John Pala

BEng (Mining), Mine Manager’s Cert of Comp.

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John is a highly experienced mining executive with over 20 years in senior operational management roles and over 25 years at the helm of Palaris providing international mining advisory services.

John’s deep operational experience underpinned with his strong commercial acumen, has delivered results for our clients world-wide and established him as a trusted advisor in the resource industry. With 45 years in the resource industry, John goes way beyond the traditional role of a mining consultant. He combines 20 years of technical, operational, and senior management experience on mines sites which provides him with a deep understanding of how to successfully run mining operations. With 25 years of running a highly successful mining advisory where he has overseen over 4000 projects across 40 countries. John delivers value through his unrelenting focus on understanding the material project risks, capitalising on opportunities, unearthing project optionality and maximisation returns.

Expertise

  • Decarbonisation Services
  • Due Diligence
  • Feasibility Studies
  • Independent Expert Advice
  • Asset Optimisation and Performance

Track Record

  • John has led over 100 strategic, operational, and business improvement reviews where the total of annual operational savings is over $1 billion. This is only overshadowed by the cost of optimisation projects, which is tenfold in terms of profit/margin impacts, that he has helped achieved for his clients.
  • Having acted for both buyers and sellers of assets, John has led due diligence teams in the evaluation of a broad range of assets, in many commodities across 40 international geographies. With involvement in over 200 due diligence projects in the past 25 years, John has a very robust and deep understanding of project ‘value drivers. He has worked with both national and international mining companies as well as international financial institutions and JV participants.
  • John has led the Palaris team to develop a decarbonisation pathway to support the energy transition. Over a 5-year period this has resulted in Palaris delivering over 75 separate decarbonisation projects.
  • John has led over 200 feasibility studies and provided technical directorship over an additional 50 studies bringing together all the elements required for a successful project delivery including processing, rail, and port. An extension of the studies process is project optimisation and John has led teams in over 1000 mine design and optimisation projects internationally.
  • His 25+ years of experience in undertaking all levels of feasibility studies from greenfield projects and brownfield expansions for both open pit and underground mines offers a unique guarantee to our clients – to help them “mine smarter.” John has an unparalleled mix of operational experience and internal industry insight backed by our up-to-date benchmarking performance data.