Critical-Mineral Provenance Board Counsel — Battery Materials

The mandate

Alliance members exchange battery-passport and sourcing evidence, yet a material can change physical form, ownership and allocation basis several times between mine and cell. Directors see digitally linked declarations without knowing whether origin, custody, mass balance, recycled content and due-diligence conclusions remain comparable after blending, toll processing or supplier correction. Regulatory deadlines make superficial interoperability particularly dangerous.

The counsel will commit three days each month to chair preparation, member challenge and review of one consequential traceability paper, and will attend five Brussels committee sessions. An incident view is due within two European business days when a material-origin claim is suspended. Site assurance, supplier audit, legal interpretation or platform procurement needs separate appointment and authority.

The term runs nine months beginning February 2027. In month seven, member executives must navigate an unseen refinery-allocation correction and present their evidence to the committee. A single three-month renewal may follow only for a named implementing standard or regulatory transition; it requires board vote, and remaining days cannot be carried into delivery work.

The counsel has no line authority, executive authority, procurement mandate, supplier-remediation power, assurance-signing role or regulatory standing. Members decide sourcing, declaration and corrective action; auditors and competent bodies retain their conclusions. Advice cannot be described as due-diligence certification, passport conformance, chain-of-custody verification or proof that a mineral claim is substantively true.

All interests in mines, traders, refiners, recyclers, cell makers, auditors, standards bodies and traceability vendors must be disclosed as conflicts. One non-overlapping industrial-provenance appointment may continue with chair approval. Equity, contingent fees or advocacy tied to an evaluated supplier is disqualifying, and confidential source or pricing evidence cannot move between alliance members or outside mandates.

Why the board wants this voice

Mining, manufacturing and compliance directors understand their own tier, but few have governed how evidence survives transformation, commingling and allocation across the full chain. The committee needs an operator able to challenge digital continuity and commercial incentives simultaneously, without selling a traceability network or issuing assurance over member declarations.

What you will own

• Challenge the evidence chain across source asset, extraction batch, trader custody, refinery input, output allocation, precursor, cathode, cell and recycling event.
• Test whether identity, quantity, yield, loss, blend, mass-balance period and recycled-content claims reconcile without artificial one-to-one lineage.
• Probe due-diligence conclusions that persist after source suspension, ownership change, audit qualification or newly credible adverse evidence.
• Frame exercises for mixed-origin feedstock, toll processor failure, duplicate allocation, recycled-content correction and inaccessible upstream record.
• Examine who bears investigation, correction, notification and replacement cost when a downstream passport inherits a supplier error.
• Review interoperability choices for semantic precision, disclosure minimisation, evidentiary retention, supplier exit and small-producer participation.
• Coach directors to separate digitally transmitted declarations, underlying source evidence, independent assurance and regulatory acceptance.

Candidate qualifications

• Held senior battery, critical-mineral or industrial chain-of-custody governance authority across extraction, refining and downstream manufacturing tiers.
• Reconciled physical transformation and commercial mass balance where blending, yield loss or toll processing defeated simple item lineage.
• Governed source suspension and downstream notification after adverse due-diligence, audit or human-rights evidence changed a material claim.
• Challenged traceability architectures that created persuasive identifiers without sufficient quantity reconciliation or accountable source evidence.
• Presented sourcing and passport trade-offs to industrial boards, regulators, standards bodies and assurance providers under market pressure.
• Maintained independence across miners, traders, processors, recyclers, manufacturers and platform suppliers while handling confidential pricing and origin data.

Non-negotiables

• Can attend all five Brussels committee sessions and respond within two business days to a declared provenance incident.
• Will disclose every mining, refining, recycling, manufacturing, audit, standards and technology interest before evidence access.
• Accepts literal absence of line, executive, procurement, assurance-signing, supplier-remediation and regulatory authority.
• Must show a live mass-balance correction through physical transformation; generic sustainability-reporting experience is inadequate.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a mineral allocation whose digital lineage appeared complete while its physical mass balance did not reconcile.
2. 49 words maximum. Which current mine, processor, recycler, manufacturer, auditor or traceability interests require board disclosure?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you propagate a refinery-origin correction without claiming false one-to-one material lineage?