Richard Lloyd

IT’S been an eventful 2025 for Shuka Minerals and its CEO Richard Lloyd, who took over as CEO in January last year. The firm’s assets, the Kabwe lead/zinc mine in Zambia and the Rukwa coal mine in Tanzania, have been all but dormant for the past few years. But even as he focused on the significant operational challenges, Lloyd also ensured additional funding for the company.

He oversaw the secondary listing of Shuka on the JSE’s AltX market in May and received additional funds from South African mining entrepreneurs Quinton van der Burgh and Jason Brewer. These funds enabled him to finalise the acquisition of Kabwe, which is the battleground of an acrimonious class action case set for the UK, involving Anglo American, which owned the mine until it was nationalised by the Zambian government in the 1970s and subsequently mothballed in 1995.

Undeterred, Lloyd believes that an estimated $4bn of resources at Kabwe can be re-accessed once the shafts and pit have been dewatered and infrastructure is improved. That’s a tall ask, not only because the costs will be exorbitant. Dewatering of the pit will present challenges as the water is likely to be contaminated, while Kabwe is also overrun by artisanal miners. Lloyd’s priority for now is to return Rukwa back to production of up to 5,000 tons per month of washed coal. But again, it will require significant investment. “It’s been unloved and perhaps suffered from a lack of funding,” he told MiningMX in June.