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| Business World Magazine |
September 2012
New Madrid smelter recently its 40th anni-
versary of operations, for instance. Being an
independent company poses a plethora of
challenges, however, and in order to ensure
Noranda thrived, Smith was called to the
plate. With his commodities background,
and his history with Apollo, he made a good
fit.
“
I was particularly attracted to Noranda
first because of the people,” Smith recalls.
“
When I walked in to the company, and I
got the chance to interview some of the se-
nior management team, and I found they
were my kind of people. That gave me great
comfort that the foundation of the culture
here was one we could grow.”
Having a good culture is of the utmost
importance to Smith and Noranda. “Rela-
tionships are right at the heart of how we
run our business,” he says. “I firmly believe
relationships are how you build sustainable
business success.”
To build an effective relationship with a
customer, Smith says there a “number of key
behavioural elements that you have to sub-
scribe to.” Many of those elements go back to
Noranda’s mantra of doing the right thing,
the right way. For example, the most im-
