Brett Smith

Brett Smith is an Executive Director of Metals X Limited (ASX: MLX), Australia's largest listed tin producer and one of the few direct ways for public-market investors to own tin — the solder metal that binds electronics together. He joined the Metals X board in July 2020 after more than three decades in engineering, construction and mineral processing across coal, iron ore, base and precious metals.

Metals X owns 50% of the Renison Tin Operation in Tasmania — Australia's largest tin mine — through the Bluestone Mines Tasmania Joint Venture, a 50/50 partnership with China's Yunnan Tin. During Smith's tenure the mine has set production records, including 3,329 tonnes of tin-in-concentrate (milled ore carrying tin metal, before smelting) in the December 2024 quarter, and the company reported A$374 million in cash with no corporate debt at 30 June 2026. In 2026 Metals X moved to lift its share of Renison's cash flows through a partial takeover offer for Hong Kong-listed joint venture partner Greentech Technology International, and committed A$17 million to nearby tin developer Stellar Resources; Smith also joined the Stellar board.

Smith trained as a chemical engineer at the University of Melbourne and built his career on the operational side of mining, developing mineral processing projects and managing engineering and construction companies in Australia and internationally. He talks about Metals X in tonnes, C1 costs (the direct cash cost of producing a tonne of metal) and cash balances rather than price forecasts, and his case for tin is structural: supply is concentrated in a handful of operations while demand tracks electronics manufacturing and electrification. His other board seats — Executive Director of Hong Kong-listed gold producer Dragon Mining, Non-Executive Director of Tanami Gold, Elementos, Nico Resources and London-listed First Tin, and Chairman of iron ore producer Mt Gibson Iron — keep that focus on producing assets and on tin.

What an investor can follow now: the outcome of the Greentech offer, a dividend review Metals X flagged for the September 2026 quarter, and growth options around Renison such as the Rentails project, which would reprocess the mine's historic tailings (waste material with recoverable tin still in it). For anyone learning how a mid-tier producer runs one of the world's larger hard-rock tin orefields alongside a Chinese joint venture partner, Smith's interviews and presentations are a working education, reported in numbers rather than adjectives.