Comalco’s development of Queensland bauxite, 1955-1975

In 1954 Australia mined little bauxite and did not produce alumina, but by the end of the 1970s Australian industry accounted for more than one third of the western world's bauxite production and about one fifth of its alumina. This article examines the development of Comalco, the company which mined Australia's largest bauxite deposits in Queensland and was an essential part of Australia's entry into the world-wide aluminium industry from the 1960s to the 1980s. Fundamental to Comalco's success was government-industry co-operation. The Australian government established an aluminium smelter for defence purposes in Tasmania that it sold to Comalco on favourable terms and then protected with tariffs and import restrictions. Moreover, federal government-industry co-operation stimulated the discovery of bauxite, the main source of aluminium, in northern Australia. Even more important to Comalco's success was the Queensland government which gave the company access to the best of the state's newly-discovered bauxite deposits in return for the company's commitment to industrial development in the state on the back of mining. Using its relationships with state and national governments in Australasia, Comalco was able to harness competing aluminium companies in the building of the largest alumina plant in the world at Gladstone in central Queensland and, in doing so, set itself on the path to becoming a multinational company in its own right.