Tom Francis
General Manager
Tom Francis is the General Manager of the Bunker Hill Mine. Mr. Francis joins the Bunker Hill team after 10 years with Rio Tinto, the second-largest mining company in the world, where he was most recently Mine Manager at the Kennecott Bingham Canyon Mine (“Kennecott”) in Utah, USA, its single largest mining operation. Among other achievements, his team delivered world-class payload metrics on Kennecott’s ultra-class truck fleet while simultaneously increasing average haul truck speeds and tire life. Previous roles with Rio Tinto included responsibility for productivity across the full Kennecott value stream (mine, concentrator, smelter and refinery), three years in the Group strategic investment analysis team assessing its global suite of projects (greenfield, brownfield & closure), and several years in Rio Tinto Exploration (RTX) managing operational support (incl. safety) for Rio Tinto’s Exploration’s projects across Africa and Eurasia.
Prior to his mining experience, Mr. Francis served as an officer in the Royal Marines and UK Special Forces, serving on multiple operational tours in Kosovo, Iraq & Afghanistan. He is a dual national US/UK citizen having lived, studied and worked in both the US and the UK. He holds a first-class degree from the University of Oxford (BA, Mathematics & Computation).
Appointed January 2022