Global defence and energy company KBR is undergoing a major restructure, with its defence business separating to form a new company called Trinzic.
That will apply to Australia, where KBR ranks number 12 on the ADM Top 40 defence contractors, doing around $438 million of defence business in 2025.
The change was announced in the US overnight and comes into effect on January 4, 2027.
“Trinzic represents who KBR Mission Tech has always been at our core: an essential partner bringing innovation and trusted execution to the missions that matter most,” said KBR President and Chief Executive Officer Stuart Bradie.
“The new Trinzic brand represents both our strong heritage and the tremendous opportunity ahead. Our teams aim to deliver solutions that address some of the world’s most critical national priorities every day, and this new identity captures the purpose-driven culture and mission focus that we expect to continue to define the company moving forward.”
Its Australian business includes sustainment of for the Navy’s amphibious ships, and sustainment of the Air and Space Operations Command and Control system in preparation for construction of SSN AUKUS nuclear submarines.
KBR Australia will retain its Defence Infrastructure team and continue supporting defence, critical infrastructure, and energy clients through its consulting, design, and delivery capabilities.
Today it was also announced that Trinzic has been awarded the Diving, Autonomous and Signatures System Program Office (DASSPO) Capability Life Cycle Management (CLCM) contract valued at approximately A$12 million.
Among Trinzic’s Australian defence capabilities is a computer modelling system able to try out different strategic scenarios, altering different parameters to assess varying outcomes.
This has attracted significant interest from defence and government.
In one scenario, the conclusion was that the threat from foreign naval task group could be significantly diminished if their satellite communications could be jammed.
KBR Vice President Australia Defence and Security Solutions Nic Maan said the genesis of this was the 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS) and Integrated Investment Program (IIP) which talked about speed to capability, integration and a focus on sovereign capability.
That system involved technology used by the US military, with a local investment of more than $10 million.
“We've transferred, under a lot of the AUKUS exemptions, a lot of technology out to Australia and we've set it up,” he said.
“So we now can offer and work with our customer to apply these technologies to help support Defence's need to integrate faster and in a manner that supports the overall strategy.
“We're positioning ourselves as a vendor-agnostic capability partner. We already do that in the maritime space with the LHDs, supply vessels, Choules and other areas.”
Maan said that was about providing decision support to government and Defence to help them make better, faster decisions.
“And then also, once those decisions are made, how do we actually deliver capability a lot better,” he said.
"We can show them how we model and create and design effects that don't necessarily need very large capability investments but achieve very, very clear and strong effects for the Defence Force.”
KBR (Kellogg and Brown and Root) dates its history back to 1901 as an oilfield and engineering company. It was acquired by Halliburton in 1962 but separated against in 2007.
KBR will remain in Australia as an energy engineering firm specialising in remote operations.
Mark Sopp, the interim chief executive officer of KBR Defense and Mission Technology Solution, said KBR had developed cutting-edge engineering and logistical science to do what is required for very difficult remote energy projects.
He said KBR was a US$8 billion business but government defence work had actually exceeded the energy side.
“While the focus was supporting the military in faraway places and very difficult missions, it was recognised that the technology to make them successful needed to step up,” he said.
“Digital was taking off. Science was taking off. The emergence, or convergence, of physical science and digital science became very important to not only serve troops overseas, but because everything became more complex.”
“Having done that for decades and decades, in the early days….they started getting into supporting the military in a similar fashion, faraway places, difficult missions, where safety is very important and engineering and logistics are very important to serve the mission,” he said.
He said the time had come where the national security and space side of KBR could no longer be associated with the energy side.
“It’s confusing and detracts from the mission. So we’re going to spin off this national security and space piece, just like Halliburton spun off KBR.”
Edited 5 Aug