The Western Australian gas utility received final project approval from the State Government only one month prior to the commencement of a pre-registration mailing campaign targeting 500,000 potential shareholders. Once responses to this mailing were processed, letters had to be designed, printed, personalised and despatched to the database within two weeks. Several brokers were involved in the public listing project, so data had to be receipted from 30 different sources and a fully customised letterhead had to be created for each of those entities. A call centre also had to be established to handle inquiries from potential investors. In addition to these requirements, Computershare Registry Services (CRS) the registry managing the float required the bulk of the work to be completed in Western Australia.
Due to the exceptionally tight timeframe between receipt of data and printing and despatch of pre-registration letters, we maximised capacity by using resources from our WA, NSW and QLD branches. This required strong project management and liaison between our various branches and CRS, the WA Government and AlintaGas. Project data was transmitted from AlintaGas, via CRS, to our Perth branch. From there, it was sent to our branch in Sydney for printing and the insertion of personalised pre-registration forms. Our staff worked all hours of the day and night to keep the project running smoothly over the large distances and different time zones. In one instance, data was received by the Perth branch at 4pm, processed in Sydney and proofs were returned to AlintaGas by 10am the next morning. We also consulted on the design of the base stocks and barcoding in order to facilitate faster scanning, data entry and identification of the different levels of forms. Individual data streams were rationalised to a common format to allow mailing in a single stream, dramatically reducing postage costs.
"The success of the AlintaGas float is a clear demonstration of what can be achieved when a multi-site project management team works towards a common goal."
"We achieved an oversubscribed offer and floated at a premium, with over 116,000 new shareholders, making it one of the outstanding campaigns in WA and probably Australia. HPA's (now Salmat's) extensive experience in planning, managing and executing more than a dozen major floats was essential to the success of this project."
David Sweet, Manager of Public Relations, AlintaGas.
