Modern Mining November 2015

CONSULTANTS/ PROJECT HOUSES

Shango Solutions. “We don’t employ any geolo- gists ourselves so it is useful if we can partner with specialists in this area where necessary, with their skills complementing our own,” Pooley observes. On the path ahead for Bara, Pooley and Willis agree that while they are looking to grow the consultancy, this will only be within certain limits. “We don’t want to grow to the point where it’s no longer fun and where we can’t maintain the personalised ‘hands-on’ service we’ve so far managed to deliver to cli- ents,” says Pooley. “If we get to the point where we need an HR department, then we’ll know we’ve gone too far! We founded Bara precisely because we didn’t want to be part of a big cor- porate environment and we haven’t changed this thinking. Our trademarks are individual attention to clients and a low overhead opera- tion and we intend maintaining this approach in the future.” Report by Arthur Tassell

Mineral’s RHA tungsten project while in Spain it has just started work on a BFS for a uranium project. Pooley notes that in the case of many of its clients Bara is steadily travelling along the project development path with them. “We’re finding we’re starting with concept and scop- ing studies and then being re-appointed for further work as the project proceeds, which we take as a compliment to the quality of the work we do,” he says. “A good example here would be Armadale’s Mpokoto open-pit gold project in Katanga in the DRC. We originally carried out the scoping study and are currently well advanced with the DFS. We have an excellent relationship with Armadale and, of course, we’re hopeful that we’ll continue to participate in the project through construction and into the operational phase.” Bara maintains good relationships with sev- eral other consultancy companies, the main ones being geological consultancies MSA and

An African project which Bara has been – and continues to be – closely involved with is the 678 000 ounce Mpokoto gold project in Katanga in the DRC. The Mpokoto site is seen here. Armadale Capital, the developer, has said that it is hoping to be in production in 2016.

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November 2015  MODERN MINING  41