Life after FSG

PIT Mining IT sees opportunities for growth

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Jody Barlow Managing Director

PIT Mining IT says the new business is well-positioned to add to its ranks of mining customers, having retained the key customers from the resources arm of Field Solutions Group.MD Jody Barlow also told CommsDay that PIT was preparing to roll out private LTE for its largest customer, Kestrel Coal.

FSG in February announced that it had agreed to sell its mining division to PIT for around $4.98 million. Shortly after that announcement, receivers stepped in and took charge of the struggling FSG at the behest of a secured creditor. That forced Barlow, who had been head of mining and resources at the company, back to the negotiating table to strike a new deal.

A December 2024 FSG investor presentation said that a strategic review had identified that a high revenue concentration across a small number of customers in min- ing was creating an exposure risk for the company, with “revenues highly sensitive to volatile project works and typically unfavourable commercial terms”. The sale announcement said that FSG expected a reduction of $4.8 million in opex and $12 million in gross revenue from the divestiture, implying these were the numbers of the mining divison.

Barlow said that the division had been hamstrung by being part of the financially

troubled FSG, including the potential to lose the business of Kestrel. That sparked the initial negotiations for PIT to buy the division.

The deal to buy the division saw the transfer of customers and staff to PIT, including the former manager of mining operations Jamie Black, who Barlow noted had played a key role in the rollout of FSG’s Queensland fixed wireless infrastructure.

The PIT MD said that he was particularly proud of being able to provide ongoing employment to the staff, including bringing across their entitlements to the new business. “You’re only as good as your team,” he said.

“We have a very strong, committed team of people. To run operations for a mining site is a 24/7 operation... In my professional career I hadn’t worked with such a strong, committed-to-the-cause team. So when there was an opportunity to purchase it, that was a real thing in the back of my head: Keeping our team together, and the relationship from a customer and supplier perspective.”

Customers had supported the move, he added. Leaving aside the impact of FSG’s financial position on the mining division “there were no issues with our service,” Barlow said. PIT has assumed 61 clients, including the flagship Kestrel relationship.

“Knowing what we know about mining customers, it took us a lot of years of bumping our head up against a brick wall and finding the right answers and the right things — we've now gone through that pain,” Barlow said. “We're in a very, very good position to understand what each individual mining operations requires. So right now a focus for me is to grow mining clientele because I believe we offer a unique way of doing things, with a staff that understand mine requirements.”

The business also brought across a range of non-mining clients, with PIT effectively having two divisions, one focused on mining and the other on the broader enterprise market. In addition to operating as an MSP in its own right, it has partnered with national MSP Precision IT to support the enterprise business, he said.

Written by Rohan Pearce