Mining Industry in Ghana: Beau Nicholls Presents Sahara Natural Resources

Interview with Beau Nicholls, CEO at Sahara Natural Resources

How would you assess the mining sector in West Africa? Which areas have taken off specifically?

The mining industry, especially exploration and mining, has taken off in the last 12 months and it is getting better. West Africa is 90% gold mining and is focussed on the Birimian Greenstones which cover most of the countries in West Africa. It is quite prolific. There have been a lot of gold deposits being found over the years and a lot more to be found. There has also been a big expansion in bauxite in Guinea specifically. Guinea has 40% of the world’s bauxite reserves which is also of a very high quality. There has been a big focus in the last 12 months towards Guinea for bauxite. Ghana also has its own bauxite deposits that can be developed. There is also iron ore. Unfortunately, places like Simandou, which is the third biggest mining province for iron ore in the world , after the Pilbara in Australia and Carajás in Brazil, have missed the iron ore boat because of delays and now those projects are not going ahead as quickly as they would have. It is unfortunate, but there are other opportunities. Just recently, in Mali, we have started working for some clients on lithium projects and pegmatites. Lithium ion batteries and electric cars have a big future, not just with Tesla, but China and Australia. There has been a big focus on exploring for lithium in West Africa. Countries such as Mali now have some very advanced projects for lithium. Ghana also has some companies, in fact, right here in Accra, the pegmatites are starting to form here down to Cape Coast. There is an Australian company that is exploring quite aggressively for lithium projects as well.

What are the trends in the mining sector, not only in West Africa, but the world as well?

We have a lot of skills within the group which allows us to do the same services – engineering, surveying, geotechnical works – across all manners of the industry.

There is a big push for intelligent mining. In Australia now, Rio Tinto has driverless trucks, 250-tonne dump trucks driving along without anyone in them. There are a lot of advancements in drone technology and Sahara, one of the pioneers in West Africa, was one of the first companies to bring in and provide as a service drones for survey. Before, you used to spend a week doing a topographic survey. You can now do that in a day and at half the price and at a higher quality. Those technologies, drones, all sorts of virtual reality, are making a big difference in the mining industry. You will never replace someone on the ground breaking a rock open, but there are advancements. Some of the big advancements in the drilling side with real-time assays. You drill your hole and the samples come out and you can tell how much gold or lithium is in that sample immediately. So, there are big advancements as technology advances.

What advancements have been made with satellites?

We are actually an agent for Digital Globe which provides the images for Google. Satellites have been around for a long time but the affordability of buying the data is now a lot cheaper. For example, if you are building a railway line from Accra to Burkina Faso, which is actually being planned, you can take the Digital Globe images and you can create topography from that, from satellite, which would normally take you months and months of work. You can now do that in a month and you can get accurate topography for engineering designs. You can design your railway or your ports or any number of things without actually going there.

You used to be called Sahara Mining Services and you have recently changed. What is Sahara Natural Resources and what are your key competitive advantages?

We initially were called Sahara Geoservices. We used to provide just the grass roots exploration, and then as we progressed, we got more capability with more professionals joining the company and we developed into Sahara Mining Services to provide a bigger suite of services which we are developing still. As a mining cycle over a five-year period, you can get booms and busts which has naturally been happening in my lifetime. We wanted to diversify our suite of services. We have a lot of skills within the group which allows us to do the same services – engineering, surveying, geotechnical works – across all manners of the industry. As of the start of 2018, we rebranded ourselves as Sahara Natural Resources with the focus of working across the natural resources sector. Sahara is an iconic name. We are very focused around the Sahara Desert which goes from one side of Africa to the other and as such, we have developed our capabilities across each of the countries in West Africa. If you were to take Australia and put it on top of West Africa, it is about the same size. So, if you looked at West Africa like one country, and you try and provide the same service in each country, then it gives you a competitive advantage. We have people on the ground in each of those countries in West Africa, the size of Australia, that can provide the same professional services that you would expect from competent people in Australia or Canada and we are using local professionals that have been trained up over the last ten to twenty years. Our competitive advantage is that we are on the ground and we provide international services with local people on the ground.

Where did Sahara come from?

Sahara evolved from an Australian company called RSG Global, which was a boutique mining services group out of Perth, Australia. The initial office for Africa was established in Ghana in 1996. We still have people from that original company, which is over 20 years of experience. RSG was then bought by Coffey International which was listed on the ASX, a big company in over 80 countries and 4,000 people. Coffey was then acquired by Tetra Tech out of the US. At that point, we established Sahara. We have gone from being a startup in 2010 to one of the biggest mining services groups across West Africa.

What are the different areas where you work? You provide a large scope of services. What are some of your newer services?

We are exploration, so we are the ones who go out and find the gold or bauxite deposits. We are quite strong in this area. We have over 60 geologists working for us at the moment, so we would be one of the biggest exploration companies in West Africa if we were a mining company, our geologists are working for 10 to 20 clients. From the exploration, we provide surveying, geotechnical, hydrogeology, all the parts of the mining cycle, including completing a bankable feasibility. With Sahara Natural Resources, we are expanding beyond. We are looking to develop into EPCM Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Management. There is a lot of opportunity outside of the mining industry in West Africa. 350 million people are living in West Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, projected to go to 1 billion people in the next 20 to 30 years. With that is coming huge infrastructure from railway lines, bridges, bauxite refineries, everything that goes with 1 billion people. Our basic skills are already in that area, so we have advanced into doing work for infrastructure. We have done geotechnical work for some embassies in Niger and Burkina Faso, and also in Ghana along with surveying. We have also done work in solar farms and a lot of energy projects including one of the first wind turbine stations that are going to be developed here in Accra.

What is your involvement in solar farms?

We undertake the surveying, for the planning and engineering and also the geotechnical investigation side to determine what sort of geotechnical engineering you need to put into designing these farms. We also do geophysical surveys for the resistivity of the electrical wires, which is important in the design work. We can also provide on the ground support in any parts of the construction depending on the partner or whoever wins the contract for the construction.

Energy is one of the biggest challenges in West Africa. It is one of the major challenges when starting a new mine. Ghana has been limited to the Volta Lake which is hydro power so there have been a lot of new energy systems, with renewable energy a big focus now. The potential is there. There are no solar wind turbines here in Ghana at the moment, so the government is looking at doing some trials to establish if it is a good source of energy. We are doing geotechnical investigations and feature surveys to see how much ground support they need to hold up one of those large wind turbines which will be here in Tema.

What are the major challenges that a company like yours can face? What do you do to combat these challenges?

We have a series of challenges. One would be sovereign risk. Some countries in West Africa have been known to go astray after elections and change of governments. We have mitigated that risk by operating in more than one country. We have established offices in about five countries in West Africa. Security has been an issue to the north in Mali and Burkina. There has been a lot of terrorist activity and it is growing daily in West Africa. We have established a partnership with a security company called MS Risk out of the Isle of Man. It is mutually beneficial for both groups. We get professional intelligence and professional services in the security sector and we also provide them with local intelligence because we have people in most places across West Africa which goes with the nature of our business. That has developed into a business where MS Risk are now able to provide on the ground security services to other companies that work in the region. We have also become a center for AAMIG, the Australian African Mining and Petroleum Group, which is the Australian government that is engaging in Africa. They use software that we developed for capturing intelligence called D-Risk Alert. You can go onto that app on your phone and see where the latest terrorist attacks or kidnappings have occurred or where political unrest is currently happening. It is a very powerful tool and it is basically sharing with the community what is happening on the ground. Security is an ongoing issue. Our business is all about people and securing good people during the bad times and maintaining them for when the good times come. This has been a challenge financially, but we have people that have been working with us for the last 20 years via previous companies and we have a very good, very loyal and professional group, our core team. We have expanded into French West Africa, so most of our people are bilingual speaking French. We have minor Arabic and we are moving into Mauritania and Sudan. We have over 200 people across West Africa now that are multilingual. I am the only Australian, so we are very focussed to employing local talent. That can be a challenge in getting the skills up, but we work a lot on training. We put our graduates through training programs that go for two to three years and then they step up and we have a clear pathway for them. One of our strategic advantages across West Africa is having competent people on the ground.

You have just created Sahara Natural Resources, you are exploring new fields, you have great opportunities coming up because you are branching out from your core business of exploration and mining. What is your vision for the future in the medium term, two to three years’ time?

We are in a unique position as we have gone through the hard times, we have established ourselves, we have maintained our core team of operational people on the ground. We work well with the governments, we pay our taxes, we are good corporate citizens. We see a lot of development in West Africa and its infrastructure with the growing population, with the new rail projects. West Africa can open up significantly and it will. There are a lot of infrastructural projects. We see ourselves as a very good local partner for larger companies that can implement these larger projects and we can facilitate them. We already have a lot of partners that we help internationally. We can see ourselves becoming a larger engineering group in West Africa and being able to complete these from our West African position. There is a big push from government to develop local partners to expand the local skills and we are a local company here in West Africa.

Do you have plans for future IPO or accepting investors?

If we want to go to the next step, we need to have access to investors and bigger funds to be able to purchase the necessary equipment. Because we grow naturally from our revenue, it is a slow process. If we get some quality partners that come in that want to be part of our business, then we can expand quite significantly.

FAIR USE POLICY
This material (including media content) may not be published, broadcasted, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the page (including the source, i.e. Marcopolis.net) is permitted and encouraged.