Who we are
Thornfield Resources Ltd is an independent London-based professional services firm specialising in China-related strategy, sourcing and intelligence. We are headquartered at 2nd Floor, 136 Baker Street, London W1U 6UD, and registered at Companies House under number 17162127.
Our work serves mining companies, smelters, manufacturers, consumer brands, Chinese brands expanding into Europe, and investment firms — all of whom share one thing in common: critical decisions that depend on understanding what is actually happening on the Chinese side of a transaction, a supply chain or a market.
Five practices anchor the firm: Mining-Smelter Brokerage, Precision Materials Sourcing, China Strategic Intelligence, Market Entry Advisory, and Cross-Border Due Diligence. The connecting thread across all five is bilingual, bicultural operating experience inside Chinese industry — not desk research about it.
Sarah Liu — Director
Sarah Liu founded Thornfield Resources to bridge the gap between Chinese industrial reality and Western commercial decision-making.
Prior to founding Bobon Copper, Sarah supported a Hong Kong–invested manufacturing enterprise in its mainland China expansion. She then spent 14 years as General Manager of Shenzhen Bobon Copper, a precision copper alloy manufacturer serving Tier 1 customers in the global connector and electronics industries — including Fortune 500 names such as Foxconn, TE Connectivity, and Amphenol. In that role she ran operations covering metallurgy, quality, supply chain, key-account relationships and export sales — building first-hand familiarity with how Chinese manufacturing actually works, who the credible counterparties are, and where the operational pitfalls sit.
That operating background shapes every Thornfield engagement. Whether the question is which Chinese smelter to negotiate a copper concentrate offtake with, how to qualify a precision-alloy supplier without flying ten people to Guangdong, or whether a potential Chinese partner is what they appear to be, Sarah brings the perspective of someone who has spent her career inside the system Western clients are trying to navigate.
Sarah completed the Advanced Management Program at Peking University HSBC Business School, and certificate programs at Harvard Business School Online. She is a native Mandarin speaker, working in English, and is based in London.
How we work
Bilingual, bicultural
Mandarin native, working in English. Comfortable in a Shenzhen factory canteen and a London boardroom. Cultural fluency is not an add-on — it is the practice.
Confidential by default
Most engagements operate under NDA from the first conversation. Client identities and case details are not used in marketing material without explicit written consent. References are available case-by-case once an NDA is in place.
Independent of trade flows
We do not take undisclosed commissions from suppliers, smelters or distributors. Our fees come from clients only, on transparent fixed-fee or retainer terms with success-fee structures where appropriate.
Operating, not theoretical
Our advice is built on what we have seen actually work inside Chinese industry, not on management-consulting frameworks. We are happy to disagree with received wisdom when our experience says otherwise.
Our standards
Every engagement begins with a clear scope, a defined deliverable, and a fixed fee or transparent retainer. We do not bill by surprise, we do not pad teams, and we do not subcontract sensitive work without disclosure.
We decline engagements that would breach UK, EU or US sanctions law, that would require operating outside normal commercial-advisory boundaries, or where the client objective is fundamentally adversarial to a counterparty's legitimate interests. Where engagements touch sensitive regulatory areas, we coordinate with specialist legal counsel.