Battery Minerals gets new MD, chairman

David Flanagan has moved to a new executive chairman role at Battery Minerals, making way for former Atlas Iron chief operating officer Jeremy Sinclair to become managing director, among several board changes at the graphite company.

Jeff Dowling will resign as chairman to become lead independent director, Brett Smith will not seek re-election as director and Gilbert George will step down from the board at the AGM.

Battery Minerals said the board changes will not increase the administration costs.

Mr Flanagan will take a about a 57 per cent pay cut to be paid $200,000 and Mr Sinclair will receive a yearly salary of $400,000.

Mr Sinclair, a mining engineer with 25 years’ experience, said Battery Minerals had an enormous opportunity thanks to the quality of the Montepuez project and the extremely strong outlook for graphite on the back of the lithium battery boom.

“I’m really looking forward to working with David Flanagan again and the exciting team he has put together to deliver the Montepuez graphite project for the benefit of our shareholders,” Mr Sinclair said.

Mr Flanagan said Mr Sinclair would bring a wealth of project development skills to Battery Minerals as it completes project financing and construction of Montepuez.

“We need to ensure we have optimal skills, experience and people-power to take full advantage of the unique market opportunity presented to us,” he said.

“We are in the process of finalising project funding and building the project while managing relationships with customers, investors and the Mozambican government.

“This requires our team to be active across four continents – Africa, Australia, Asia and North America simultaneously.

“I worked closely with Jeremy at Atlas Iron and I know that his great depth of resource project development and operations knowledge, his experience in managing approvals processes and his understanding of customers and their individual needs will be invaluable as we unlock this opportunity.”

Mr Flanagan thanked Mr Dowling, Mr Smith and Mr George for their leadership and said he was pleased Mr Dowling was staying on as a director.