Robert Wilt
CEO: Ma'aden
‘We will blow people’s hair back with the scale of the reserve, and how quickly we are going to get there in terms of production’
ROBERT Wilt is promising big things for Ma’aden, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned miner. “We will blow people’s hair back,” he said of the company’s domestic investment plans. The picture at Manara Minerals, a joint venture between Ma’aden and its 65.4% shareholder, the Public Investment Fund, appears less upbeat. Established in 2023 to acquire a global footprint in mining for Saudi Arabia, Manara has concluded only one substantial deal – when it took a 10% stake in Vale Base Metals in 2023.
Manara passed on an opportunity to invest in Ivanhoe Mines, whose flagship copper mine is Kamoa-Kakula in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, due to concerns over jurisdictional risk. It also decided against buying a share in Barrick Mining’s Reko Diq mine in Pakistan, one of the world’s largest gold miners. Analysts say the company will bide its time, especially given 2025 was a year of economic uncertainty, mostly owing to US tariffs. Despite being the chief architect of global disruption last year, US President Donald Trump’s administration is a strong political and economic ally of Saudi Arabia.
So it was no accident that as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Washington for the first time since 2018, the two countries were also inking a potentially important minerals deal. This is the arrangement in which Nevada-based MP Materials will build a facility to refine rare earths supplied from within Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, into oxides of so-called heavy and light rare earth metals. “People are waiting for the announcements,” said Wilt. “Just hang on,” he said, adding that the world would be amazed – hyperbole that’s positively Trumpian.
LIFE OF ROBERT
Wilt was previously CEO of Sofina Foods, one of Canada’s largest food-processing companies, and before that was president of the Metals Group at Precision Castparts Corp, managing two subsidiary aerospace and industrial companies. Most of his career, however, was at Alcoa – the integrated aluminium producer – where he held various executive positions over 17 years. Wilt holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree in engineering management from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
