Pilbara Aboriginal Traditional Owner business, Gumala Enterprise Pty Ltd recently completed a landmark contract supporting work on a project at BHP’s Yandi mine site, which created approximately 20 jobs, and high Aboriginal employment.

Gumala Enterprises is 100 percent owned by Gumala Aboriginal Corporation, representing the Banjima, Nyiyaparli and Yinhawangka people, based in Tom Price.

BHP Superintendent Projects, Contracts & Procurement (Mines), Fintan McDermott, said the agreement is currently the largest single contract awarded through BHP’s new Local Buying Program for Western Australia.

“Our project team identified an opportunity to ‘carve out’ a section from our larger Yandi project to create a direct opportunity for a local contractor, via the BHP Local Buying Program,” Fintan said.

“The opportunity identified was for a local contractor to take on the sorting and stockpiling of site produced rock armour to support the construction of the flood protection bunds.”

Phil Jefferys who is BHP’s Head of Strategy, Community and Planning said BHP is fully committed to Indigenous contracting and economic empowerment.

“BHP’s Local Buying Program is proving itself to be an effective tool, which allows our teams to be proactive and innovative when it comes to sourcing and supporting local and Indigenous businesses,” Phil said.

“It’s fantastic to see Aboriginal Traditional Owner businesses working on their country and we hope to see many more opportunities like these across our sites.”

BHP is committed to contributing to Indigenous economic empowerment, a vision CEO Andrew Mackenzie shared at a CEDA event in January.

“At BHP we encourage our Indigenous employees, suppliers and partners to have a voice, but we know we must do more,” Andrew said.

“While mining benefits our whole nation, business, government and communities all need to make sure that this flows to local communities.

“We know we must do more to increase the size of our Indigenous workforce and engage more Indigenous businesses.”

BHP’s Local Buying Program, delivered by C-Res is a full procurement-to-pay portal which allows small, local eligible businesses and Pilbara Aboriginal businesses to engage with BHP for direct competitive contracting opportunities, valued at less than $US2 million. These businesses benefit from the Local

Buying Program’s payment terms of 21 days from receipt of invoice (averaging 15 days at present).

Learn more about the BHP Local Buying Program.

For more information, click here (PDF 3.21MB)