Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Elias Fernandini · Voluna · August 2026
Here is the map. What stands out from the outside is that Voluna has two buyers who work on different clocks: the explorer trying to find something, and the operator trying to understand ground they already own. They sit in different companies, spend from different budgets, and are almost never reached by the same message. This covers where each one sits, who signs, and roughly how many companies are there. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Exploration stage and junior companies
The largest count on this page and the most exposed to the metal price. Small teams, no internal lab, and a field season that is planned months before it runs, which makes the planning window the whole sales cycle.
Who signs: VP of exploration, chief geologist, exploration manager, and at the smallest companies the CEO.
1,700 to 2,100
exploration and development companies listed across the main mining exchanges; most carry fewer than twenty staff
Mid tier and major producers
Fewer companies, larger budgets, and an internal technical services group that will test a new method properly before it is adopted. Slow to buy the first time and durable afterward, because the method gets written into the standard.
Who signs: group chief geologist, VP of exploration or growth, head of technical services, mine geology manager.
250 to 350
producing companies operating at scale worldwide
Operating surface mines and mine planning teams
The buyer who is not exploring at all. Grade control, pit design and short interval planning are funded from the operating budget, which is the budget that does not disappear when the market turns.
Who signs: mine general manager, chief mine planner, resource geology manager, technical services manager.
1,100 to 1,400
large active surface operations worldwide; the owner company layer above them is far smaller
Tailings and closure portfolios
A compliance funded buyer sitting in a completely different part of the company. Characterization work here is driven by disclosure standards and closure obligations rather than by discovery, and the seat that signs has never met a geologist on a sales call.
Who signs: head of tailings governance, VP of sustainability, environmental manager, closure lead, chief engineer.
150 to 250
companies with publicly disclosed facility portfolios, covering roughly 1,800 to 2,000 disclosed facilities
National and state geological surveys
Small in number, high in reference value, and buying on a published budget cycle rather than a commercial one. A completed survey project is the credential that shortens every commercial conversation after it.
Who signs: chief geologist, director of mineral resource programs, procurement lead.
80 to 120
national, state and provincial survey bodies with active mapping mandates
Drilling and geophysics contractors
Not a customer, a distribution route. These companies are already inside the accounts above, hold the field relationship, and are the group most likely to resell or bundle a data service rather than compete with it.
Who signs: managing director, technical director, business development lead.
400 to 600
established exploration service and drilling contractors worldwide

Where the openings are

1
Your two buyers pay from different pots. Exploration spend is discretionary and tracks the metal price. Operating and compliance spend does not. A channel built only on explorers goes quiet exactly when the market does, and the segment that would have carried you through it is the one nobody is calling.
2
The buying moment is a season, not a quarter. Field programs are planned and funded months before anyone is in the field. Being in front of an exploration manager during planning is worth more than ten conversations after it, and the planning window is visible from outside through budget statements, permits and listing disclosures.
3
Around two thousand explorers is too many to call and too few to advertise at. That is precisely the size of market where a named role channel beats both a conference stand and a sales hire. The work is identifying the right seat at each company and reaching it on a schedule, which is mechanical rather than clever.
4
Tailings is the segment every list misses. The buyer is an environmental or governance seat, so they never appear on an exploration list and never attend the technical sessions where a new method gets discussed. They are reachable by name and by disclosure, and almost nobody is doing it.
Built from public market data, counts banded deliberately. Sources are exchange listings across the main mining exchanges, public mine and facility disclosures, and published survey directories, current to 2025. Counts describe companies rather than projects or properties, so one company may hold many assets. Private and unlisted operators are not fully enumerated anywhere public and are described rather than counted.
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