Phil Newman - Chief Executive Officer - London, UK
Phil has 21 years experience in the mining and mine engineering industry. He has wide project management experience of multi-disciplinary teams across different countries and cultures.
For many projects, Phil often develops and facilitates workshops with clients related to a final deliverable. These can vary from a strategic review of a particular market entry policy to a general commodity outlook; workshops on project risk have proven popular. The objective of such workshops is to ensure that the work completed (or ongoing) by CRU Strategies is openly debated and challenged and that the goal and objectives of the client are met with respect to the particular commission.
Phil has a multi-commodity focus and has completed many projects for companies that service the mining and metals industry, such as infrastructure providers, power companies and equipment / consumable manufacturers.
Other project experience includes strategic reviews of the iron ore industry with a particular emphasis on the emerging pellet feed market; understanding environmental legacy risks associated with the mining and metals industry and general market issues associated with the base and precious metals industry.
Mining experience and operations exposure was gained during 10 years at Golder Associates where Phil was a recognised international expert in the field of paste technology and tailings management. Phil has worked in over 30 countries worldwide and has a Masters degree from McGill University, Montreal.
Robin Adams - Managing Consultant - Seattle, USA
Robin has been working as a market research analyst, economic forecaster and, most recently, management consultant in the global metals and mining industry since 1973. He is currently a Senior Managing Consultant for CRU Strategies where he leads the negotiation support practice area. He also has a continuing responsibility for CRU Group’s intellectual property, including its Compass™ long-term price forecasting methodology and its Value Based Costing (VBC™) approach to business strategy, asset valuation, and performance improvement at mining, beneficiation and metallurgical operations of all kinds.
Robin led the development of CRU Strategies’ approach to managing mining operations from a capital productivity perspective to increase shareholder value. He has developed benchmarking concepts and linked these to performance measurement systems at iron ore and base metal mines, aluminium smelters, aluminium, stainless steel and steel rolling mills and other metallurgical facilities. He is a specialist in the development of Monte Carlo simulation models that integrate technical, economic and political risk assessments for the purpose of project decision-making and finance and asset valuations. He also has extensive experience with a similar approach to the application of bargaining zone theory in strategically important contract negotiations such as electricity contracts for aluminium smelters and marketing off-take agreements.
Robin was Vice President, Metals, Mining and Shipping at Chase Econometrics, a subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase, from 1976 to 1983. He was the founding President of Resource Strategies Inc which merged with CRU in 1996 to create what is now CRU Strategies. He was educated in Zimbabwe and at Oxford University, England, where he holds the degree of MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
Sola Adebiyi - Senior Consultant - London, UK
Sola joined CRU Strategies in 2011 from CRU’s Aluminium Business Unit, where she was responsible for research in the aluminium products market. She was editor of the Aluminium Products Monitor and Flat Rolled Products Quarterly reports and regularly contributed to the Aluminium Monitor, Aluminium Quarterly and Long Term Aluminium report. She also worked on the Aluminium Rolling Cost report and market outlooks for foil, extrusions and beverage packaging materials.
Since joining CRU Strategies, she has worked on a number of Strategy and Valuation projects covering the aluminium scrap, flat rolled aluminium products, beverage can stock, alumina and bauxite markets. She participated in CRU’s workshop at the 2012 CRU Global Aluminium Conference and has also worked on projects covering the potash and ferrosilicon markets.
Sola holds a BSc Chemistry and Business Studies degree and an MSc in Engineering Business Management from the University of Warwick.
Dane Davis - Research Analyst - Seattle, USA
Dane joined CRU Strategies in the summer of 2012. Since then, Dane has had a multi-commodity focus, working on projects in steel, iron ore, potash, and phosphate rock. As a part of this work, he has completed extensive research into the overall structure and details of the iron ore and potash industries. In addition to his work on due diligence and market forecasting for these commodities, he has also had experience with contract support negotiations and long run forecasting models. Dane has assisted in the modelling of capital cost estimates, mining asset valuations, and operating expenditures. He has worked within CRU’s London office to develop and implement CRU’s long run volume and price forecasting models.
Dane has a M.Sc. (Merit) in European Political Economy from the London School of Economics and a dual major BA in Global Politics and Economics from Washington and Lee University. Prior to working at CRU, Dane worked for think tanks and political organizations both in the US and the UK.
Juan Esteban Fuentes - Principal Consultant - Santiago, Chile
Since joining CRU Strategies, Juan Esteban has been involved in developing methodologies to quantify and mitigate risks in mining and mineral processing operations.
Prior to CRU, Juan Esteban worked for six years as Assistant Vice President at Citigroup within the Metals and Mining group, performing risk analysis for the main Chilean mining companies such as Codelco, Escondida, Collahuasi, Sur Andes, Mantos Blancos, Pelambres, Tesoro and Enami. Transactions with these clients involved corporate bank loans, syndicated loans and bond emissions
Juan Esteban holds a BSc in Industrial Civil Engineering from the Catholic University of Chile and is fluent in English and Spanish.
Rebecca Gordon - Managing Consultant - London, UK
Rebecca joined CRU Strategies in 1995 and has worked on and managed many single client consultancy projects across a broad range of metals and subjects. From 2004 until 2007, Rebecca was Practice Area Leader for the Performance Improvement Practice and in particular developed this business in South America. Between 2007 and 2010, Rebecca spent time as Head of Business Development within CRU focusing on internal improvement projects including introducing an internal investment approvals process. In 2010, Rebecca returned to CRU Strategies and has taken charge of the group’s Strategy Practice.
Rebecca has managed a wide variety of projects include corporate planning reviews, management training workshops and projects on implementation of maintenance outsourcing and value based management key performance indicators. Rebecca is an expert on the labour related aspects of performance improvement. The project teams for these projects have included many external consultancies and subcontractors requiring a high degree of project management expertise. Rebecca has also provided strategic consultancy to clients, including acquisition and disposal recommendations on assets in India, China and Australia and metal purchasing advice for an automotive supplier.
Rebecca holds both an MA and an MEng in production engineering from Cambridge University and an MBA from IMD, Switzerland. She is fluent in French and has conversational German and Spanish.
Ian Hiscock - Senior Consultant - London, UK
Whilst at CRU, Ian has been involved in IPO support, commercial due diligence as well as projects on business strategy and government policy. Working across different business units within CRU, he has contributed to, and been responsible for a number of consultancy assignments, regular publications and technical models, covering a range of commodities, including uranium, iron ore, copper, cobalt, sulphur and sulphuric acid.
Ian holds the position of Business Manager for Upstream Steel Consultancy. He is also project manager for CRU's annual uranium publications - the Mining Cost Service and Market Outlook.
Ian holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Essex, in the United Kingdom.
Mukesh Kumar - Senior Consultant - Mumbai, India
Mukesh Kumar is a Senior Consultant in the CRU Mumbai office. Prior to joining CRU, Mukesh worked with Hatch Associates Limited (UK) for close to five years and was involved in market and industry analysis, competitive environment analysis and strategy development for metals and steel industry. The projects that he had been involved in while working with Hatch had focus on both upstream as well as downstream value chain of metals and steel industry. He has a good understanding of the mining and metals industry through the value chain. Prior to joining Hatch, Mukesh worked with Steel Authority of India Limited for three years and was involved in managing iron ore mine operations and mine development.
Mukesh has approximately eight years of operations and consulting experience in metals and steel industry.
Mukesh holds a Mining Engineering degree from ISM Dhanbad and MBA from University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Alex Laugharne - Senior Consultant - London, UK
Since joining CRU Strategies, Alex has worked on a wide variety of projects across numerous commodities. This includes considerable experience in the iron ore market, where Alex has been involved with several deposits’ pre-feasibility studies, performing value-in-use calculations and market outlooks for prospective mines in Northern Europe, Western Australia, Sierra Leone, Greenland and the Middle East, as well as writing comprehensive and up to date introductions to the iron ore and steel industries from a lender’s perspective.
Alex has also gained experience across other industries, from profiling costs and benchmarking power contracts for aluminium smelters, to preparing business plans based upon detailed valuations of a hydroelectric dam and a struggling copper smelter/refinery.
More recently, Alex has been heavily involved in the completion of two very long term outlooks for the steel industry across the whole value chain, focusing primarily on the modelling of regional steel demand to 2050 and the risk to market participants posed by the potential for a significant increase in Chinese scrap generation and hence demand for primary raw materials. This has involved extensive first-hand research into the scrap industry within China.
Alex graduated with an MEng in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nottingham in 2007.
Rolando Lay - Senior Consultant - Santiago, Chile
Rolando started his career in CRU Analysis in early 2008 working in the Steel Business Unit in London, specifically in the design and development of the nickel industry cost model (Nickel & Chrome team). After this, he joined the CRU Strategies team in Santiago and participated in several projects for mining producers and investment entities in Chile and Latin America, mainly focused on performance improvement, cost model analysis, risk assessments and mineral market analysis.
Later he continued working in a different company in Chile providing consulting to major mining operations and government entities, including market analysis, risk management, mining project evaluation, real option valuation, stochastic analysis for strategic mine plan selection, evaluation tools development and technical tender design for the Chile government.
Rolando holds a BSc in Industrial Civil Engineering and an MEng in Mineral Economics from the Catholic University of Chile. He is fluent in English and Spanish.