Could you provide a brief background of Lycopodium, the company structure and your vision for the medium term?

Lycopodium was founded in 1992, so this year we celebrate our 25th anniversary. The company listed on the ASX in 2004 and today has offices in Australia, Philippines, Canada and South Africa. Whilst we started in the mineral resources sector, particularly in gold, by the late 90’s we looked to diversify the business with a view to offsetting the cyclical nature of the resource sector. In addition to looking to alternate sectors, such as process industries and infrastructure, we also sought within resources to broaden our clientele, commodity expertise and geography to continue to develop. We consider ourselves a diversified engineering and project delivery group. In the resources sector, Lycopodium has broad experience and capabilities in gold, iron ore, base metals, PGMs and diamonds as well as most other minerals. Based on the number of projects, the predominance of our activity right now is in gold, but we are also delivering the design of First Quantum Mineral’s (FQM) copper project at Mina de Cobre, Panama, amongst a host of other projects.

Lycopodium Ltd is the parent company to a group of subsidiaries operating across a number of sectors. One of our subsidiaries is Orway Mineral Consultants (OMC), a metallurgical consultancy which, amongst other things, specializes in process optimization which we consider an important facet of the resources sector moving forward. OMC is also currently working with OZ Minerals, providing the technology that will help them better exploit their Carrapateena project. In terms of staffing, the Company has over 650 people working in its offices and across sites worldwide.

Which geographical areas are Lycopodium’s primary focus internationally?

Whilst headquartered in Australia, we are currently most active in Africa, the Americas and a few other regions. Historically, Lycopodium has had an equal focus on the domestic and international markets, but currently over 80% of our business is overseas working with a range of clients, both international and Australian, such as Perseus, who operate in international jurisdictions. We are currently delivering six gold projects in West Africa and undertaking feasibility studies on projects in other parts of Africa as well as Central and South America. We are also working on a number of other minerals related projects, including onshore and offshore diamond projects out of our Cape Town office.

Could you mention a few of your clients and perhaps highlight one of your current projectS?

Lycopodium’s clientele is very broad. Though varying in size, our clientele tend to be publicly listed– either on the TSX, ASX, LSE, or JSE. We work for all scale of clients from the majors such as Rio Tinto, Newmont, BHP Billiton, Barrick; mid-tiers such as First Quantum Minerals (FQM), and a host of junior and first project companies. As mentioned earlier, our single largest body of work is FQM’s Mina de Cobre Panama project, where Lycopodium is completing the design, technical procurement and engineering support. In our early days, Lycopodium was delivering relatively small brownfield and greenfield projects and studies. Today, this project has a capital value of $6.5 billion, and will process upwards of 74 million tonne mt/y of copper bearing ore. It is a very impressive undertaking, and for us; it is an indicator not only of our skills but of the strong relationship we have built with this client, given that this is our 6th project for FQM.

What company values have allowed Lycopodium to build long-lasting relationships with mining clients?

First and foremost, it is our unwavering commitment over the years to fit-for-purpose quality and delivering value. One of the indicators of quality in the resources sector is how quickly we can help our clients reach commercial production. Our plants have a solid reputation and track record in this regard. We see ourselves first and foremost as engineers, where our key focus is ensuring our client’s satisfaction.

A range of projects, such as Dalgaranga, have shifted from EPCM models to EPC. Do you observe this as a general trend and why now?

The shift from EPCM models to EPC is definitely a trend, and it is not the first time we have seen EPC delivery within the market place. It was more common 20 years ago and then waned in popularity. We are currently delivering two EPC contracts as we speak and a third which is awaiting funding. There will always be a place for both and it really depends, amongst other things, on the size and nature of the project.

EPC is a feature of the market and I believe will remain so. In simple terms, clients feel they are getting greater surety on cost as well as driving greater scope discipline given that making changes on an EPC contract is more expensive. Lycopodium has recently started a JV with Monadelphous (a leading Australian based engineering and construction group), Mondium, in order to target and deliver EPC projects in the mineral processing sector. Together we bring complementary strengths of multidisciplinary engineering and construction capabilities, as well as technical expertise and minerals project delivery experience. Mondium benefits from the combination of two significant parent organizations to give it  the balance sheet to tackle larger contracts

Which would you say are the greatest advantages and challenges of operating out of Perth?

The greatest challenge of operating in Perth is geographical in the context of a global business. There are good connections out of Perth into Africa but it is still a long way to anywhere. Certainly being in the same time zone as our Manila office, as well as Asia is very helpful, but it is not great for the Americas — which was one of the reasons for the opening of our Toronto offices. The advantage of working out of Perth is that the Australian engineering and construction fraternity has a can-do attitude. We have been working for the last 25 years in logistically challenging and remote areas. We feel it is important to understand the challenges specific to each project when designing our plants and facilities. I feel that is one of the key things we are strong at.