2 weeks Ago
Blake Allen isn’t a professional athlete, but he’s keeping a very close eye on the 2032 Brisbane Olympics . The founder of BRC Roofing and Cladding Australia is currently headhunting in Queensland ahead of a planned expansion into the state in the next 12 months. His company is hoping to play a key role in supporting the infrastructure projects needed for the games , which will take place in eight years’ time.
Expanding to a new state will be an important milestone for Allen. He knows his eight-figure business is achieving things that nobody else is in his industry. As a 100% Indigenous-owned contractor, BRC is building much more than roofing for commercial and industrial clients.
Allen is focused on creating multi-generational change by training and supporting as many Aboriginal workers as he can through the business. “We want to be building and working on the projects that literally put this country on the map,” he says. “I want Aboriginal boys and directors [to be] a part of these builds.
” Over the past 11 years, BRC has notched up work on more than 400 projects across New South Wales and counts companies like Amazon and Bunnings among its clients. Allen has even bigger ambitions for the operation, determined to build it into a major roofing industry player over the next two decades. “We’re here to take over the whole industry in the next 20 years, and we just so happen to be an Aboriginal business,” he says.
But it’s been a long road to get to this point — when Allen was a teenager, it was not completely clear he was headed for a life of entrepreneurship. When he moved to Sydney to stay with his older brother at the age of 16, Allen says he was “just going down the wrong path”, not attending schooling and without a job. “We joke about it in the family that I came up to Sydney with a backwards cap and a big chain on,” Allen says.
“I had nothing but bad habits, really.” But he started a roofing and tiling apprenticeship and before long was upskilling in carpentry and metal roofing, too. By 20, he was running the day-to-day operations of someone else’s business as a supervisor, before going out on his own at the age of 23.
As his company grew, he immediately saw the impact he could have by hiring others from his community and showing the power of Indigenous-owned businesses. “I’ve been offering Aboriginal kids jobs for the last nine years, pretty much ever since I could put people on,” Allen says. “It’s been a very long journey to where we are now.
.. But now people know us, and they know this Aboriginal owner, and this Aboriginal brand, and their social corporate responsibility.
” Diversifying to boost impact Despite only being 10 years into his business journey, Allen is already thinking about the impact BRC will have for decades to come. His current focus is diversifying the company’s operations with the hope of soon becoming the nation’s first-ever Indigenous-owned roofing supply chain business, covering everything from materials manufacturing operations to project management and product installation. As the business has grown, it has worked with First Australians Capital (FAC), which supports First Nations founders and has backing from high-profile investors.
The group is backed by global businesses including fintech giant Block, which invested $3 million in FAC in 2023 through Block’s social impact fund. BRC’s relationship with FAC has allowed the company to access working capital support as it has chased new revenue streams, including providing roofing maintenance services for the NSW government. Investing in more materials manufacturing capabilities will give BRC more control, Allen says.
“We’ve had to deal with the markets and the bigger guys having buying power,” he says. “We’ve had to fight that journey. When we have our own supply chain, we control our own destiny.
“I think as an Aboriginal business and people, that is what we are striving to do here at BRC more than anything else: not be sitting back and letting other people decide what happens in our community, for our people, or for our business.” Allen is eager for his 14-year-old son and younger family members to one day join him in the business. Seeing his staff develop is the best part of the job – and he wants his team and future generations to be the biggest winners from the company’s growth.
“I believe as we really do take it to the next level, the people who have been here and stuck by me, they’re probably going to benefit the most.” Never miss a story: sign up to SmartCompany’s free daily newsletter and find our best stories on LinkedIn ..
