The first thing to know about under-pressure IGO Ltd boss Ivan Vella is that he isn’t throwing away the company’s critical metals playbook. There may be spot fires burning throughout IGO’s nickel/lithium portfolio, but Vella says he has “absolute conviction” in late CEO Peter Bradford’s strategy to produce the goods required for the energy transition.

The second is that his 20-year career at Rio Tinto, which culminated in running its aluminium business out of Montreal, drilled into him the importance of tier-one assets. He likes assets like IGO’s Greenbushes, the world’s largest hard-rock lithium mine and located in Western Australia.