Thiess Pty Ltd is an international mining services company based in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

, Australia. Established in the 1930s as Horn & Thiess, the company later became Thiess Bros and Thiess Contractors before being bought by

Leighton Holdings CIMIC Group Limited (formerly Leighton Holdings) is an Australian construction contractor. It is active in the telecommunications, engineering and infrastructure, building and property, mining and resources, and environmental services industries ...

in 1983 to become part of the CIMIC Group. Thiess' headquarters are located in the Thiess Centre in South Bank in the

Brisbane CBD Brisbane City is the central suburb and central business district of Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, Australia. It is colloquially referred to as the "Brisbane CBD" or "the city". It is located on a point on the northern bank of the ...

near the TAFE Brisbane City campus. Following restructuring within CIMIC in 2014 and the merger of several international Leighton businesses into Thiess, the company claims to have become the largest contract mining services provider in the world.

History

Thiess was founded as Horn & Thiess in 1933 by Henry Horn and Leslie Thiess with headquarters in

Toowoomba Toowoomba ( , nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar') is a city in the Toowoomba Region of the Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia. It is west of Queensland's capital city Brisbane by road. The urban population of Toowoomba as of the 2021 ...

. Initially the business focused on road-building and earth moving but subsequently expanded into dam construction,

open cut mining Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of mining ...

and other forms of civil engineering. After other members of the Thiess family bought Horn out, it was renamed Thiess Bros. In 1951 Thiess was

listed Listed may refer to: * Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm * Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic * Endangered species in biology * Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...

on the Sydney and Brisbane

stock exchanges A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for the ...

. After importing

Toyota Land Cruiser The (also sometimes spelled as LandCruiser) is a series of four-wheel drive vehicles produced by the Japanese automobile manufacturer Toyota. It is Toyota's longest running series of models. , the sales of the Land Cruiser totalled more than ...

s into Australia for the

Snowy Mountains Scheme The Snowy Mountains Scheme or Snowy scheme is a hydroelectricity and irrigation complex in south-east Australia. The Scheme consists of sixteen major dams; nine power stations; two pumping stations; and of tunnels, pipelines and aqueducts that ...

in 1959, Thiess became the

Toyota is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on . Toyota is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, producing about 10 ...

commercial vehicle franchisee in Australia. A 40% shareholding in Thiess Toyota was sold to

Toyota Australia Toyota Australia is an Australian subsidiary of the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota. It markets Toyota products and manages motorsport, advertising and business operations for Toyota in Australia. It is also responsible for Lexus vehicles in A ...

in 1968, with the remaining stake being sold in 1980. From 1967 until 1970, Thiess was also the distributor of

White Motor Company The White Motor Company was an American automobile, truck, bus and agricultural tractor manufacturer from 1900 until 1980. The company also produced bicycles, roller skates, automatic lathes, and sewing machines. Before World War II, the comp ...

products in Australia. In February 1980, Thiess was taken over by CSR in a

hostile takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to t ...

. In April 1981, the construction division was sold to a consortium of

Hochtief Hochtief AG is a German construction company based in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.Westfield Group Westfield Group was an Australian shopping centre company that existed from 1960 to 2014, when it split into two independent companies: Scentre Group, which owns and operates the Australian and New Zealand Westfield shopping centre portfolio ...

(25%) and Leslie Thiess (25%). In July 1983 Thiess was acquired by

, with Hochtief becoming the majority shareholder in Leighton Holdings. In 1987 Thiess diversified into

waste collection Waste collection is a part of the process of waste management. It is the transfer of solid waste from the point of use and disposal to the point of treatment or landfill. Waste collection also includes the curbside collection of recyclable ...

establishing Thiess Waste Management Services. This was sold in July 2012 to Remondis. In 2011, the business was inducted into the

Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame In 2009 State Library of Queensland, the Queensland Library Foundation and the QUT Business School The QUT Business School is one of six faculties at the Queensland University of Technology. It is home to the QUT Graduate School of Business, a ...

. In 2014, the mining operations of Leighton Africa, Leighton Asia and Leighton Contractors were merged into. In 2016 Thiess's civil engineering business was merged into Leighton Contractors which was renamed CPB Contractors. Since then Thiess has been entirely focused on mining projects. In 2021, CIMIC agreed to joint ownership (50/50) of Thiess with

Elliott Advisors Elliott Investment Management is an American investment management firm. It is also one of the largest activist investor, activist funds in the world. It is the management affiliate of American hedge funds Elliott Associates L.P. and Elliott I ...

Major projects

Major projects undertaken by Thiess include:

References

{{Mining companies of Australia, state=collapsed Auto dealerships of Australia Companies based in Brisbane Companies formerly listed on the Australian Securities Exchange Construction and civil engineering companies established in 1933 Construction and civil engineering companies of Australia Mining services companies of Australia Waste management companies of Australia Westfield Group 1950s initial public offerings Australian companies established in 1933 Waste companies established in 1933 1980 mergers and acquisitions