Kris Butera, Managing Director and founder of Plutonic Limited, recently pulled no punches in a thought-provoking LinkedIn post that lays bare the frustrations and challenges of Australia’s mineral exploration sector. His insights, equal parts rant and rallying cry, touch on everything from bureaucratic headaches to flawed funding models, with a healthy dose of disdain for complacency in the industry. Let’s break down the key points.
Bureaucracy: A Minefield Before the Mine
Butera opens with a lament familiar to any junior explorer: the endless hoops that must be jumped through before even breaking ground. Land access, cultural heritage considerations, community engagement, JORC compliance, safety regulations—these are all critical components of modern exploration. However, Butera questions whether the sheer burden of these requirements is stifling innovation and discovery.
“By the time you deal with tenure, landholder, cultural heritage, safety, community engagement, JORC, etc., you wonder how you’re actually meant to fund exploration,” he writes. This bureaucratic overload, Butera argues, often leaves geologists feeling like they’ve signed up for admin work rather than ore body discovery—a sentiment likely to resonate across the industry.
Kris Butera
Too Much Talk, Not Enough Drilling
Another gripe on Butera’s list is the trend towards “geoscientific discussions” over real exploration. He criticises an industry culture where “technical success” and “playing the market” take precedence over actual discoveries. For Butera, this reflects a fundamental misalignment of priorities: finding ore should be the ultimate goal, not perfecting theories or appeasing shareholders with technical jargon.
This ties into his broader frustration with what he calls “excess white noise” during the discovery phase. According to Butera, explorers are wasting valuable time on unnecessary logging and geotechnical analysis aimed at making life easier for developers down the line. “NO—find the damn ore body first,” he states emphatically.
The Funding Conundrum
Perhaps the most pointed criticism in Butera’s post revolves around funding—or, more precisely, the lack of it in a form that genuinely supports exploration. He refutes the popular notion that the funding model is broken, instead claiming that it doesn’t exist in a sensible form. The lack of trust between funders and explorers, he argues, creates a vicious cycle where neither side feels incentivised to invest time or money.
Moreover, Butera challenges the industry’s fixation on “advanced projects” as inherently de-risked and more likely to deliver strong returns. He calls this a “falsehood,” suggesting that investors often misunderstand the actual risks and rewards associated with exploration.
Boring as Bat Dung?
In perhaps his most scathing critique, Butera describes the industry as “deadset boring as cow excrement.” He attributes this to a mix of laziness and overly rigid disclosure rules for listed companies, which he believes stifle creativity and excitement. His solution? A cultural and regulatory shift that breathes life back into the sector.
A Call for More Funding—and Vision
Butera concludes with a plea for greater financial support for explorers—not just grants or pre-competitive data but meaningful investment that allows for sustained discovery efforts. Without this, he warns, the industry risks wasting time, effort, and investor funds on projects that never deliver.
What’s the Solution?
Butera’s post doesn’t offer a detailed blueprint for fixing these systemic issues, but his message is clear: the industry needs a shake-up. He calls for stronger targeting capabilities, more capable boards, and an overall re-evaluation of what exploration should look like. At its core, his argument is that Australia’s mineral exploration sector has lost its sense of purpose.
A Timely Wake-Up Call?
Kris Butera’s brutally honest assessment of the mineral exploration sector is a wake-up call for anyone invested—literally or figuratively—in the future of mining in Australia. Whether you agree with his critiques or not, his passion for discovery is unmistakable.
It remains to be seen whether his words will inspire action or fall on deaf ears. But if there’s one takeaway, it’s that complacency and bureaucratic inertia won’t deliver the next major discovery. For that, as Butera rightly points out, the industry needs “the breath of life coursing through its veins.”
