Mick Davis walks away from Guinea investment vehicle he founded
Mining veteran Mick Davis has cut ties with Niron Metals, an
investment vehicle he co-founded in 2019 to develop Guinea’s Zogota iron ore
deposit, previously owned by BSG Resources (BSGR).
The former Xstrata boss, who was chair of Niron, ceased to
be a director last week and is no longer a person with “significant control” of
the private company, filings at Companies House, England’s registrar of
companies, show.
Niron was appointed Zogota’s developer as part of a
settlement between the Guinean government and BSGR, the mining group controlled
by the family of Israeli diamond tycoon Beny Steinmetz.
Davis’ decision to divorce himself from Neron Metals was
taken before a military coup overthrew Guinean president Alpha Condé in early
September, the Financial Times reported.
“People with knowledge of the situation said Davis had come
to the view that it could take many years before Niron would be able to secure
a route to market for Zogota’s iron ore and that he wanted to focus on other
projects,” FT.com reported .
Niron Metals wants to develop the Zogota iron ore deposit in
Guinea. (Image courtesy of Niron Metals.)
Guinea, which has some of the world’s biggest unexploited
iron ore deposits in its southeastern region, is also one of the countries
where it is very difficult to bring assets into production, mainly because of
the absence of infrastructures to ship the ore.
Niron had been able to ink a memorandum of understanding
with neighbouring Liberia to use a rail and port to export iron ore from the
Zogota deposit. Gaining access to the shipping route, the same one Guinea
vetoed for years for the much larger Simandou project, could have helped Davis
bring the proposed mine into production quickly and relatively cheaply.
Davis is a well-known name in the mining industry as he led
Xstrata from a $500 million business in the early part of the last decade to an
operation so big that — at one point — it made a takeover offer for Anglo
American (LON:AAL).
As finance chief of miner Billiton, which he helped list on
the London Stock Exchange, Davis was also a key figure in the 2001-megamerger
with BHP, which created the world’s largest mining company.
In 2012, he sold Xstrata to Glencore (LON: GLEN) and
ventured into setting up X2 Resources, a mining fund that was unable to score
any deals in the three years after launch.
The mining veteran now wants to seize the opportunity
presented by the increasing need for battery metals with his newly founded
investment firm Vision Blue Resources (VBR).
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