08 Mar Appointment of Chief Operating Officer and Metallurgical Manager

Rocky Smith has been appointed as Chief Operating Officer. Rocky is a highly experienced Chemical Engineer with 35 years’ rare earths experience. He was Managing Director of Molycorp’s Mountain Pass rare earth project in California, US,  now owned by MP materials and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Rocky is one of the few western mining executives with in-depth knowledge of the rare earth industry, including the supply chain, operational start-up and running complex chemical processes.

At Mountain Pass, Rocky was responsible for building the project and delivering operational readiness. He established the training systems, Quality Management and in accordance with “Zero Harm”, the highest possible health, environment and safety performance standards. More recently, Rocky was CEO of ASX listed Peak Resources.

Roy Gordon has been appointed as Metallurgical Manager. Roy is a senior hydrometallurgist with more than 10 years’ experience across international projects in support of the High Value Manufacturing and advanced manufacturing economies. Roy worked previously with Rocky at Peak Resources.

He has built and optimised projects supporting magnet and battery manufacture and holds an MBA from Curtin University and a Double Major in Chemistry and Mineral Science from Murdoch University.

The appointments have been made with immediate effect. They underpin Pensana’s commitment to establish the world’s first fully sustainable mine to magnet metal supply chain from the rare earth oxide separation facility proposed at the world-class Saltend Chemicals Park in the Humber, Yorkshire.

Chairman Paul Atherley commented:

“We warmly welcome Rocky and Roy to the growing Pensana management team ahead of our developments at Saltend and in Angola and our ambition to establish the world’s first fully sustainable mine to magnet supply chain. Rocky is a hugely talented Chemical Engineer with outstanding experience across the global rare earth industry. His knowledge in establishing processing operations will be extremely valuable as the Company commences development of the proposed processing facility at Saltend. We are also pleased to welcome Roy, who has previously worked with Rocky and will be a major contributor to the growing operational team.”