Mick Davis

SINCE raising $650m by April 2023, Davis’s latest investment creation, Vision Blue Resources (VBS) has kept a low profile in pursuit of its strategy to expand its portfolio in companies operating in five key metals: graphite, vanadium, silicon metal, tin and rare earths. Those metals are the battery minerals that Davis views as critical to the global energy transition that VBR wants to invest in and support. While South Africa has some of those resources – in particular vanadium but also rare earths – Davis has ruled out making investments here. 

The closest he has come to Southern Africa is Madagascar, where associate NextSource Materials is developing the Molo graphite mine. NextSource is listed in Toronto and Davis is the chairperson. Last year he headhunted former Sasol CFO Hanré Rossouw to become its CEO. Rossouw was CFO of Xstrata Alloys between 2011 and 2013, providing a historical connection to Davis’s former Xstrata group. 

Davis in 2023 ruled out investment in South Africa for a string of reasons of which the changeable nature of regulations, especially over security of tenure, seems to be the chief concern. He does not appear to have spoken on the subject since the creation of the Government of National Unity, but Rossouw seems more optimistic. NextSource needs to build an anode battery facility and South Africa is one possibility. “I believe we would be open to consider South Africa,” Rossouw commented.