Fulton Hogan

• Date founded: 1933
• Industry: Heavy construction; engineering services; asphalt surfacing
• Corporate headquarters: Christchurch, New Zealand
• Type: Private

Fulton Hogan is a vertically integrated civil construction company headquartered in Christchurch, New Zealand. Founded in 1933 by Julius Fulton and Robert Hogan, it has remained a family business managed in part by their descendants and renowned for its culture, where people and communities are highly valued.

Fulton Hogan's businesses are the construction of roads and infrastructure, the supply of roading and quarrying materials and provision of construction and infrastructure services. It builds roads, parkways, rails, bridges, ports, airports, waste and wastewater facilities, defence facilities, utility plants and residential subdivisions. It owns and operates quarries and manufacturing plants that supply pre-cast and pre-stressed concrete materials, concrete aggregates, sands, sealing chips, gabion rock, railway ballast and asphalt and bitumen products. Services include road maintenance, project management, research and development, asset management, asphalt and sealing and traffic management. It operates in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. Its twelve manufacturing plants are located throughout New Zealand, with two plants in Tauranga, three in Christchurch, and one each in Auckland, Invercargill, Lower Hutt, Nelson, Renwick, Wa Warrnambool and Whangarei. It extracts raw materials from more than forty-five quarries and other sites in Australia and New Zealand.

History

In 1933 Julius Fulton and Robert Hogan were laid off from their jobs laying asphalt in the Otago area. They started a small roading business in Fairfield near Dunedin—not because they had any special expertise, but because they needed a way to make money and jobs were scarce during the Depression. Their first contract was for fixing cracks and potholes on a road between Saddle Hill and Fairfield. They registered their company as Fulton Hogan Limited in 1935.

They picked up more jobs and taught themselves the skills they needed as they went along. Fulton took on the roles of chair, accountant, manager and sales representative. Hogan led the work crews and designed and modified machinery and equipment. They grew the company to a staff of eighty people by the time Fulton retired in 1961. In the early 2000s, it moved its headquarters to Christchurch.

The company expanded greatly from the mid-1970s to early 2000s. It grew from about 170 people in 1974 to 1,000 employees in 1990 and 9,500 in the 2023.

Fulton Hogan also developed into a vertically integrated company by acquiring companies that supplied materials related to their road and construction activities. In 1973, it purchased Otago Bitumen. It also made a brief foray into diversification in 1983 when it purchased Stainless Casting, a specialised metal company. It sold the company three years later. It acquired quarries and built manufacturing facilities in New Zealand and Australia. In 2002, it acquired Standard Roads and Astec, a surfacing and quarry business. By supplying roading and other construction materials, it was able to expand beyond construction work. By 2005, when it obtained a major asphalt contract that included both the supply and placing of asphalt, it was a successful competitor to other major civil construction firms. In 2009, it purchased a 50 per cent share of Pioneer Road Services, a roading company and provider of pavement products in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It also bought out Shell New Zealand's 37 per cent interest in the company, which it had held for nearly thirty years. In 2016 Fulton Hogan formed a strategic alliance with Heijmans, a civil construction company in the Netherlands.

Impact

The founders of Fulton Hogan established several principles and practices that laid the foundation for a company culture that values its employees, suppliers, customers and the communities where it operates. For example, they wanted employees to not only feel they were important members of the company but to benefit from its activities. Thus, they initiated a shareholding plan where employees were given shares in the company long before such plans were common. The company is owned by members of the Fulton, Hogan and Johnson families and past and present employees. It also provided superannuation and medical insurance long before they were traditional employee benefits. In recognition of their achievements—including the workplace culture they cultivated—Fulton and Hogan were inducted into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame in 2014.

Fulton Hogan is committed to sustainability, the environment and safety. It has implemented measures to reduce its carbon emissions and improve its energy consumption. For example, it installed solar panels on many of its plants in Australia and has increased its use of biofuels in its facilities. It has recycled oils from restaurants, garages and other local businesses in the Canterbury area since 2005 and participates in the government's Recycled Oil Saves the Environment program. In the mid-2010s, it initiated a plan to build a sludge-drying plant in Luggate, New Zealand, that would convert sludge from sewerage systems into fertiliser. However, the plan was stalled by opponents who objected to the increased traffic the plant would bring to the area. In 2023, Fulton received a $215,000 grant from the Government's Decarbonizing Industry (GIDI) Process Heat Contestable Fund to retrofit an asphalt plant with a foaming bitumen bar, which will save 277 tonnes of carbon per year. Fulton Hogan committed to reducing its carbon footprint by 30 percent by 2030 and reaching a net carbon zero target by 2050.

Fulton Hogan has long held a Zero Harm initiative, which mandates that the company's activities result in no harm to people or the environment. That initiative was challenged during the 2011–12 fiscal year when four employees lost their lives in on-the-job accidents. The accidents involved a tractor-train collision, a truck accident and two roller collisions. Fulton Hogan revamped its approach to safety and identified areas with the greatest risk. It then implemented a new safety program to better manage those areas. To ensure understanding and compliance, it produced safety instruction cards with simple diagrams and explanations for every job process in a critical risk area. It reinforced procedures through toolbox meetings, work events and videos of employee stories.

Futon Hogan has received several awards in recognition of its commitment toward safety. In 2014 the Fulton Hogan HEB Construction Alliance won a NZ Workplace Health and Safety award for its initiative in addressing a safety hazard. Fulton Hogan's quarrying division was awarded the WorkSafe New Zealand Chief Leadership Award for the Extractives Industry in 2015. Individual employees have also been recognised for innovations that reduce risk and improve safety. For example, two Fulton Hogan quarry employees won the 2016 WorkSafe New Zealand Safety Contribution Award for designing a calculating wheel guard for machinery. A Fulton Hogan sweeper operator received the 2017 AAPA Victorian Safety Initiative Award for helping to create a sensor system that detects movement behind vehicles. The company also won the 2024 Fleet Safety Award for its Certified Safe vehicle safety programme.

In 2024, Fulton Hogan commissioned a new Marini 2500 asphalt plant in Drury. This marked the second of four Marini 2500 planned asphalt plants, supplementing its existing asphalt plants in Silverdale and Mount Wellington. The additional two plants would be constructed in Tauranga and Wellington. According to Fulton Hogan, its Marini 2500 plants require 30 per cent less energy per tonne than traditional asphalt plants, which allows for substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, according to the commissioned plant's sustainability credentials, the Drury plant will be able to produce asphalt mixes with 40 per cent recycled asphalt.

Bibliography

Fairbairn, Charles. "Towards a Zero Harm Target." Contractor Magazine, 21 June 2016, contractormag.co.nz/contractor/towards-a-zero-harm-target/. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

Fulton Hogan. www.fultonhogan.com/. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.

"Fulton Hogan Partners with Govt to Lower Asphalt Carbon Emissions." Fulton Hogan, 20 Apr. 2023, www.fultonhogan.com/fulton-hogan-partners-with-govt-to-lower-asphalt-carbon-emissions/. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

"New Asphalt Plant Lifts Capacity, Lowers CO2 Emissions." Fulton Hogan, 5 Nov. 2024, www.fultonhogan.com/new-asphalt-plant-lifts-capacity-lowers-co2-emissions/. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

Pearson, Megan, and Maria Slade. "Sons of Depression Built Roading Empire." Stuff.co.nz, 13 June 2014, www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10142044/Sons-of-Depression-built-roading-empire. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

Rae, Sally. "Fulton Hogan Founders to Join Business Hall of Fame." Otago Daily Times, 7 Aug. 2014, www.odt.co.nz/business/fulton-hogan-founders-join-business-hall-fame. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.