INSIDER MAGAZINE: How life lessons took humble Edgar Basto to top of BHP as president of Minerals Australia

How does an only child of humble means from a small town in Colombia become a successful mining executive overseeing a workforce of 45,000 in Australia? It’s a question Edgar Basto often poses to himself. As BHP’s Minerals Australia president, the Perth-based Basto sits within the mining giant’s nine-person executive leadership team reporting directly to chief executive Mike Henry. His responsibilities span the company’s powerhouse iron ore division and Nickel West in WA, metallurgical and thermal coal assets across Queensland and New South Wales and the company’s Olympic Dam copper mine in South Australia, which also produces uranium, gold and silver. “Growing up, my objective was to finish school, get a job, buy a motorcycle and get married — that was the extent of my plans,” the 54-year-old recalls laughingly in his distinctive Colombian Spanish accent. But a priest at the Catholic school he attended recognised his intelligence and impressed upon him the need to aim higher. The young Basto secured a scholarship to attend the Industrial University of Santander to study metallurgical engineering and graduated cum laude. His academic achievements were recognised by the former Billiton, which recruited him to a graduate program and subsequently posted him to its Cerro Matoso ferronickel mine in Northern Colombia, setting him on a path for success. He later worked in senior positions in mines across South America, eventually rising to become president of BHP’s Escondida operation in Chile, the world’s biggest copper mine. LIFE LESSONS During his five years at the joint venture asset, he improved the operation’s safety and productivity. Similarly, he is widely credited in his former role at BHP, as the asset president of WA iron ore, with transforming the Pilbara-focused business to become the world’s lowest-cost producer through a focus on supply chain efficiencies and automation. But the self-effacing Basto says his success was in motivating others to be their best and create great outcomes. “Seeing my team flourish and become better leaders makes me really proud,” he says. “Some of the GMs we put together to run the (WAIO) business are asset presidents now.” The jovial Basto does not present as the average blue-chip company executive. His speech is unscripted, his manner not rehearsed and his smile is genuine and infectious. His laid-back, warm and generous demeanour seems to belie the corporate success he has achieved. A former president of the WA Chamber of Minerals and Energy, Basto is a respected and popular figure in Perth’s corporate circles since arriving in WA in 2015. But he is less known in the broader community. Aside from his own clear intellect and the training and development he was afforded early in his career, Basto also learnt valuable life lessons from his poor but honest parents while growing up in Colombia. His father died when Basto was just 15, but not before he had passed on guiding principles to his only son that remain part of his character today. Basto recalls one occasion when his father took a down-and-out stranger into the family home to give him a bed and a roof over his head for the night. The vagrant woke up early the next day before anyone else and fled the house with many of the family’s goods including a wristwatch that Basto’s father had gifted him. “I was really upset about this and I was angry with my father for taking this guy in,” he says. “But he said ‘why are you worried about this? You have to do the right thing by people and if they do the wrong thing, it’s their problem’.” Still aggrieved about the loss of the watch, Basto’s father took off his own wristwatch and handed it to his son. Basto says he learned from his father that relationships are important and to earn respect, you must respect others. He keeps the watch in his pocket to this day as a reminder of his father and the lesson learnt. TAKING CARE Basto recalls working in a senior role in South America where he was responsible for health, safety, environment and communities. He approached his asset president at the time, informing him that he planned to sack his superintendent because he was underperforming, difficult to work with and causing disruption within the team. “My president gave me his blessing but suggested I write a letter to myself as to why I was making that decision,” he says. “When I wrote the letter, I realised I was being too harsh. I realised I had to do more to help the person. “I learned never to make a decision with a hot head particularly when people are involved. “You have to really think about developing them, nurturing them, giving them every chance to bring their best contribution to the company.” Despite Basto’s rise to the senior ranks of the world’s biggest miner, he has an ongoing reputation for connecting with his operational staff at the coalface. He speaks of forging trust with his employees, offering opportunities, but also teaching them the importance of collective effort and open communication. “People need to feel that you, as a leader, care about them,” Basto says. “If I take care of my team, my team will take care of me and the company.” Another career-shaper for Basto involved his time at Escondida when a worker died in a mine site accident in 2010. The employee was an experienced operator of 25 years who had been responsible for training others. But he had taken a short cut that resulted in him being crushed to death. Basto had the unenviable task of passing on the news to the man’s wife. Upon further investigation, he discovered that it wasn’t the first time that short cuts had been taken at the mine. For him, the incident reinforced the importance of ensuring workers felt they could “call out” safety breaches not just at site level but also if leaders in the company were failing to ensure a safe working environment. “It really impacted me in terms of thinking about how I, as a leader, can help create a culture of safety,” he explains. Under Basto’s leadership, BHP’s Pilbara iron ore division has significantly reduced the number of serious injuries since 2015 and the unit has not had a fatality in the past 10 years. Across Australia, BHP has not had a mine site fatality for the past three years. BUILDING CONNECTION As head of BHP’s Tintaya copper mine in Peru in the early 2000s, Basto was challenged by community unrest. He was forced to suspend operations for nearly three weeks after a riot over community benefits from the mine. It impressed upon him the importance of communication and good relations with the communities in which BHP operated. “We managed to sort the situation by creating elements of shared value. If they do well in the communities, we (BHP) do well,” he said. Basto uses the example of a mine he ran in Colombia, where a local group of women made uniforms for the workers. He tries to create the same vertical integration and shared value in Australia in the remote communities where BHP operates. And the lessons learned in South America have also helped guide Basto’s relationships with Indigenous communities across Australia. Basto has formed a special bond with the Banjima People of the Pilbara, upon whose traditional lands BHP’s new $US3.6 billion ($4.91b) South Flank mine sits. “Listening to the Banjima has given us ideas about how we can run our business better,” he says. On the advice of elders from the group, BHP has set up a quiet place at its Mulla Mulla worker village at South Flank, where people can visit and talk to others about things that might be worrying them. “The ‘are you OK?’ question is one we don’t often ask, and we don’t ask because we are so busy. So these are the sorts of things I have learnt from the Banjima,” he says. Basto acknowledged the reputational damage to the mining sector by the destruction of the ancient Juukan Gorge shelter in the Pilbara last year by BHP’s main iron ore rival Rio Tinto. “An event like that causes an impact for the whole industry,” he says. “Yes, we have good relationships with Indigenous communities and we have processes in place but there are always opportunities to improve.” In response to Juukan, BHP last year set up the Banjima Heritage Advisory Council giving traditional owners direct input into mine planning at South Flank. The company and the council have already begun discussions about how the Banjima’s cultural heritage can be better displayed and explained to Australia and the world. BHP has been in the frame in recent months over another hot button issue in the WA mining sector, sexual assault and harassment. “There is no place for sexual assault, or sexual harassment in our organisation, in our industry, or in society and that is something I am determined to act on,” Basto asserts. “I want each and every person in BHP to feel safe, the same way I want my three adult sons to feel safe where they are working, because then they will have the opportunity to be themselves. “You can’t thrive and grow in a place where you don’t feel safe and can’t be yourself.” Like other industries and society generally, climate change represents another major challenge for resources companies like BHP. The mining giant has set a target to reduce its operational emissions by at least 30 per cent and achieve net zero by 2050. But the company is always trying to pivot its business towards so-called “future-facing” commodities that it sees will play a growing role in the globe’s path to a decarbonised economy. “We are well placed to thrive in a decarbonised economy and supply the commodities that the world needs to drive that change,” Basto says. AT HOME Basto and his family have made Perth their home since he moved here in 2015 to head up BHP’s WA iron ore division. They had their first taste of Perth during a visit in 2008 when Basto was working for BHP in Melbourne between 2006 and 2009. “My family said ‘we like the place, it’s an easy city to live in, you have access to everything and there are beautiful places to visit like Kings Park’,” he shares. “My wife and I wanted our children to be Australian, to have an Australian passport, along with their Colombian passport of course.” The citizenship ceremony during the peak of COVID was conducted virtually, which Basto describes as the only downside to the experience. “We feel Australia is home, we feel this is a country of opportunity and potential,” he says. Because of COVID travel restrictions, Basto has been unable to visit his 92-year-old mother, Elena, in Colombia for nearly three years. Through his career, Basto has supported his mother financially but he insists she remains a humble person. He jokes that his mother has no comprehension of his role at BHP, thinking until recently that he drove a truck for a living. So he didn’t think it was important to call her when he was formally elevated to the position of President Minerals Australia for BHP last year. Despite his oversight, news of Basto’s promotion made it onto a local broadcaster in Colombia, prompting concern from his mother who heard the report. Basto was told of his mother’s dismay and called her to reassure her that the new job was a good thing. “She thought I must be working too hard,” he says. The affable Basto is always happy to tell his story, particularly to school-aged children and young graduates in the hope that it will help them forge their own careers. “There’s a lot of talent out there, my job is to capture that talent,” he says. “I was lucky enough to have leaders who guided me in the right direction and pushed me to be my best. “I have to do the same, I need to give back and that’s what I try to do.”

INSIDER MAGAZINE: How life lessons took humble Edgar Basto to top of BHP as president of Minerals Australia

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