Independent confidence to commit capital to the right processing technology and minerals projects, where technical judgement and rigorous economics decide the outcome.
“Damien brought a rare combination of deep technical expertise and commercial judgement to our critical materials work. Over an 18-month program he assessed a complex portfolio of global mining and processing projects, cutting through technical detail to give us a clear, risk-adjusted view of where the real supply risks and opportunities lay. His insight into novel processing and project ramp-up was invaluable — it gave us the confidence to make better-informed investment and sourcing decisions, and to build the right internal capability. I’d work with Damien again without hesitation.”Executive Director, Purchasing & Supply Chain, Global Automotive OEM
“Damien and Grant led the technical due diligence on our project for one of our major international investors. Even as the company that was being assessed, I was struck by the rigour and independence of their work — among the most thorough and credible technical reviews I’ve seen. We greatly benefited from the rigour of the process and the insights arising from it. They combine technical depth with sharp commercial judgement, and earned the trust of everyone at the table.”Dr Stephen Grocott — former CEO, Queensland Pacific Metals; Independent Consultant.
Over an 18-month program, we led technical due diligence across a global automotive OEM's EV critical-materials portfolio: the mining, refining and processing projects underpinning its battery supply. The aim was to give the OEM confidence in its investment decisions and a realistic, risked view of future supply. We mapped how critical minerals were being sourced, critically reviewed the technical evidence behind each contracted project — preliminary economic assessments, pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, and the due-diligence reviews carried out by other consulting firms — and built a project-by-project view of technical risk and realistic production ramp-up. The work spanned:
It shaped the OEM's investment staging, offtake timing and team design.
The bespoke risk framework and ramp-up assessment tool built for this program is now a proven, reusable HIC asset for project and portfolio due diligence.
We led a structured technical due diligence of a novel nickel-cobalt processing project for a global automotive OEM weighing continued investment. We built a comprehensive diligence questionnaire of 147 questions spanning the full value chain and assessed the technology-maturity readiness of each of the 49-unit operations in the proposed metallurgical process, then tested the findings with an independent expert and a project-team workshop. The result was a clear, evidence-based investment recommendation and a defined path to bankable feasibility.
Working with Hatch, we led the desktop evaluation of step-change processing technologies for a tier-one miner targeting a 50% improvement in the energy, cost and recovery intensity of its copper and nickel operations. We screened and prioritised options with the asset teams — coarse-particle and in-grind flotation, ore sorting, novel comminution — and built tailored brownfield and greenfield flowsheets, modelling each for recovery, throughput, capex and opex. It identified integrated technology suites worth over a billion dollars in NPV at around three-year paybacks, with a prioritised roadmap of testwork to follow.
We helped a major iron-ore producer find a way to get more tonnes at lower cost from a processing plant that was running unstably and producing excess wet, sticky ultrafines. Conventional crushing and screening models rest on particle-level inputs that can never truly be known, so instead we forensically analysed the plant's own operating history as a natural experiment, with a first-principles mass-and-energy balance to quantify the prize. This pinpointed the root cause: a tertiary crusher recirculation circuit that, as the feed ore changed, had drifted to a 150% recycle ratio, re-grinding already-acceptable material and overloading the crushers, conveyors and screens. By decommissioning the circuit we estimated a 40 to 60% decrease in load on the downstream circuit, lifting annualised production at lower cost while delivering a coarser, lower-moisture product. The work also showed ore source was a material driver of performance, pointing to ore blending as a further lever.
Same methodology, different problem: custom techno-economic models exposing the drivers behind complex, capital-intensive decisions. See value-led decarbonisation.