Mining services contractor Aerison is slowly rebuilding after being bought out of administration last year but its ownership remains unclear.
Mining services contractor Aerison Group is slowly rebuilding after being bought out of administration last year by members of the Wadia family and a group of mystery investors.
Managing director Dylan Wadia recently sat down with Business News to discuss his plans for the business but was less forthcoming on its ownership.
Mr Wadia said the company was owned by a group of eight investors that want to remain anonymous.
Yet company searches by Business News show that Aerison’s parent company is owned by four members of the Wadia family, including Dylan’s father Hasmukh ‘Hank’ Wadia and his mother Pramila Wadia.
They control competitor Applied Pollution Control Pty Ltd, trading as APCINFRA.
Dylan Wadia acknowledged there are questions in the market surrounding the group’s ownership.
“There is a lot of potentially misinformation out there about who has acquired Aerison,” he said.
“It is not APCINFRA, it is a separate entity and a separate group of people that have pooled their capital.
“They have decided they want to remain anonymous.”
Dylan Wadia agreed he was a shareholder.
“I put some capital in but by no means am I the largest.”
Pressed on the ownership, he conceded the shareholders also include Hank Wadia, Pramila Wadia and younger brother Keeshan Wadia.
The four family members owns the shares via a company called Aeri MSM.
It owns KNGY Holdings, which owns Aerison Holdings, which owns the operating business.
He described Aeri MSM as a trustee structure to provide anonymity for other investors in the business.
The Aerison business changed hands in October last year, five months after it was placed in the hands of KordaMentha administrators Richard Tucker and John Bumbak.
The administrators initially struck a sale deal with Kwinana firm Pacific Industrial Company, but that fell through.
That was followed by a deed of company arrangement (DOCA) with APCINFRA “or a nominee”.
The nominee was KNGY Holdings, which acquired the shares in three entities – Aerison Holdings, Aerison Services and Aerison Mechanical and Electrical Technology.
A further three Aerison subsidiaries were acquired as part of the Aerison Holdings share transfer.
Dylan Wadia, who has extensive experience in the oil and gas sector with engineering firm Wood and Woodside Energy, worked briefly in APCINFRA before moving to Aerison.
“I did join my father in the business for a small period of time, looking after engineering design for dust collectors and air pollution control equipment,” he said.
“Then we decided to part ways, amicably.”
Aerison’s core business is air pollution control, notably dust suppression and dust extraction systems.
That is the same market APCINFRA works in.
Aerison is also a builder and supplier of switchrooms, which are part of the power solution for many mining and resources projects.
“Air pollution control is absolutely our unique point of difference and that is our entry to a lot of customers and then there is the switchroom manufacturing we do,” Mr Wadia said.
The group was placed into administration last year after it struggled to deliver on one of its largest contracts.
It became enmeshed in a dispute with Roy Hill Holdings over the construction of a $47 million desalination plant.
Despite this experience, Mr Wadia said Aerison was still aiming to broaden its service offering, to deliver turnkey solutions across structural, mechanical, piping (SMP) and electrical and instrumentation (E&I) services.
He believes the group is better structured to deliver on this goal.
This includes a focus on breaking down the silo mentality that had developed within the ‘old’ Aerison and, he believes, contributed to its historic issues.
Mr Wadia has also overseen a rebuild of the group’s management team, with seven new faces among the nine general managers.
More fundamentally, he said the new owners have adopted a long-term view on where they want to take the Aerison business.
“The old Aerison as a public-listed company was driven by different metrics, and that was potentially growth at any cost,” he said.
“The business now is very much around long-term sustainable growth.
“There is no requirement to grow at breakneck speed, its more about the quality of the margins and the quality of the revenue we are doing rather than the quantity.
“If the quality is good, which means we have good people, good systems and processes, then everything else will follow after that.”
As a listed company, Aerison grew to have revenue of $208 million in FY22 and peaked at about 450 staff and contractors.
“We are probably half of that size and I think the work is roughly half as much as well,” Mr Wadia said.
He acknowledged the balance sheet repair has been difficult.
“We are still coming through the back end of that,” he said.
“Fortuitously I have a lot of deep relationships with a lot of suppliers in Perth.
“I was able to leverage my relationships with people who know me and have worked with me.
“With our customers, it’s just been winning their confidence.”
Mr Wadia said Aerison has active engineering, construction, commissioning and maintenance works with all of the blue chip miners and some major oil and gas companies.
“Every day the confidence of our customers is growing and so the work is starting to flow in.”
It has recently established a presence in Queensland, driven primarily by a desire to meet the needs of clients with national operations.
The business has also shifted its manufacturing from Forrestfield to a larger facility at Bibra Lake, with an 8,000sqm workshop and 15,000sqm of hardstand that enables modular construction in the yard.
Amidst the positive news, Aerison remains in a legal dispute with several former staff who establish Innovent Engineering.
