Sector guide · Mining services & supply
What buyers pay a premium for in a mining services sale
Across mining services sales, five qualities separate the businesses that attract competing buyers from the ones that sell for scarcely more than their gear.
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What buyers pay a premium for in a mining services sale
Across mining services sales, five qualities separate the businesses that attract competing buyers from the ones that sell for scarcely more than their gear. Not one of the five takes longer than a couple of years to build from where you are now.
Vendor status that survives the sale
Prequalifications and vendor registrations generally sit with the entity, which means how the deal is structured can decide whether the buyer keeps the gate pass or starts the onboarding queue from the back. Because re onboarding with the majors can take many months, this question often shapes the entire transaction. Keep registrations current and clean, hold them in the trading entity, and map the transfer question with your advisers before market rather than during due diligence.
Revenue on the calendar, not on the phone
Term maintenance contracts, scheduled shutdowns booked seasons ahead, standing purchase orders and personnel embedded on site give a buyer revenue they can see coming. Shutdown work deserves particular attention: a business with its place in the shutdown calendar of two or three operations has something close to recurring revenue in an industry that rarely offers it, and buyers pay for that visibility.
A safety record that opens gates
Every buyer in this sector knows that one bad safety run can end a vendor relationship that took a decade to build. A strong incident record, certified systems, documented training and a culture the crew actually follows are worth real money, because the buyer inherits the trust those numbers have earned with every client at once. Track the metrics, keep the records audit ready, and present safety as the asset it is.
An inducted crew that stays
Trades with current tickets and site inductions, supervisors the client's people know by name, and low churn in a market where everyone is poaching are precisely what a buyer cannot hire off the street. Document the tickets, the inductions and the tenure, look after the people who would follow the business rather than you, and be ready to show a buyer why the crew stays.
Specialised capability, honestly valued
Niche services and the specialised equipment behind them are hard to replicate and genuinely valuable, provided the value story is honest. From years around equipment values: specialised gear is worth what the market pays for it, not what the depreciation schedule says, and in narrow markets those numbers can sit far apart in either direction. Price the register honestly, keep the maintenance records complete, and sell the capability and the iron as one story.
The Act, the regulator, the register, and the rule that a licence cannot be sold with the business
If your business supplies a worker to another business, this section is the one that sets your completion date. The scheme is created by the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2017 (Qld), which commenced on 16 April 2018. The regulator is the Labour Hire Licensing Compliance Unit, which sits within the Office of Industrial Relations. The public register of licensed providers is at ols.oir.qld.gov.au, with an advanced search facility, and it is the register a mine operator checks before engaging you.
The coverage test is wider than the phrase labour hire suggests. Section 7 of the Act provides that a person provides labour hire services if, in the course of carrying on a business, the person supplies, to another person, a worker to do work. That definition catches labour supply businesses obviously, but it also catches maintenance, shutdown, drill and blast, cleaning, trades and specialist crew businesses that place people under a principal’s direction. The regulator states that all labour hire providers operating in Queensland need to be licensed, including interstate and overseas providers supplying workers in Queensland.
There are exemptions and they are narrow. They cover high income earners not covered by an award where annualised income exceeds the stated threshold, supply within a corporate group, temporary in-house secondments, and supply of an executive officer as the sole person supplied. Recruitment and permanent placement, volunteering and workplace consultancy are not labour hire services. If you are relying on an exemption, get that written down and confirmed before a buyer’s solicitor tests it, because the offence provisions are serious.
Section 10 provides that a person must not provide labour hire services unless the person is the holder of a licence. The maximum penalty is 1,034 penalty units or 3 years imprisonment for an individual, and 3,000 penalty units for a corporation. Section 11 goes the other way and is the reason mine operators are rigid about this: a person must not, without reasonable excuse, enter into an arrangement with an unlicensed provider, at the same penalty level. A principal that engages an unlicensed contractor commits an offence itself. No mine will take that risk to accommodate your settlement date.
Now the rule that governs your sale. A licence is not transferable. Section 39 states that a licensee must not transfer, sell, dispose of, lend or hire out the licensee’s licence to another person, with a maximum penalty of 200 penalty units or 1 year imprisonment. The regulator confirms it in plain English: a licence holder must not transfer, sell, dispose of, lend or hire out their licence to another person or business. There is no assignment process, because assignment does not exist under this Act.
So the outcome turns entirely on structure. In a share sale the licensed entity survives the transaction and the licence survives with it. What you must do is declare the change. A number of changes must be declared within 14 days of the change, including changes to registered details and to key personnel, and insolvency matters. A change in shareholders that brings in new executive officers, or a change of nominated officer, falls squarely inside that. The regulator can then reassess fitness and propriety, so a buyer with a poor compliance history is a risk to the licence itself, not just to the price.
In an asset sale the buying entity must hold its own licence before it supplies a single worker. You cannot sell it yours, you cannot lend it, and a grace period does not exist in the Act. If completion happens before the buyer’s licence is granted, the buyer cannot lawfully supply workers, your principals cannot lawfully engage the buyer, and the revenue you just sold stops on day one. This is the single most common deal-breaking timing issue for Queensland mining services businesses that supply labour.
Two operational details worth building into your timetable. A licence is granted for the term of up to 1 year stated in the licence, and an application for renewal must be made before the licence expires, so renewal is annual and it is not automatic. Fees as at 1 July 2024 were unchanged for 2024-25 due to 0.00 per cent indexation. Tier 1, where wages are $1.5 million or less, was $1,120.42. Tier 2, between $1.5 million and $5 million, was $3,361.26. Tier 3, above $5 million, was $5,602.10.
What to actually do. Search your own entity on the register at ols.oir.qld.gov.au and check the licence number, the status and the expiry before you go to market. Do not let a renewal fall due inside a due diligence window. If the deal is structured as an asset sale, make the buyer’s licence grant a condition precedent to completion, with a long stop date. That puts the risk of a slow application on the party that controls the application. If the deal is structured as a share sale, diarise the 14 day declaration obligation for the day after completion and make somebody responsible for it by name.
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