Bluejay appoints chairperson

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim- and FSE-listed Bluejay Mining has appointed 70-year-old Michael Hutchinson as its nonexecutive chairperson with immediate effect.

Hutchinson has a career spanning almost 50 years in the metals industry, which Bluejay CEO Roderick McIllree said on Monday would greatly benefit the company.

“Mike brings a wealth of specialised operational experience, particularly in Greenland, and an esteemed network of contacts, which will be extremely useful as we look to move through the offtake and sales process. Accordingly, this is a pivotal time for the company, and with our 2017 work programme continuing to progress at a rapid pace, I look forward to working with Mike as we look to establish Bluejay as a revenue generative mining company,” he commented.

Bluejay has started offtake discussions for production from the Pituffik titanium project, which it aims to bring into production in 2018.

Hutchinson began his career at Metallgesellschaft, where he worked for 25 years, ultimately becoming the MD in 1985. Metallgesellschaft was a metal trading subsidiary of one of Germany's largest industrial conglomerates. He was also a director of the London Metals Exchange from 1986 to 2008, which is the world's largest market for industrial metals trading. Since then he has held a number of notable board and management roles, which includes being chairperson of Metalloyd, a major supplier of steel and raw materials to traders, distributors and end-users, and chairperson of Greenland Minerals & Energy, which successfully overturned the long-standing Danish and Greenlandic ban on uranium exploitation. He was also chairperson of Wogen, a speciality metals trading house.