Canada’s North American Construction Group has now paid more than C$500 million for Australian contract mining market exposure after agreeing to acquire private Western Australia-based Iron Mine Contracting for $115 million.
Toronto and New York-listed NACG bought Queensland’s MacKellar Group in 2023 for $395 million.
CEO Joe Lambert said earlier this year NACG was targeting the circa-A$20 billion Australian contract mining and drilling market for growth with WA a particular focus.
“The Australian contractor marketplace is massive and growing,” he said. “WA is 50% of the active mines in the entire country and we have less than a 1% share of that market.”
NACG was targeting 2025 full-year revenue of $1.4-1.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $415-445 million. It now forecasts 2026 revenue of $1.5-1.7 billion with adjusted EBITDA of $380-420 million.
Iron Mine Contracting, founded in 2013, said earlier this month it had more than A$1 billion of work in hand after winning a 39-month surface mining contract in WA with Covalent Lithium. The company said it was working at 10 iron ore, lithium and gold projects across the state for clients that included Covalent, Rio Tinto, Fortescue, Northern Star Resources, Gold Fields and Meeka Metals.
“IMC represents a natural and strategic extension of our business into the Western Australian market,” Lambert said this week.
“The IMC team has built a high-quality business with strong margins sharing NACG’s core culture of operational and safety excellence.
“This acquisition provides a great foundation to fast track our WA growth strategy which is considered a global powerhouse for base metals, precious metals and critical and rare earth minerals. Combined with the MacKellar Group we are now an Australian tier one contractor capable of executing complex scopes across the entirety of Australia.
“IMC is a well-run business in a great market presenting a clear opportunity for low-capital growth by leveraging our underutilised Canadian assets and our highly skilled in-house maintenance team experienced in major component and whole machine rebuilds.”
NACG says the $115 million deal value represents 2.5-times IMC’s expected 2026 EBITDA. The deal was projected to be earnings-per-share accretive for NACG in 2026.
The company’s financial adviser on the transaction is Canada’s National Bank Capital Markets.
Legal advisers are Fasken Martineau DuMoulin in Canada and MinterEllison in Australia.
