Mining and Metals
Mining has been part of our work for decades.
We work with miners, developers, contractors, private equity and mining services businesses across Australia and internationally.
Our searches range from Board and executive appointments to project, operational, functional and technical leadership. What matters is understanding the situation behind the role.
A business developing its first project needs different leadership from an established producer. A turnaround is different from a ramp-up. An underground operation presents different challenges from a large open pit or processing business.
We take time to understand that context before deciding where to look.
The Market
Copper, rare earths, mineral sands, iron ore, lithium and gold. Underground and open pit.
Mining is never one market.
Commodity, geography, project stage, operating model and ownership all influence the kind of person who may succeed.
The strongest candidate may come from the same commodity. They may also come from somewhere less obvious.
We try not to narrow the search before we understand what experience genuinely matters.
Our networks have developed over many years across mining, processing, projects and mining services.
That history helps us know where to start. Research helps us look beyond it.
Our Approach
We start with what the role needs to deliver.
The we look at where that experience is likely to sit.
That can mean searching across commodities, adjacent industries or international markets rather than simply approaching people with the closest job title.
We look carefully at what candidates have personally delivered, the scale and complexity involved, and the conditions in which they achieved it.
The aim is a considered view of the market and the people within it.
The Roles
Our mining work spans:
Board & Executive
Chair, Non-Executive Director, CEO, Managing Director and executive leadership.
Project & Operations
General Managers, Project Directors, Project Managers, Operations Managers, site leadership and other roles close to delivery.
Functional & Technical
Engineering, technical, commercial, people, finance, asset management and other specialist leadership and management appointments.
Leadership Advisory
Succession, talent mapping, assessment and market intelligence.
Not every assignment is a CEO search.
Some of the most important appointments we work on sit much closer to the operation or project. The standard of search remains the same.
Case Studies
Selected searches led by our principals
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A major resources business was building a greenfield critical minerals operation and, for the first time, delivering it under an unfamiliar project delivery model. Two firsts at once, on an asset with no tolerance for a slow start.
We searched Australia and internationally for leaders who had delivered multi-billion dollar mining and complex processing projects, rather than screening on commodity experience. The brief was built around what the first eighteen months would actually demand.
Delivery carried the weight in the assessment. The deciding question was who had personally taken a project of that size and complexity from ground to running, under a delivery model they didn't control end to end. The appointed candidate came from large complex processing and mining builds at directly comparable scale.
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Western Australia's first new salt operation in two decades, and a project of strategic importance to the state. The business was moving from construction into operations for the first time, with no existing operational team, no established systems, and no internal benchmark for what good looked like.
The appointment had to carry operational readiness and ramp-up, which is a different job to running an established asset. It calls for someone who can build a function rather than inherit one, and who can hold a team together through the least stable period an operation ever has.
Delivery and Resilience carried the weight in the assessment. The appointed leader is taking the operation through readiness and ramp-up now.
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A major lithium producer needed someone to carry commercial negotiations on supply across Asia and the Americas. The role sat at the point where production meets the market, responsible for the contracts that determine what the operation is actually worth.
This is a narrow field. The combination required is commodity marketing depth, contract negotiation at scale, and the cultural fluency to hold long-term relationships across two very different regions. Most candidates have two of the three.
Direction and Engagement carried the weight here. Commercial judgement under incomplete information, and the ability to build trust with counterparties who have every reason to test it.
Mining and Metals
If you are thinking about an appointment, succession or simply want another perspective on the market, we are happy to talk.