London-listed Pensana has appointed an eight-person project delivery team, dedicated to the execution and commissioning of its Longonjo rare earths mine, in Angola, and its Saltend refinery, in the UK.

The project team is, in turn, leading a team of 134 specialist engineers from various disciplines.

Key appointments to the project delivery team include Hamish Westwater as project director for Saltend. He has more than 30 years’ experience in delivering complex projects in the chemical engineering sector.

Kevin Botha has been appointed project director for Longonjo. The qualified electrical engineering and project management professional has 45 years’ experience in the global mining industry, having worked for various blue-chip international companies in realising multibillion-dollar projects.

Jeremy Clarke will serve as project sponsor for Longonjo. He has worked at executive technical level with diversified miner Anglo American and as a consulting metallurgist for diamond miner De Beers, with his mining industry experience spanning more than 35 years. 

Other notable members of the team include Mike Hamer, Richard Dewhirst, Nigel Hudson, Dave Porter and Miguel dos Santos, each having decades worth of mining, electric and/or chemical engineering experience.

Pensana last month broke ground at the Saltend processing hub it is building in the Humber Freeport, in the UK, while the Longonjo openpit mine is situated in Angola.

The company has finalised more than 70% of the equipment and services packages of the two projects on which it expects to spend $494-million.

To minimise onsite construction activity and streamline processing, certain unit processes have been modularised while all other process equipment has been selected as standard, off-the-shelf items to ensure robust and simple operability of the plants.

For example, for Saltend, this relates to solvent extraction mixer settler rig fabrication arrangements and for Longonjo this encompasses power supply, water reticulation and construction camp facilities, as well as flotation circuit columns.