Three Hancock-named companies entered liquidation. The projects behind them were sold to GVK in 2011

Three companies carrying the Hancock name entered creditors’ voluntary liquidation on 5 October.

Hancock Coal Infrastructure Pty Ltd (ACN 132 394 122) appointed Guy Anthony Baxendale. Its notice was published that day. ASIC notice

Hancock Kevin’s Corner Pty Ltd (ACN 132 394 131) and Hancock Galilee Pty Ltd (ACN 136 381 970) appointed David Lewis Clout and Scott Matthew Clout. Their notices were published on 6 October. ASIC notice ASIC notice

The names point toward Hancock Prospecting.

The ownership story points somewhere else.

In 2011, India’s GVK group agreed to pay US$1.26 billion for interests in Hancock’s Galilee Basin coal and infrastructure projects.

At the time of the sale, Hancock Prospecting retained minority interests in separate Alpha mine companies. GVK acquired 100% of Kevin’s Corner and 100% of the associated rail and port infrastructure interests.

The three companies now in liquidation formed part of the interests GVK acquired outright in the 2011 transaction.

And their records trace three different pieces of one enormous development plan.

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Kevin’s Corner was supposed to become a $6 billion coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.

Queensland’s Office of the Coordinator-General describes a combined open-cut and underground operation designed to produce as much as 30 million tonnes of coal a year.

The plan included two open-cut areas, three underground mining areas, coal-processing infrastructure, accommodation, water and waste systems, a 2.5 km runway, a 17.8 km rail spur and an eight-kilometre access road.

But the mine was only one part of the system.

A new railway was supposed to carry the coal hundreds of kilometres east.

At Abbot Point, additional port infrastructure was supposed to put it onto ships.

The three companies now in liquidation can be traced across those pieces.

Hancock Kevin’s Corner sat on the exploration side of the mine.

Hancock Galilee sat on the mine-development side.

Hancock Coal Infrastructure sat on the transport side.

That distinction matters because primary records still attach identifiable rights, applications or approvals to all three parts of the structure.

Queensland’s tenure records, as at 7 August 2026, still listed Hancock Galilee against two Kevin’s Corner interests.

One was a granted mineral development licence covering about 31,507 hectares, with an expiry date of 30 September 2027.

The other was the 37,380-hectare Kevin’s Corner mining lease application.

Queensland Parliament’s 2024 record identifies that application as ML 70425 and gives its original lodgement date as 18 December 2009.

The August 2026 tenure records were still classifying it as an application.

That was almost 17 years after it was lodged.

The same August tenure records listed Hancock Kevin’s Corner against a granted coal exploration permit with an expiry date of 17 September 2029.

Those records do not tell us whether a liquidator can sell, transfer or extract value from those interests.

They establish something simpler.

Less than two months before the liquidations, Queensland was still recording live coal tenure against both Kevin’s Corner companies.

Kevin’s Corner did not simply sit untouched in an approvals queue.

It went through years of environmental and legal assessment.

The project obtained Commonwealth environmental approval in 2013.

Its mining lease objections eventually reached the Queensland Land Court, which in 2017 recommended that the lease be granted subject to the relevant conditions.

But the recommendation was not the same thing as a granted mining lease.

When Queensland’s Department of Resources gave Parliament a list of mining lease applications awaiting approval as at 30 June 2024, the Kevin’s Corner application was still on it.

The department said mining lease applications can remain unresolved for many reasons, including environmental processes, Native Title, compensation negotiations, overlapping tenure and departmental assessment.

It did not say which issue or issues applied to Kevin’s Corner.

Two years later, Queensland’s August 2026 tenure records were still listing the application.

Weeks after that, Hancock Galilee entered liquidation.

Kevin’s Corner became extraordinarily detailed on paper.

An air-quality study prepared for the project modelled individual classes of mining equipment.

For overburden hauling, it used a Caterpillar 797B.

The model gave the truck an empty mass of 279 tonnes and a payload of 345 tonnes.

Fully loaded, it weighed 624 tonnes.

The same work modelled other haul trucks, draglines, excavators, stockpiles and tailings areas.

That does not mean Hancock Galilee bought a fleet of 797Bs.

The equipment was part of the proposed mine plan.

The project documents describe a proposed mine, not an operating one, and none of them records a mining fleet bought and waiting for a liquidator to sell.

The value, if any remains, may instead sit in the rights and project work accumulated around a mine that has not been built.

The third company did not hold the Kevin’s Corner mining tenure.

Its role was infrastructure.

ASIC’s register records Hancock Alpha Coal Pty Ltd as a former name of Hancock Coal Infrastructure.

By the time of the GVK transaction, Queensland’s Coordinator-General described Hancock Coal Infrastructure as the company through which GVK acquired 100% of the Alpha Coal rail project.

The proposed railway was approximately 495 kilometres long, running from the Galilee Basin towards Abbot Point.

Kevin’s Corner was also intended to use that railway.

Together, the Alpha and Kevin’s Corner projects were expected to consume its proposed 60 million tonne annual capacity.

There is no evidence that Hancock Coal Infrastructure ultimately built the 495 km railway.

Nor should the proposed corridor be treated as 495 km of land owned by the company.

Its more concrete rights appear at the other end of the proposed route.

North Queensland Bulk Ports recorded Hancock Coal Infrastructure as a preferred developer for a proposed new terminal at Abbot Point.

Then, on 4 October 2012, the Commonwealth issued an environmental approval for Terminal 3.

The approval names the holder as:

Hancock Coal Infrastructure Pty Ltd.

It also gives the exact ACN of the company now in liquidation.

The approved action covered construction of a coal terminal including offshore jetty and berth infrastructure, onshore coal stockpiles and associated infrastructure.

The approval was written to have effect until 1 September 2053.

That does not mean Hancock Coal Infrastructure entered liquidation holding a fully usable or readily saleable right to build a terminal.

The proposed Terminal 3 development did not proceed as originally planned.

The present legal and commercial value of the Commonwealth approval has not yet been established.

But the attribution is direct: the approval was granted to the exact company that entered liquidation on 5 October.

That leaves Hancock Coal Infrastructure with a different asset question from the two Kevin’s Corner companies.

For Hancock Galilee, Queensland was still recording development tenure and a mining lease application.

For Hancock Kevin’s Corner, Queensland was still recording an exploration permit.

For Hancock Coal Infrastructure, the paper trail includes the proposed railway, preferred-developer arrangements at Abbot Point and a Commonwealth terminal approval issued directly to the company.

None of that proves what the liquidators will ultimately regard as a realisable asset.

It does show why these companies should not be dismissed as empty names simply because the physical mine, railway and terminal were not built.

The Australian liquidations also sit below a much larger financial problem.

GVK Power & Infrastructure’s audited 2026 accounts say GVK Coal Developers, the Singapore company associated with GVK’s Australian coal acquisition, had current liabilities exceeding current assets by about US$3.193 billion and accumulated losses of about US$1.982 billion at March 2026.

The filing also records debt defaults and an English court order involving approximately US$2.19 billion including interest. GVK records its position disputing the enforceability of that order in India.

GVK Power & Infrastructure itself had already entered India’s corporate insolvency process in 2024.

That is important context.

It is not evidence of what directly caused the three Australian companies to enter liquidation.

The notices published so far do not set out their creditor balances, asset values or the directors’ explanation for the October appointments.

Those answers should come from the liquidators.

They weren’t.

The better question is what remains.

Does Hancock Galilee’s coal tenure or mining lease application retain value?

What rights remain with Hancock Kevin’s Corner?

Does anything commercially useful survive from Hancock Coal Infrastructure’s Terminal 3 approval or old development arrangements?

Are there project datasets, engineering work, contractual rights, receivables or related-party balances still sitting inside the companies?

Or, after fifteen years of delay and financial distress, is there very little left to realise?

The insolvency notices do not answer those questions.

The first substantive liquidator reports might.

Choose the companies or sectors you care about. Administrations, winding-up applications, name changes and other distress events arrive tied to the legal entity behind them.

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If you are owed money by a company in an insolvency process and are unsure which entity you dealt with: They owe me money

We publish public-record information, not advice. The liquidators are the authoritative source on the three Australian liquidations. Nothing here is a statement about the solvency of Hancock Prospecting Pty Limited or any company not expressly identified in this article, or about any party's claim.