Critical Minerals
Critical Minerals
Andrew Waltho
FAIG RPGeo, FAusIMM, FGS, PMSME, GAICD
Consulting Director – Sustainable Mining Services, Mining Transactions and Corporate Advisory Team, ERM
Andrew has more than 40 years as an exploration and mining geoscientist spanning multiple commodities, deposit styles, and settings with major, mid-tier and junior companies and as a consultant. Andrew also has more than 23 years’ experience as a director of resources sector companies and not for profit professional organisations. He is a past-President of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists and was recently appointed to the VALMIN Committee which is responsible for the development of the Australasian Code for Public Reporting of Technical Assessments and Valuations of Mineral Assets.
Career highlights include 25 years with Rio Tinto and CRA, most recently as Chief Geoscientist Energy, Diamonds and Minerals where he led a small team responsible for achieving growth and asset portfolio diversification through identification of new exploration opportunities and acquisitions across a broad spectrum of commodities, provision of specialist technical advice, identification of technical improvement opportunities and participation in due diligence reviews of potential acquisitions and divestments. This included revision of resource evaluation and estimation practices for the Jadar lithium project in Serbia.
Andrew was involved in the development and initial operation of the Century Zinc Mine in northwest Queensland as a Project and Principal Geologist and Mining Services Manager, responsible for mine geology, geotechnical, dewatering, survey and long-term planning. He has also participated in feasibility studies for base metals, iron ore and energy minerals projects both in Australia and overseas. He has a strong innovation track record, particularly in the application of geophysics to rock mass characterization and production control. Andrew has also demonstrated the value of a strong understanding of the relationships between geological structure and mineral distribution in the improvement of exploration, resource evaluation and production control practices.
He has considerable experience in the sustainability of mining projects and managing uncertainty inherent in resource estimates. Experience in seeing projects through discovery and resource evaluation and feasibility, to production and optimizing existing mining operations has fostered the development of skills in identifying, quantifying and managing geological and resource risk.