About us

Our Team

Board of Directors

Denis Waddell

Chairman

Denis is a Chartered Accountant with extensive experience in the management of exploration and mining companies. Denis founded Tanami Gold NL in 1994 and was involved with the Company as Managing Director and then Chairman and Non-Executive Director until 2012. Prior to founding Tanami Gold NL, Denis was the Finance Director of the Metana Minerals NL group. During the past 38 years, Denis has gained considerable experience in corporate finance and operations management of exploration and mining companies.

Errol Smart

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Errol is a geologist, registered for JORC purposes, and has over 30 years of industry experience across all aspects of exploration, mine development and operations with experience in precious and base metals. He has held positions in Anglogold, Cluff Mining, Metallon Gold, Clarity Minerals LionGold Corporation and African Stellar Holdings. Errol’s senior executive roles have been on several boards of companies listed on both the TSX and ASX and currently serves as a Director on the Board of the Minerals Council South Africa.

Godfrey Gomwe

Non-Executive Director

Godfrey is the former chief executive officer of Anglo American plc’s Thermal Coal business, where his responsibilities included oversight over the company’s manganese interests in the joint venture with BHP. Until August 2012, Godfrey was an executive director of Anglo American South Africa, prior to which he held the positions finance director and chief operating officer. He was also chairman and chief executive of Anglo American Zimbabwe Limited and served on a number of Anglo American executive committees and operating boards, including Kumba Iron Ore, Anglo American Platinum, Highveld Steel & Vanadium and Mondi South Africa.

Anthony Lennox

Anthony (Tony) Lennox

Non-Executive Director

Tony has forty years of resource sector experience in operations, project development and corporate management and contains thirty-five years of leading people and twenty years of board experience.

Tony is an experienced mining engineer with extensive underground and open cut experience in both coal and base metals. Importantly his career includes Managing Director & CEO of Palabora Mining Company Ltd from 2010 – 2013, which was owned by Rio Tinto Copper, South Africa. Palabora is one of South Africa’s oldest and most revered large mining operations having been in operation since 1956. Palabora was renowned as a highly efficient, large scale underground mechanised mining operation under his stewardship.

With over 10 years in Africa at Managing Director and Chairman levels he brings skills in governance, strategy development and execution in complex and culturally diverse arenas. This, when added to his technical and leadership skills, has resulted in commercial and sustainable business solutions under his watch. Tony’s career with Rio Tinto, BHP, and Shell Australia, included leading world class start-ups, global corporate safety, health and environment functions, project financial evaluation, Board governance input, risk management, stakeholder management, and turnaround businesses, which brings accomplished skills to the Orion Board.

Mark Palmer

Non-Executive Director

Mark has 13 years of experience working with entities in Australia, including 8 years with Dominion Mining. He previously worked with NM Rothschild & Sons Limited for the London mining project as part of the finance team, where he was responsible for assessing mining projects globally. He later moved to the investment banking team at UBS, where his focus was global mergers and acquisitions, and equity and debt financing. He also ran the EMEA mining team at UBS, later joining Tembo Capital in 2015 as investment director.

Patience Mpofu

Non-Executive Director

Patience is an award-winning mining executive with over 15 years of experience of cross-functional resources industry experience. As a previous Vice President of a leading ASX listed mining company, Patience led multidisciplinary teams to develop integrated sustainability strategies that drove business results, reduced risk, and improved the company’s reputation. Patience has strong ESG leadership experience across a broad range of roles including devising global commercial strategies to create value. As a metallurgist by training, her technical proficiency underpins her comprehensive understanding of the mining sector.

Currently, as CEO and Principal Consultant of Insight Mining Experts (IME), Dr. Mpofu offers unparalleled insights into global mining trends, risks, and ESG practices, especially in the context of energy transition. Patience’s career with South 32, Lonmin PLC, and Anglo-American, included roles as VP Corporate Affairs, Commercial Manager, Senior Manager Business Development, Senior Strategy Manager, Planning analyst and Lead Metallurgist brings extensive experience to the Orion Board across multiple disciplines.

Senior Management

Errol Smart

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer

Errol is a geologist, registered for JORC purposes, and has over 30 years of industry experience across all aspects of exploration, mine development and operations with experience in precious and base metals. He has held positions in Anglogold, Cluff Mining, Metallon Gold, Clarity Minerals LionGold Corporation and African Stellar Holdings. Errol’s senior executive roles have been on several boards of companies listed on both the TSX and ASX and currently serves as a Director on the Board of the Minerals Council South Africa.

Peet van Coller

Peet van Coller

Chief Financial Officer

Peet is a Chartered accountant who served his Articles of Clerkship at Ernst & Young. Peet has 23 years of experience, predominantly in the mining and manufacturing sectors, including various senior finance and commercial positions at Jubilee Group Metals, Murray & Roberts, Master Drilling, Samancor Chrome, Anglo Platinum and ARM-Norilsk JV, Nkomati Nickel Mines.

Martin Bouwmeester

Martin Bouwmeester

Company Secretary

Martin is a Fellow Certified Practicing Accountant, highly experienced in exploration, mine development and operations. Prior to his role at Orion, Martin worked closely with a number of companies, to identify and assess exploration, development and mining opportunities, evaluate and arrange various alternatives for exploration, development and mining activities and develop and implement financial strategies. Martin was CFO, Business Development Manager and Company Secretary of Perseverance Corporation and was a key member of the executive team that evaluated the sulphide mineralisation at the Fosterville Gold Mine; an initiative that led to the discovery and definition of more than 3M ounces of gold and the funding for the development of the mine and processing plant to exploit those resources.

Marcus Birch

Marcus Birch

Executive: Sustainability & Business support

Marcus has over 30 years of experience in mining and minerals exploration. He holds a BSc Honours in Geology from the University of Exeter and a BCom in economics, accounting and business management from the University of South Africa. Marcus initially began his career as a geologist in the South African gold mining sector, and more recently held senior general management positions in the junior exploration sector.

Mark Meyer

Mark Meyer

Executive: Operations

Executive: Operations Graduate Mechanical Engineer, Engineer’s Certificate of Competency for Mines & Works, with 40 years of experience in Mining. Began his career in the Anglovaal gold mines, with time in the deep-level mines in the West of South Africa and the gold mines in Mpumalanga. Previously held positions at senior management level in Junior Gold Mining Operations in Ghana and Zimbabwe.

John Paul Hunt

Group Consulting Geologist

John Paul is an economic and exploration geologist with over 25 years of experience in grassroots to brownfields target generation and exploration, exploring for intrusive magmatic nickel, base and precious metal magmatic sulphide deposits, sediment-hosted and vein-hosted base metal deposits, orogenic and placer gold, pegmatite-hosted mineralisation, and mineralisation related to magmatic-hydrothermal systems, including Iron Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) type deposits.

He has a track record of building successful teams and businesses at different scales. He has comprehensive experience in design and executing exploration programs at all stages from prospectivity and target generation to evaluation and Resource. He has been involved in numerous project reviews, due diligences and feasibility studies. He has worked on 6 continents and extensively in sub-Saharan Africa and northern Europe.

Nelson Mosiapoa

Nelson Mosiapoa

Group Corporate Social Responsibility Advisor

Nelson studied chemical engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Nelson is currently undertaking the final phase of his Post Graduate Diploma in Management at the University of Cape Town. As an advanced policy scholar of science and technology, he served on the policy unit of the governing party in South Africa prior to the first democratic elections. His professional career started at Sasol Petroleum as a gasification process controller and then a learner official at Anglo American/De Beers. He is also the founder and trustee of the Mosiapoa Family Trust, a private and investment equity company in the resources sector with assets featured on the JSE.