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Brambles Industries is an Australian-headquarted multinational group of companies specialising in logistics, including waste management, document management, and other logistical issues. It is a dual-listed structure, with Brambles Industries Limited listed on the Australian Stock Exchange making up 57% of the group's value, and Brambles Industries plc listed on the London Stock Exchange. The company has headquarters in both Sydney and London; the majority of the board is Australian-based, as is the board chairman Don Argus. Chief executive officer David Turner was the head of GKN, the former joint venture partner of Brambles' European operations. Brambles Australian operations date from 1875, founded by Walter Bramble, and the company became a public company in 1954. The origins of its British operation date even earlier, to 1759 and the Dowlais Iron Company in Dowlais, Wales. The direct predecessor of the current Brambles plc, Guest Keen and Nettlefold, dates from 1900. The two companies began a joint venture in 1975 to operate CHEP, a shipping pallet-pooling operation already run by Brambles in Australia, in the UK, and after a second joint venture operating the waste management operation Greenaway these operations were joined with the Australian Brambles operations to form the present corporate structure in 2001. Today the company operates a number of businesses in Australia, the UK, and often in many other countries: - CHEP - a supplier of wooden pallets for cargo manipulation.
- Eurotainer - supplier of bulk shipping containers for liquids, powders and gases
- Recall - document managements and storage
- Interlake - storage racking and associated systems for warehouse management and order fulfillment.
- TCR - a joint venture with German airport company Fraport AG specialising in ground support equipment for airliners.
- Brambles Industrial Services - provision of services to the steel industry, including the construction and maintenance of factories and logistics.
Brambles employs approximately 30,000 people worldwide. Its before-tax operating profit in 2003-04 was approximately 720 million AUD on sales of around 7,600 million AUD. Brambles share register contains no one single dominant representative, a number of investment funds owning the biggest slices. These include Maple-Brown Abott, The Capital Group Companies, Lehman Brothers, and the National Australia Bank, amongst others. No investor holds more than about 13% of the company.
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