Mick McMullen, former executive at Detour Gold and Stillwater, is the CEO of Metals Acquisition.
Former executives of Canadian miner Detour Gold have teamed up with some of the biggest names in Australian mining and a Glencore director to launch a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) targeting assets fitting the green-economy metals and mining profile.
Increasingly popular, SPACs are shell companies created to raise funds through an initial public offering to acquire another business at a later stage.
Metals Acquisition Corp will seek to raise $250-million in a public offering in the US, according to its prospectus released this month.
Although it has not yet identified a candidate for its initial business combination, its criteria requirements are strong environmental, social and governance stewardship, a stable mining jurisdiction, a strong cost position and the involvement of an existing strong management team.
The Metals Acquisition prospectus states that the “once-in-a-century transition” to electrified transport will create a ripple effect through the mining and metals sector. Significant growth is forecast for the metals used in electrification, including copper, lithium, nickeland cobalt.
“Consumption of these electrification metals will grow exponentially, with potential deficits forecast in the coming years, due to the lack of new discoveries coming on line, driven by the lengthy mining development timeline from discovery to first production.”
The SPAC also sees additional opportunity in gold and other precious metals, noting that these metals are set to benefit from the large amount of quantitative easing that is occurring globally.
The management team behind Metals Acquisition includes former Detour Gold executives Mick McMullen and Jaco Crouse as CEO and CFO respectively, as well as investment banker Dan Vujcic as chief development officer.
The chair nominee is corporate director Patrice Merrin, who currently serves as a nonexecutive director on global commodity trader and miner Glencore’s board. Merrin previously served on the board of Detour until the company was sold in a C$4.9-billion deal to Kirkland Lake last year.
Other directors are Rasmus Gerdeman, MD at Ankura Consulting, Neville Power, former Australian iron-ore major Fortescue Metals MD and CEO, John Bennett, founder and CEO of privately held Black Mountain, and director nominee Charles McConnell, an energy expert.
Australian mining executive Bill Beament serves as an adviser to Metals Acquisition.Until recently, he was CEO of one of Australia’s largest listed gold producers, Northern Star. He is currently involved in ASX-listed base metals developer Venturex.
Co-founder of private battery metals mining company Black Mountain Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes and co-founder of Omnia Company and former Fortescue manager Nicholas Power are also advisers.