In today’s episode we chat to Richard Lloyd, CEO of Minexia which operates the mining funding platform NR Private Market. Rich is a 25-year mining industry veteran having graduated from the Royal School of Mines in the early 90's, and having worked in gold exploration and mining and then mining investment banking (I guess the rocks are in his DNA…) Rich also sits on a number of mining boards as a non-executive director.
After meeting Richard at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town recently, I wanted to get him on the podcast to talk about the financing landscape for junior miners as he has a strong background in this space. We talk about the challenges facing mining juniors in today’s environment and how investors can differentiate between deals, especially during the early stages. We also touch on WRT-to-platform financing and how it can help juniors to raise much needed early stage finance.
KEY TAKEAWAYS

Post-graduates, and those just starting out in the industry, need to be prepared to put themselves out there, and most importantly travel, in order to find opportunities.
Anti-laundering measures are paramount to any activity in mine investment. Heavy regulations see to it that investment channels cannot be used for nefarious purposes.
In the main, the mining industry has always been a little slower on the uptake when it comes to technological innovations, such as crowdfunding.
Copper is a commodity that has a useful purpose on the investment side, for the reason that by studying its share prices, you can almost use it as an indicator, or as Richard calls it, a “fair-weather commodity” to show where the market is heading.
Minexia analyse potential deals using a “Four C’s” system, involving:

Country - What are the geo-political risks of the proposed area? Sometimes the high-risk, post-conflict areas can be lucrative.
Commodity - Some materials are far easy to assess than others. 
Corporate - What does the management structure look like? Is it stable? Are they listed or private? Where are they based?
Concession - What does the layout of the project itself look like?

There are many unscrupulous funding channels out there. The only way to really combat this situation is to raise awareness. Richard credits methods such as Dig Deep as a good way of raising this awareness.
Minexia help junior miners by vetting the deals carefully. Through their broad range of knowledge, and with their team of experts, they can provide swift, accurate feedback.

.BEST MOMENTS
‘Gold mines aren’t necessarily found along the M4 corridor nowadays’
’There are only so many ways you can dig a hole in the ground’
‘Investing in early-stage mining projects is a little more technical’
’They call it Dr Copper for a reason’
‘You don’t know exactly what they’re reading, or what they’re looking at'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
 
Dig Deep – The Mining Podcast on iTunes
Minexia - https://www.minexia.com/about
Richard Lloyd LInkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-lloyd-mining-finance/?originalSubdomain=uk
ABOUT THE HOST
Rob Tyson is an established recruiter in the mining and quarrying sector and decided to produce the “Dig Deep” The Mining Podcast to provide valuable and informative content around the mining industry. He has a passion and desire to promote the industry and the podcast aims to offer the mining community an insight to peoples experiences and careers covering any mining discipline, giving the listeners helpful advice and guidance on industry topics.
Rob is the Founder and Director of Mining International Ltd, a leading global recruitment and headhunting consultancy based in the UK specialising in all areas of mining across the globe from first world to third world countries from Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Australia. We source, headhunt and discover new and top talent talent through a targeted approach and search methodology and have a proven track record in sourcing and positioning exceptional candidates into our clients organisation in any mining dis