Lacaze, who is managing director of Lynas Corporation, is at the head of a company leading the way in the type of minerals the world will need as it transitions to a zero-carbon emission future.

Moult is CEO of Yancoal. As its name suggests, it is a coal miner - producing the very material the world is supposed to stop using.

Both are keen to foster innovation within their organisations, as well as diversity and strong social purpose.

They come from diverse backgrounds: Moult is lifelong coal miner, while Lacaze built her career in other areas of business, only coming to mining in 2014.

Moult is a mining executive who knows how to operate on the modern social and political environment - with all the challenges that entails.

"Yancoal appreciates that we can only achieve ongoing financial and operational success if we not only meet, but also exceed, all our environmental, social and community responsibilities and pursue an ongoing sustainable mining model," he said.

"Addressing challenges and achieving tangible and positive outcomes in all these areas is inherent in our approach to sustainable mining and central to maintaining our social license to operate.

"While operating efficiently and profitably, and managing risk are good business practices, Yancoal's objectives also include operating responsibly, safely and ethically; contributing to positive community and economic outcomes; and identifying opportunities in risks that the business manages.

"These are not just ‘bolt-on' activities - they are integral to Yancoal's overall strategy to generate enduring benefits and value for all our stakeholders, shareholders, employees, neighbours, community members and governments alike."

Moult is also realistic about coal's present and its future.

Earlier this year he told the Austmine conference that coal was still the second largest exporter in the country.

"One of the challenges is transitioning to a carbon-neutral position," he said.

"That doesn't mean zero carbon, it means carbon neutral. Coal will play a big part in that."

Moult also pointed out that Yancoal could be a company in transition in the not too distant future.

"If you look at our mines, they will mostly be gone in 20 years," he said.

"One of our challenges is that transition and what we're going to do in the future if we're going to be sustainable."

Lacaze is leading a company at the opposite end of that spectrum

"Our market is heading for what the textbooks will describe as the early rapid growth phase," she said.

Lynas products include neodymium, praseodymium, lanthanum, cerium and mixed heavy rare earths.

More importantly, it is the only producer of scale of separated rare earths outside China.

It mines its rare earths at Mount Weld in Western Australia's gold fields and turns them into a 35-38% concentrate. That concentrate is shipped to its separation plant at Genbeng, Malaysia where it is separated into its various products.

The company is in the process of developing a cracking plant in Kalgoorlie, WA.

Lacaze said that was a decision the company took to reduce the amount of material it was sending to Malaysia.

The Mount Weld rare earths ore contains a high proportion of iron phosphate, which the cracking plant removes. Doing the cracking close to the mine means Lynas is minimising its freight costs.

Not long after Lynas took the decision to move the cracking to WA, the Malaysian authorities changed licencing conditions its separation plant worked under, requiring it to do the cracking elsewhere, making the Kalgoorlie plant even more important.

Lacaze said Lynas was looking at the growth that would be needed.

"Our job is to do everything we can to ensure we can grow at least as fast as the market, if not faster," she said.

So could that mean bringing more of the rare earths processing to Australia?

Lacaze is not ruling out bringing the more processing to the country providing it is at the right price.

"Both the state and federal governments would be enthusiastic for us to do that," she said.

"The opportunity to be more than just the world's quarry and farm has always been attractive."

The problem is, Australia is a high cost jurisdiction compared to others, not least Lynas' rare earth rival China.

"We have to be cost competitive with our major competitors, which are Chinese firms" Lacaze said.

"It's about finding was to mitigate the areas where we know we will be expensive. These are things we talk to government about such as providing infrastructure that will allow us to make savings on some elements of our operations in Australia. The more we can get that infrastructure, shared infrastructure, these are opportunities we see."

As an example Lacaze pointed to the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder's efforts to help Lynas get access to water for its cracking plant.

"The council has really focused on the things that matter," she said.

"Water matters. It also matters to us that we're not using expensive water piped from Perth.

"The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder has a water treatment plant that is powered by solar. They will build a pipeline out to site and we're going to buy the grey water from them."

Lacaze said Lynas' people were crucial to its way forward.

"We need to get bigger, better and more efficient," she said.

"We need to be a supplier of choice and at the heart of that we must be an employer of choice."

Moult said Yancoal understood how important it was to create a workplace culture where people felt valued, included and empowered to have a voice and share their ideas and innovative solutions.

"Of our five company values - People, Safety, Innovation, Excellence and Integrity - people is our most important," he said.

"We are committed to listening to, and learning from, our people. We believe that when our people actively contribute and share their skills and perspectives throughout the business, we are better positioned to achieve our strategic and operational objectives.

"Having a diverse workforce is important because it provides us with a broader pool of skills and perspectives to draw upon.

"Our business connects with diverse communities across Australia, from capital cities to remote regional areas. Yancoal also has a global footprint, through our connection and interactions with our Chinese shareholders. This broad business footprint also drives our approach to diversity."

Moult believes creating a diverse workforce and recruiting from the local community are not mutually exclusive objectives.

"Well over 90% of our workforce live in the regional areas where our operations are located and we do not operate a FIFO [fly-in, fly-out] employment model.

"Securing our workforce from the communities in proximity to our operations provides considerable economic and social benefits to these towns and regions."

On the innovation front Moult said Yancoal was always working with original equipment manufacturers and local suppliers to customise technological solutions to allow operational improvements at its sites.

There are presently several projects under way including collaborating with CQMS Titan on payload and production improvements at Mount Thorley Warkworth; collaborating with WesTrac and Caterpillar on a production optimisation study in advance of the potential delivery of a fleet of dozers over the next four years; and collaboration between Liebherr and Yancoal's technical groups on a potential trial to develop production improvements.

"From a transactional viewpoint, Yancoal also works closely with its major OEMs with the aim of integrating our business-to-business systems in order to streamline and automate our purchasing processes," Moult said.

Yancoal has a history of underground mining technical innovation and introduced the longwall top coal caving mining technology to Australia at its Austar mine in NSW in 2006.

Yancoal Australia's major shareholder, Yanzhou Coal Mining Ltd, holds and owns the patent rights to the LTCC design in China and Australia.

LTCC uses a modified longwall mining system that allows the excavation of thick coal seams of 5-12m at one pass of the longwall machine.

This generates higher productivity and economic returns for an operation by allowing a material amount of additional coal in a seam to be accessed and recovered.

"The technique has been recognised as a significant advance in underground coal mining of thicker seams and has worldwide potential," Moult said.

"With the closure of the Austar mine, Yancoal is not presently utilising LTCC at any of its operations. However, LTCC is a proven technology and if the right geological, structural and coal quality elements occur at an underground mine site, Yancoal will again consider utilising this method of extraction."