When Finland’s Outokumpu Technology became a separate division of the Outokumpu group in 2005 and subsequently listed as an independent company on the Helsinki stock exchange around a year later, Tapani Järvinen was at the helm. He was also president and ceo when the company changed name to Outotec – a global supplier of technologies for extracting value from raw materials. When Järvinen started work with Outokumpu in 1985 he was initially selling tube, wire and other copper products, but a later period of six years as manager of the Zaldivar copper mine in Chile took him upstream and closer to the ore processing technologies that are at the core of Outotec’s business. His experience at both ends of the copper supply chain, and in between, has served him well at the top of the business, but he is now preparing to retire at the end of this year and...