VR8 is led by a management team with the technical depth, financial acumen and operational track record to take a large-scale vanadium project from development through to steady-state production.
Jurie Wessels
Executive Chairman
Jurie has 30 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 is mining the Homase-Akrokerri Gold Mine in Ghana acquired and developed by GoldStone when Jurie was CEO, Namibia focussed Arcadia Minerals Ltd (AM7.ASX), which owns the Swanson Tantalum mining project, the Bitterwasser Lithium Clay Project, and the TVC (Nickel, Copper and PGE) mafic/ultra-mafic exploration project, Namibia focussed Kaoko Metals Ltd, which owns the Chalkos Copper project and the Karibib Copper-Gold Project, 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.
Nick Diack
Chief Executive Officer
Nick brings over a decade of specialist mining finance, private equity and deal-making experience across Sub-Saharan Africa, with a strong track record in structuring and executing complex transactions in the mining sector.
He has extensive experience across South Africa’s Bushveld Complex, and most recently was instrumental in securing and closing the acquisition of Vanchem, which is one of only three primary vanadium processing facilities globally, through Southern Point Resources, a mining private equity fund he co-founded and managed.
Michael Davy
Non-Executive Director
Michael is an executive and accountant with over 18 years’ experience across a range of industries. He 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).
John Ciganek
Non-Executive Director
John 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$5 billion for various clients.
John’s previous roles include Principal / Director of Euclase Capital, Executive Director of BurnVoir Corporate Finance, General Manager 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).
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.
Tim joined WH Ireland in 2012 and continued to focus on the resource sector, before joining Vanadium Resources in 2023 as CFO. He is also a non-executive director of Orcadian Energy plc, a North Sea oil development company.
Isabel Geldenhuys
Consulting Engineer and Head of Pyrometallurgical Process Design
Isabel is a South African professionally registered engineer (Engineering Council of South Africa) and Fellow of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM), with approximately 30 years of experience in pyrometallurgy and mineral processing. She holds a Master of Engineering in Extractive Metallurgy (cum laude) from Stellenbosch University and a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pretoria.
During her 25 year tenure at Mintek, South Africa’s national mineral research organisation, Isabel rose to the position of Manager of Pyrometallurgy and served as project leader on over 20 large-scale pilot and demonstration smelting campaigns. She has been an independent consulting metallurgist since March 2021, providing technical advisory services to mining and metallurgical clients across Southern Africa, Europe, Australia, and Canada. Ms Geldenhuys also served as President of the SAIMM in 2021/2022 and has authored more than 80 technical reports and numerous peer-reviewed publications, including a 2026 technical article on pilot-scale DC electric smelting for sustainable iron production.
Alex Oehmen
General Manager Operations
Alex has over 40 years’ industry experience across the resources, mineral processing and engineering sectors, with a 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.
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 were 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 has also held roles in the marketing of vanadium products to domestic and international markets.
Kyla Garic
Company Secretary
Kyla Garic is a Chartered Accountant and Director of Onyx Corporate, which provides CFO, corporate management and corporate governance services. She has over 20 years of experience and specialises in the ASX market, delivering professional services including IFRS-compliant financial reporting and Company Secretarial across a range of industries. Ms Garic has been involved in the recapitalisation of various ASX-listed companies. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce, a Master of Accounting, a Graduate Diploma of Chartered Accounting and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Corporate Governance. Ms Garic is a Member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and a Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia.