Welcome to the Arena from ICR – Conversations with Today's Innovators & Business Leaders John Dowd, CEO of GoGreen Investments, and Chris Showalter, CEO of Life Zone Metals - Digging Deep: Unearthing the future of sustainable mining
When it comes to legacy industries, it's all too common for business processes to become embedded and stagnant, but with growing technological and environmental transformation across markets, there may be no choice but to change. Today's guests are teaming up to promote a technology that could drive that change with the potential to disrupt the mining industry.
Today we're talking with John Dowd, CEO of GoGreen Investments and Chris Showalter, CEO of Life Zone Metals. GoGreen is a special-purpose acquisition company combining with Life Zone Holdings Limited in a go-public transaction set to list on the New York Stock Exchange in July under the symbol LZM.
John has over 30 years of energy and commodity investing experience and has received six Lipper Awards for best risk-adjusted performance in in the energy sector. Previously, he researched energy companies for 11 years as a sell-side analyst. Needless to say, John has a deep understanding of what resonates with investors.
Chris is the CEO of Lifezone Metals. He brings a corporate finance and merchant banking background to the Lifezone team and has extensive experience across Africa. In addition to capital markets and fundraising, Chris brings strong expertise, originating sourcing, and developing relationships across the continent.
He held the role of director and partner at the Merchant Bank, Hanneman Partners in Zimbabwe, where he focused on African mining sector. Over six years in Zimbabwe he has developed specific, he has developed specific expertise in the platinum sector and advised a number of platinum mining companies prior to that. He spent nine years at Goldman Sachs where he held various roles in equity capital markets where where also ex, while also exploring opportunities for Goldman across Southern Africa.
Highlights:
- John explains GoGreen's mission statement (3:16)
- How GoGreen approached the SPAC process (3:42)
- John explains the benefits of the SPAC structure (5:06)
- John describes what attracted GoGreen to Life Zone Metals (5:50)
- SPAC redemption rates, and the process of securing a partnership (7:37)
- Chris breaks down Life Zone Metals' work, and relationship to Africa (9:41)
- Chris compares traditional smelting practices to the benefits of Lifezone's Hydra-Met technology (12:10)
- Efficiency of Hydra-Met technology, versus traditional mining practices (14:23)
- What makes Kabanga nickel sustainable? (15:20)
- Chris describes the market in Africa, and why they companies work in the location (16:28)
- Tanzanian Nickel and its relation to the recent Inflation Reduction Act (18:47)
- Chris and John describes the total addressable market for their industry (20:35)
Links:
GoGreen Investments on LinkedIn
Feedback:
If you have questions about the show, or have a topic in mind you'd like discussed in future episodes, email our producer, marion@lowerstreet.co.