire.com).

In 2006 Jamie McKellar was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM), for service to the community through the development of a Construction Waste Recycling Industry and commitment to environmentally sustainable industrial practices. This was an honour to both Jamie and also the Alex Fraser Group as a whole.

In 2008, Alex Fraser reached a major recycling milestone, of producing 20 million tonnes of recycled Construction and Demolition materials. It is very significant, not only as a production volume, but also for the enormous savings this has made on the environment and our natural resources. To put 20 million tones of Construction and Demolition waste into perspective, if you were to fill the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) with this material – it would form a tower – with a bigger footprint then most CBD buildings – 812 meters high. That’s almost three times higher than Melbourne’s Eureka Tower.

Alex Fraser is still one of Australia’s leading demolition contractors throughout Australia and now in New Zealand. The company still deals in Scrap Metal and Material Salvage as well as having raw material transport capability and also a leading edge Environmental Solutions business.

Managing Director, Jamie McKellar O.A.M., has overseen the Company’s greatest period of growth and diversification. He says that Alex Fraser has a very promising and sustainable future in an expanding global marketplace.

“The advances of the next 20 years will make the last 20
years look like we were standing still. While we are very
pleased with the leading edge technology we have developed
and the capabilities of our current plants and systems, we
have no ultimate concept of where this may go in the future.
What is certain is, what took us 10 years to achieve back then,
will now take only 3 years to become a reality”.