Pensana Rare Earths Plc, based in London, UK, has appointed Rocky Smith as Chief Operating Officer and Roy Gordon as Metallurgical Manager, as the company works to establish a fully sustainable mine to magnet metal supply chain from the rare earth oxide separation facility proposed at the Saltend Chemicals Park in the Humber, Yorkshire, UK.

Smith is an experienced chemical engineer with over three decades of experience in rare earths. He was Managing Director of Molycorp’s Mountain Pass rare earths project, which is now owned by MP Materials, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

At Mountain Pass, Smith was responsible for building the project and ensuring operational readiness. He established the training systems; QC and high performance standards for health, environment & safety. More recently, Smith was CEO of ASX listed Peak Resources.

Gordon is a senior hydrometallurgist with over ten years of experience across international projects. His work has acted in support of the high value and advanced manufacturing economies. Gordon previously worked with Smith at Peak Resources.

Paul Atherley, Pensana’s chairman, commented, “We warmly welcome Rocky and Roy to the growing Pensana management team ahead of our developments at Saltend [UK] and in Angola and our ambition to establish the world’s first fully-sustainable mine to magnet supply chain.”

www.pensana.co.uk