Vincent Mascolo
CEO: Atlantic Lithium
"We’re trying to achieve a greater than 15-year mine life and we’re one of the lowest capex and opex producers globally."
IT’S been a banner year for Vincent Mascolo, who started out 2021 as the CEO of one company, IronRidge Resources, and ended it in charge of two: Atlantic Lithium and Ricca Resources. Atlantic is essentially rump IronRidge, stripped of its high-quality gold assets in Côte D’Ivoire and Chad and transformed instead into a pure-play lithium company centred on a key asset in Ghana, Ewoyaa. Depending on how long a view you want to take, that looks to have been a pretty good move.
Shares in the new Atlantic Lithium are now hovering at around three-year highs, helped along by the buoyant lithium price; by the positive results of a recent scoping study; and by a funding deal that negates any need for further dilution. And since shares in Ricca were distributed to
IronRidge shareholders at the time of the demerger, in November last year, what’s essentially happened is a focusing of the upside into two distinct vehicles.
Gold in Chad, after all, isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, although if it’s supported by an asset as prospective as Zaranou, the Côte D’Ivoire asset, why not just see where it goes? Mascolo has shown himself to be a dab hand at manoeuvring his companies through complexities and in making sure he stays fully in charge and not overawed by the big egos that have in the past run along in support behind him.
LIFE OF VINCENT
Mascolo is part of a network of Australian miners centred loosely on privately owned DGR Global, an investment vehicle that also owns shares in Atlantic. DGR’s founder, Nick Mather, was also a director of IronRidge for a good long spell and only resigned in 2021. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Mascolo resigned in turn from DGR. The association
between Mascolo and Mather goes back almost 20 years, but both have their own separate big fish to fry now – Mascolo with Atlantic and Ricca and Mather with SolGold, among other things. Mascolo also currently sits on the board of ASX-listed Tempest Minerals, a company that shares a director with DGR, Brian Moller, and is on the hunt for precious and base metals in Australia.
