Board & Management

Corporate

Board & Management

Jurie Wessels

Executive Chairman

Jurie Wessels has 26 years’ experience in the exploration industry and co-founded a number of exploration and mining companies, including Bauba Resources Ltd (BAU.J), which owns three operating chrome mines, GoldStone Resources Ltd (GRL.L), which company is mining the Homase-Akrokerri Gold Mine in Ghana acquired and developed by GoldStone when Jurie was CEO, Arcadia Minerals Ltd (AM7.ASX), which company owns an advanced Tantalum project, the Bitterwasser Lithium Clay and Brine Projects and tier 1 exploration assets, and Vanadium Resources Ltd.

Jurie has significant experience in the sourcing and assessment of exploration and exploitation projects and in the governance, funding and management of resource companies. He explored for various minerals in Africa, South America, the Indian sub-continent and Europe, and explored and developed several mining projects to successful conclusion.

John Ciganek

Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer

John Ciganek is a qualified Mining Engineer, holds a Master of Business Administration and has more than 30 years of mining and finance experience. His experience spans working in mining operations, project development, project finance, offtake agreements, M&A and the equity capital markets. Through his career to date, John has been involved with successfully raising debt and equity funding in excess of ~A$5Bn for various clients.

Mr Ciganek’s previous roles are Principal / Director of Euclase Capital, Executive Director of BurnVoir Corporate Finance, General Manger Corporate Development at PMI Gold, Senior Banks Engineer and Risk Executive at Commonwealth Bank, and Senior Mining Engineering positions with Hargraves Resources, Reynolds Yilgarn Gold and Comalco / Rio Tinto (CRA). John is a Non-Executive Director of Calidus Resources Limited (CAI.ASX) and Ookami Limited (OOK.ASX).

Tim Feather

Chief Financial Officer

Tim Feather has over 25 years of experience in corporate finance. Following a law degree at the University of Nottingham he qualified as a chartered accountant with Deloitte in the UK. In 1995 he moved into corporate finance in the City of London by joining Brown Shipley before leaving to co-found Westhouse Securities, where he was head of corporate finance and specialised in advising and fundraising for mining and oil and gas companies. He joined WH Ireland in 2012 and continued to focus on the resource sector. In 2019, he joined the Sumner Group, a privately held group with interests in mining, healthcare and defence, where he was Business Development Director. He is a non-executive director of Orcadian Energy plc, a North Sea oil development company.

Michael Davy

Non-Executive Director

Michael Davy is an Australian executive and Accountant with over 18 years’ experience across a range of industries. Michael previously held a senior management role in Australia for Songa Offshore (listed Norwegian Oil and Gas drilling company), where he assisted with the start-up of the Australian operations and managed the finance team for a two rig operation with multi-hundred million dollar revenues. Prior to that he worked in Australia and London for other large organisations overseeing various finance functions.

Michael is currently a director and owner of a number of successful private businesses all under his personal management. During the past five years Michael has held directorships in several ASX listed companies and is currently the Non-Executive Chairman of Raiden Resources Limited (ASX: RDN) and Haranga Resources Ltd (ASX:HAR) and is a non-executive director of Arcadia Minerals Ltd (ASX:AM7).

Alex Oehmen

General Manager Operations

Alex Oehmen has over 40 years’ industry experience across the resources, mineral processing and engineering sectors, with a demonstrated track record in the management of vanadium and steel making operations within the Bushveld region of South Africa. Alex holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Metallurgical) and Master of Business Leadership.

Most recently, Alex was Operations Manager at Bushveld Minerals Ltd for their Vanchem operations and General Manager Operations at Vanchem Vanadium Products (Pty) Ltd prior to its acquisition by Bushveld, whose operations are within the same geological and mineralogical terrain as the Steelpoortdrift Project. Alex was responsible for operations and production of various vanadium products including vanadium pentoxide flake, ferrovanadium and various vanadium chemicals. He also held roles in the marketing of vanadium products to domestic and international markets.