Clayton Franklin
Founder and owner of EPCA, Clayton Franklin is a TÜV Certified Electrical Engineer with over 25 years’ experience in mining and construction.

Clayton completed his Bachelors Degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering with Honours in 1997 and has carried electrical engineering for major Australian mining companies ever since. While skilled in Electrical Design, Project Implementation, Process Control, Control Systems Design and Functional Safety (TUV certified Engineer), Clayton also holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Curtin University.

He is a Wunumara man from Cloncurry, Queensland, born to an Indigenous mother (Carol Appo) and a European father (Maurice Franklin). His grandfather, Jack Hassen, attained the Australian Lightweight boxing title in 1949, and was also an elder of the Kaldadoon mob. He grew up on his father’s organic banana farm and from a young age was inventing new technologies to assist the farm. Together with his father who is a mechanical engineer, they electrified a petrol-driven 4-wheeler which still runs to this day and achieves true net zero emissions with the vehicle charged by the farm’s solar PV system.

Clayton is immensely proud of his heritage and is a strong advocate for his community, dedicating much of his career supporting rural communities. In 2004, Clayton joined Bushlight which supplied renewables, predominately in the form of solar coupled with batteries and generator backup, to remote Aboriginal communities. Clayton was solely responsible for the design and product improvements and carried out a multi-disciplinary role. Bushlight installed over 140 systems into remote Aboriginal communities from Kununurra to Cairns and in 2006, won the Engineers Excellence Award for Australia.

Recently Clayton was the lead engineer on a 220-tonne Hydrogen-battery hybrid mining truck and also for a D65 Epiroc drill rig that was electrified.

Clayton founded EPCA in 2021 alongside three engineering specialists with the overall goal of providing diesel to electric conversions for mining equipment supplied in kit form, for changeout anywhere in the world.