Bradken is a manufacturer and supplier of differentiated consumable and capital products to the mining, transport, general industrial and contract manufacturing markets with operations in Australia, China, Canada, India, Malaysia and the United States. It is a subsidiary of Hitachi Construction Machinery.
History
In 1919/1920, BHP steelworks employees, General Manager Leslie Bradford and Chief Mechanical Engineer Jim Kendall and a group of their friends backed a racehorse named Jack Findlay that completed a remarkable sequence of five wins. With each win the group rolled-over their bets and by 24 January 1920 they had won a small fortune pledging their winnings to start a steel foundry business.[1]
On 28 April 1920, Bradford and Kendall used their winnings to establish the Alloy Steel Syndicate and build a steel foundry in Alexandria, Sydney. The syndicate was incorporated as Bradford Kendall Limited on 20 March 1922.[1][2]