Mark has over 30 years experience, providing strategic advice on metal markets, exploration, development projects, operating mines and corporate development. Mark's expertise includes asset evaluation, benchmarking and optimisation, and encompasses, geology, mining, ore processing, and mining finance. He has conducted investment appraisals of numerous companies, mining projects and mining sector services businesses.

Prior to co-founding Skarn, Mark led the metals & mining consulting business at SNL Financial.

His career started in 1987 as an exploration geologist with Anglo American Corporation in Southern Africa. He went on to work for junior diamond and gold explorers in West and East Africa. He subsequently spent 13 years at Brook Hunt & Associates Ltd (now Wood Mackenzie) where he held the position of Director with primary responsibility for bespoke consulting work. From 2009 Mark was Managing Director of GFMS Mine Economics Limited, a business co-founded with GFMS Limited, which was sold to Thomson Reuters in 2011.

Charles has over 25 years of mining industry consulting experience. He started his career as a geologist, before joining Brook Hunt where he worked as a senior mining analyst for nearly 10 years. Following this he worked as a sell-side analyst for a number of London leading investment banks including Evolution Securities and Oriel Securities.

Charles was previously Research Director at S&P Global Market Intelligence (previously SNL) where he was responsible for developing mine economic analysis. In addition he undertook numerous bespoke consulting projects. Prior to this Charles was Managing Director of The Gold Mining Company Ltd, an investment vehicle focused on acquiring operating gold mines in West Africa. Charles was also CEO of several private exploration companies targeting oil shale, gold and potash assets. He graduated from University of Wales Cardiff in Geology (B.Sc. Hons) and has an M.Sc. in Mineral Project Appraisal from University of Imperial College (London).

Charles' expertise ranges from mine and royalty valuation, commodity supply-demand analysis, technical due diligence, debt and equity financing to corporate strategy.

Sophie's expertise ranges from financial valuation of individual assets and companies to dynamic modelling of global mine supply and costs, risk analysis for projects and strategic advice on business development. Sophie holds a B.Sc. Hons. in geology and physics from University of Toronto, Canada.

As principal copper analyst at Rio Tinto, Sophie led the team providing long term price forecasts. She also provided bespoke advice and modelling for the copper business development team and the economics team.

At Wood Mackenzie, Sophie managed the copper cost service and provided consulting expertise for a wide spectrum of clients, from project risk management to asset valuation and benchmarking. Prior to joining Wood Mackenzie, Sophie worked in equity research at Desjardins Capital Markets, covering the majors and mid-caps on the Toronto stock exchange, in addition to assisting the corporate development team with due diligence on mining assets.

As an ecologist, Martin has worked for 40 years bringing together governments, businesses and conservation organisations to work on a shared sustainability agenda. He has extensive experience of collaborative work on sustainability in the extractives, energy, agriculture and tropical commodities.

He has worked closely with companies such as Rio Tinto and BP, sector associations like IPIECA and ICMM, and international agencies like the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation and the United Nations. Martin has also been involved for 30+ years developing global and national policies on the environment, and on how environmental issues are mainstreamed into other sector policies.

Besides his work with Skarn, Martin is the MD of Conservation Policy & Practice Ltd, Senior Advisor on Business & Biodiversity at BirdLife International, Director of Sustainability at Bloomsbury Minerals Economics, Co-chair of the Strategy & Objectives Working Group of the Global Platform on Sustainable Natural Rubber.

Martin is a member of the CBD Extended Working Group on Mainstreaming sustainability and of CEMEX International's Global Advisory Group, and the Advisory Committee of the Concrete Sustainability Council. He has a Postgraduate Diploma in Environment & Geography from the University of Hertfordshire and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Zoology from University College London.

Raymond is a Dutch Mining and Metallurgical engineer with postgraduate environmental engineering studies, with well over 20 years international experience in project development, design and engineering, technologies and business development for water management in the mining industry.

His experience is very versatile and covers water supply, effluent treatment, integrated water management and governance. Raymond has successfully fulfilled leading responsibilities with several of the major global consulting groups, in areas such as Project Management, Consultancy and Design, Due Diligence, Business Development, and Product Management.

Fernando holds a BSc (Hons) in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Chile.

At Wood Mackenzie Fernando performed a variety of roles, starting as a copper smelter and refinery cost analyst, then heading the EMEARC region metals research team, managing most of the global team in M&M. He then led the global data team for M&M where he was responsible for data strategy and maintaining client-facing tools and models. His expertise ranges across dynamic modelling of chemical processes to asset valuation, supply and cost modelling.

Prior to joining Wood Mackenzie Fernando worked at Codelco, where he specialised in mathematical modelling of smelting processes, long-, medium- and short-term production planning, development project valuations and continuous improvement. Fernando was also responsible for the continuous operation and production of the Anode casting section at Caletones smelter.

Lucent Nicholson has over 17 years of analyst and processing engineering experience in the mining and metals industry covering multiple sectors including the base metals, aluminium and PGMs

Before joining Skarn Associates, Lucent spent 13 years at CRU working in a number of analyst roles, most recently as Head of Base Metals Costs. He was instrumental in the design of costs and carbon emission models and the supply platform in the base metals team.

Lucent began his career at Alcoa's Clarendon Alumina Works in Jamaica, where he was the process engineer responsible for their Thickener and Filtration circuits.

Matthew has over 14 years of metal markets experience spanning 25+ base & precious metals, bulks, industrial minerals and energy transition commodities. Matthew has worked on various aspects of the industry including supply side forecasting, supply chain analysis, cost benchmarking and demand forecasting.

Before joining Skarn, Matthew was Head of Consulting at Roskill, where he worked on a variety of consulting projects and market studies across industrial minerals, battery and base metals for private, public and governmental institutions. Prior to that, Matthew was Head of Metals & Mining Industry Research at S&P Global Market Intelligence, where he ran the markets, mine economics and exploration study research teams and developed the company's suite of metals and mining content.

Matthew graduated from University College London with an MSci (Hons) in Geology.

Kate is Head of Commercial at Skarn Associates and is focused on nurturing all current and future client relationships.  She brings over 20 years’ experience as a commercial leader having worked with clients and companies from around the world across a variety of industries.

Prior to joining Skarn, Kate was with SNL Financial and S&P Global where she oversaw global sales and relationship management teams supporting clients such as commercial banks, insurance companies, regulatory and government agencies, buy and sell side institutions, industry and trade organisations and companies in the metals & mining space.

John has over 30 years of experience in the smelting industries and joins us to provide support in the development of our ESG smelting capability. This will allow Skarn to look at smelting assets from technical, economic and environmental bases.

John worked for the last 13 years at Wood Mackenzie where he was responsible for their smelter analysis in terms of costs, revenues and emissions. Before this he was at Minton, Treharne & Davies where he worked as a metallurgical consultant dealing with projects ranging from fire and water damage to theft of cargoes across the metals and coal/coke space. He had worked at the Britannia Zinc smelter in the UK for 10 years serving in a number of technical and commercial positions. Upon leaving Birmingham University, where he had gained a PhD in Chemical Engineering, John worked for British Steel investigating process developments to produce steel without coke.

David is the Principal of Cuprite Consulting, which he established in 2012. David consults on a wide range of commodities including copper, molybdenum, zinc, nickel, tungsten, lithium, and coal. On extended contract with the Klesch Group in 2016, David worked on M&A origination in the metals and mining sector. David briefly headed CRU's Copper Consulting Group over 2018 and 2019, with prior consultancy for CRU relating to the copper semis sector.

David started his career with Anglo American in South Africa as a mineral processing engineer at Vaal Reefs gold and uranium mine. He has an MSc in Mineral Production Management from the Royal School of Mines and subsequently spent 24 years with Brook Hunt and Wood Mackenzie heading up its Metals Cost Research team, specialising in the copper industry. David subsequently joined Lundin Mining as Mining Economist where he applied Value Based Management principles to operational strategy.

Martin Haller is Director of Haller Metals Economics, which he established in 2013 as a boutique consultancy specialising in the aluminium industry from bauxite to semi-fabricated products. Martin has over 30 years' experience in the aluminium industry, ranging from aluminium market analysis and equity research to bespoke consulting assignments. His consulting assignments include advising on raw material contract pricing, aluminium off-take agreements, socio-economic impact of greenfield smelters, pre-feasibility work for smelters, refineries and downstream facilities, valuation exercises and model verification.

Martin started his career at CRU, researching aluminium semis and end-use markets. Later he moved to the brokerage side of Dresdner Kleinwort where he was manager of metals and mining equity research. He later worked in Billiton with the Mergers & Acquisitions team. Subsequently he spent 11 years at Brook Hunt/ Wood Mackenzie, as Manager of Aluminium Research and Consulting.

Michael has over 15 years experience in the metals sector covering exploration and mining operations as a geologist and geotechnical engineer, and as an industry analyst covering base and precious metal supply forecasting, cost analysis and research, including uranium and battery materials.

Prior to joining Skarn Associates, Michael spent almost 10 years working in the metal exploration and mining industry in Ireland and Australia with a particular focus on gold, nickel, zinc and lead operations and projects. Michael then joined the Metals and Mining Research team of S&P Global Market Intelligence as an analyst progressing to Senior Analyst leading the mine economics team, where he covered mine-level supply forecasts and production costs for a range of metals.

Michael graduated from Trinity College, University of Dublin, with a B.A. Mod. Geology.

James holds an MSci in Physics and a PhD in Mineral Physics from University College London (UCL).

His PhD thesis focused on computational modelling of Earth mantle materials at high pressures and temperatures. The aim of his research was to calculate physical properties of the mantle, and ultimately begin to answer fundamental questions about the evolution of the Earth over billions of years.

James is now applying his vast research and analysis expertise to modelling energy and carbon emissions from mines all over the world.

Tom started his work on water while completing research at the University of Aberdeen. He then went on to work at Northumbrian Water before coming to Skarn Associates.

Tom’s expertise is in hydrological modelling, data analysis and data visualisation. He holds two degrees in physical geography and has a passion for water sustainability. 

Tom has a B.S.C. in Mining engineering from Camborne School of Mines. He has worked as a graduate engineer at BHP NiWest Leinster as well as Development Engineer A&I (analysis and improvement) at Olympic Dam Mine.

Tom is currently building detailed technically-driven energy and emissions models for a range of mines and companies.

Zoe Joined Skarn associates in 2022. She is responsible for the development and implementation of Skarn's marketing strategy and day to day management of Skarn's public channels, newsletters and events. Prior to joining Skarn Associates, Zoe was the Marketing Director for Open Mineral during its highly successful Series C round of Fundraising. Zoe was also the lead marketing executive for Roskill, developing knowledge on over 40 metals and minerals within the mining supply chain. She is experienced in digital marketing, partner development, PR and copywriting. Zoe is fluent in French.

Paul has more than twenty years' experience in the mining sector in investor relations, communications, research and news reporting roles. Paul has twelve years' experience in the Colombia gold sector including investor relations roles with Continental Gold, Gran Colombia Gold and Mineros. Paul founded the successful Colombia Gold Symposium in 2016 and has written for industry-leading publication Mining Journal since 2015. Previously, Paul spent five years in Chile reporting and analysing the copper sector for CRU and Metal Bulletin.

Paul received a BA in Business Administration from the University of the West of England, UK; and a MA in International Relations from the University of Chile, Santiago Chile. He is fluent in English and Spanish.

Elen studied at the University of Birmingham and the University of the Highlands & Islands and has previously worked within the maritime, medical and legal sectors.

Elen is currently undertaking corporate reviews and the analysis of company ESG targets and strategies.

Rachel has a BSc in Economics, and studied Operational Research at the University of Edinburgh. She worked for British Steel for more than 10 years in systems and product analysis, and in operations scheduling.