Colin Vale Email & Phone Number

Sunshine Coast, Warana

After many years in PNG I decided to cease FIFO work and settle back in Australia to spend more time with my family and to build and grow a successful business for myself rather than others for a change. I was far too young to retire so a business partner & I created a health & fitness facility from scratch. Today we have an edgy, fun, modern and motivating facility on the Sunshine Coast for members to train and achieve their fitness and lifestyle goals. My business partner looks after all the General Management of the day to day operations and I look after all the back end (accounting, strategy, website, SEO, administration, finance etc) requirements of running a successful business. It's been an exciting project that's on track for future expansion. So far the business is doing well and we have plans to grow our model into something unique in this competitive industry.

Queensland, Australia

I’m a highly skilled and qualified CEO with a successful record of managing a diverse group of companies. Strong experience in Hospitality, Construction, Mining and Retail. I’ve been an executive director on numerous boards and have expertise with joint ventures, contract management and negotiation, tender analysis, change & quality management, safety management, leadership and more. Strengths include innovative commercial business skills, planning, financial analysis and budgeting, IS and comms savvy with a knack of resolving issues rather than creating them. Thrives in controlled chaos and manages and balances risk with reward. I'm a motivated manager that recognises the value of high performance teams. I'm always looking for opportunities and new business. Ability to build the business organically or through careful analysis of M&A opportunities that fit or can adapt to our values and culture.Specialties: I speak fluent PNG pidgin, have permanent PNG residency and work well with landowners and indigenous communities. I have numerous management qualifications and an MBA that I've put to good use. All my personality profiles indicate that I'm innovative and visionary with excellent leadership skills.

Lihir Island Png

The Anitua Group of Companies was founded by a small group of entrepreneurial Lihirian landowners in 1989. The group was disfunctional in 2008. One of the first things I did was establish a corporate team. The group’s companies had not had any real leadership for eight years and I was not that welcome, especially by our joint ventures that had foreign equity. During the years without leadership they had assumed control of the businesses and did not appreciate me trying to rationalise and organise the group. We had to face some major cultural issues. I knew that the corporate team, given the diverse range of companies we had, could not seriously expect to directly manage the companies. Wesfarmers successfully operate a diverse group of companies and it was a similar model we employed as it very much aligned with what we were trying to accomplish. The greatest impediment to implementation of the new structure and strategies were cultural change issues.The purpose of establishing the Anitua Group of Companies in the first place was to provide a means for landowners to participate in the Lihir Gold project, one of the world’s largest gold mines. When I left the Anitua group it was the largest single supplier of goods and services to Newcrest Lihir as well as having hospitality operations throughout the rest of PNG. The group is now focusing internally on innovative growth and longer term on expansion of all its companies throughout PNG.The Anitua Group comprised of numerous businesses – including contract mining, security, property, construction, camp management & camp services, retail, investments, logistics, farms and drilling. The Anitua Group employed over 1500 people on Lihir Island, with another 3000 people throughout PNG. The main purpose of Anitua is to create sustainable businesses for Lihirians before the Lihir Gold mine closes. Whether the Lihirians can ever realise this vision is very much in their own hands now.

Lihir Island, Nip, Png

As the group GM of NCS Ltd I built this company from nothing to what was the largest hospitality company in PNG. NCS had numerous subsidiaries under its umbrella. See www.ncs.com.pg for information on this group. NCS is owned by Anitua Ltd, the company of which I subsequently became the Executive Director of. My main achievements at NCS were to build a small struggling landowner catering company on Lihir Island into what became a diversified group of companies that included construction, fishing, hospitality and joint venture businesses throughout the country. During my time in NCS we initiated and implemented ISO 9002 & HACCP Quality Assurance accreditation for the group. It's was so fulfilling to see a small single site cost reimbursable business grow to become the largest hospitality company in PNG. To reinforce the company's standing we won most of the hospitality work on the Exxon Mobil LNG pipeline project. This was a massive achievement given that this work would traditionally be given to a multinational company. We also passively invested in a number of properties on mainland PNG. Whilst the rest of the group floundered, NCS flourished, and the board of the group of companies approached me to take over the role of Executive Director of the whole group.

SHRM was bought out by the Compass Group many years ago and I started as an operations controller visiting sites all along the east coast of Australia before spending five years at the massive Bougainville Copper site in PNG as the catering manager for SHRM. (1985-1989) I was Operations manager based in Port Moresby for a year before taking over as Project Manager on the Kutubu Oil Pipeline between 1990 and 1992.

Mba, Business

Diploma Of Business Administration, Business

Gaicd, Directorship Training