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MODERN MINING
November 2015
CONSULTANTS/
PROJECT HOUSES
feature
P
ooley says that Bara South Africa
has worked on projects all over Af-
rica and in just about every metal
or mineral since being founded.
“We’re very happy with the way
Bara has developed,” he says. “We’ve enjoyed
a very diverse workload spread over a wide
client base. Clearly, there is a recession under-
way in mining but it has had little effect on
us, and certainly over the past couple of years
we’ve been steadily building up the number of
full-time employees and associates we have at
a time when many other consultancies have
been shrinking their manpower.”
Analysing the reasons for Bara’s success,
Pooley says there is a combination of factors at
play. “Firstly, the partners of Bara are very well-
known in South African mining circles and, in
many cases, we’ve actually found that the work
has come to us rather than the other way around
based on business relationships developed over
many years. Secondly, we have very low over-
heads and we’re able to pass on these savings
to our clients, who are predominantly junior
and mid-tier companies with limited funds
who appreciate an efficient and economical
service and the value-for-money solutions we
offer. Thirdly, we’re in a market niche where
we don’t have a huge amount of competition.
There are not too many small, multi-disciplin-
ary mining consultancies around as most of the
Bara Consulting thrives
despite the mining downturn
Pat Willis (centre) and
Marijan Nujic (left),
Technical Director of
Geomet d.o.o. Olovo, inspect
an adit at the Olovo lead
project in Bosnia, one of
Bara’s current assignments.
Two years ago
Modern Mining
profiled newly established
mining consultancy Bara Consulting. At that point the
consultancy was only months old and consisted of just two
people – Jim Pooley and Clive Brown – but already had a
healthy workload. Today, the company has grown to 26
people (including full-time staff and associates), has an
independent UK arm run by Patrick Willis, and an order
book which is remarkably healthy given the parlous state
of the global mining industry.
Modern Mining
recently
spoke to Pooley and Willis at Bara’s South African office in
Johannesburg to learn more about Bara’s progress and its
strategy going forward.