Some aspire to be leaders. Others are called to take up the mantle.
Carl Popal never sought to hold an executive position on a board. More interested in the commercialisation of good and services, Popal traded everything from emu meat to clothing brands, construction material and mining tenements early in his career.
As his expertise in recognising and trading prime mining real estate grew, Popal saw an opportunity to leverage his strategic knowledge of the industry.
From 2000 to 2010, he was heavily focused on investing in junior mining in Australia, building a large portfolio of promising prospects, quality companies, and solid shares.
That’s when he got the call from shareholders of Paynes Find Gold.
Angry with a lack of progress and blow-out administration costs since the company’s IPO a year before, shareholders rallied to eject the former board and elect Popal to the seat of CEO.
Something of a rebel from his first days in an executive office, Popal maintained that maverick attitude as he moved from one successful company to the next, staying true to his values in the often-cutthroat corporate world.
In 2013 those ideals led him to Eclipse Metals Ltd (ASX:EPM), a company built on forward-thinking ideas of sustainability and a sense of responsibility toward society.
“My personal motivation is to make sure that whatever we do, it’s going to contribute toward cleaner mining solutions, net zero emissions, and better technology for humanity,” Popal explained.
“That's the one thing that motivates me. Whatever we do, whatever we develop, in the long run, my children and future generations will benefit from it.”
In this article:
- Science doesn’t lie
- Mining today for tomorrow’s tech
- Sheer determination and persistence
For Carl Popal, the question of whether climate change is occurring has long been settled.
“I've always been an advocate, a supporter of greener mining. Back in 2009, 2010, people thought I was going coo-coo talking about that kind of stuff. It wasn’t commercially sensible,” Popal recalled.
“I looked at the rationale, the scientific evidence. The ice is melting. We’re releasing more and more carbon emissions that have been trapped in that ice, and it’s becoming a snowball effect as things get worse.
“Science doesn't lie. What goes up must come down, two and two is always four.”
That same logic-based mindset led Popal to invest in Eclipse Metals during its IPO in 2011 – at the time dubbed Eclipse Uranium (ASX:EUL) – and subsequently, in 2013, join the board to be executive director.
“I've always believed that uranium is the solution to delivering net-zero emissions, a solution that can produce abundant amounts of energy. Uranium has got a lot of pluses,” Popal said.
Within six weeks of the company’s IPO, the 2011 tsunami hit Japan and the Fukushima disaster unfolded on the world stage.
“After Fukushima, no one wanted to know about uranium. It killed the momentum from an investment perspective and from a commercial perspective.”
Uranium was no longer tenable as the sole asset of the business, so the company was rebranded to Eclipse Metals and its portfolio opened to acquire a suite of manganese, bauxite, quartz, rare earth, battery and precious metal assets across Australia and Greenland.
While this greater diversity opened myriad opportunities across multiple markets, the company developed something of a branding problem.
“We have a smorgasbord of assets. We have the manganese, we have the uranium, we have copper now, we've got the rare earths and all that,” Popal explained.
“As one of the brokers said, ‘Look, you got the fruit salad, you need to somehow identify yourself out there. Where's your watermelon? Where's your apples?’ Well, that's a good way of putting it.”
While Popal and the Eclipse team never lost their vision of a cleaner, more sustainable future, they realised their energy would be better spent building a multi-asset, future-tech focused business.
The challenge, now, was to develop their own unique identity in a rapidly expanding sector.
Mining today for tomorrow’s tech
The face of mining, long considered a wholly anti-environmental practice, is rapidly beginning to shift.
Lithium-ion batteries now dominate the electric car industry, renewables have become the cheapest, most cost-effective energy production methods, and the greater Australian mining industry has woken up to the opportunities the Decarbonisation Revolution is offering.
With the incredible amount of lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite, and rare earth elements that will be necessary to build the energy infrastructure of tomorrow, the mining sector now has an opportunity to become the sustainability champions of the manufacturing industry.
It’s a path Popal and his team have been guiding Eclipse Metals down from the very beginning.
“In our view, we've only focused on the green energy minerals and metals. Uranium as a green energy, manganese as a green metal, the rare earths that are required for the high-tech green energy sector,” Popal explained.
“Future Tech, we've focused on that. Everything that's playing a positive role in low carbon emissions.
“That the market hasn't understood that yet, that's been the biggest challenge for us.”
The vast majority of Eclipse Metals’ assets lie in the Northern Territory, with the notable exception of the flagship Ivittuut Rare Earth Element Project in Greenland.
Aerial image of Ivittuut and the cryolite mine from 1960, showing the working open pit, mine infrastructure, ore and waste dumps and ship loading facilities.
Originally a cryolite mine – one of the rarer industrial minerals to be found in commercial quantities – Ivittuut also has potential for base metals, including iron and zinc, as well as fluorite, siderite, high-grade silica quartz, lithium, and rare earth minerals.
In the Northern Territory, Eclipse’s assets include a collection of uranium properties – Liverpool, Ngalia Basin, Tunderball, Caramal, Nabalek and Ranger Mines – as well as the Mary Valley Manganese Project, and the Rock Hill Project, prospective for copper, silver, and zinc.
Late last year, the company announced it would be divesting its non-core uranium assets in the Northern Territory, spinning out the Ngalia Basin and Liverpool projects into Oz Yellow Uranium.
“The uranium assets need to be a pure-play uranium entity,” Popal explained.
“It’s a completely different beast, the investors are very different to general commodity investors. Unlike gold, you don't keep a pound of uranium in a safe.
“Spinning off the uranium assets gives Eclipse more of a defined vision to excel in the green metal space, and zero carbon emission focused-mining.”
Sheer determination and persistence
That kind of forward-focused thinking and entrepreneurial spirit are some of the key strengths Popal points to when asked about the success of his corporate journey so far.
“Failure is part and parcel of business, you have to accept failure in order to be able to be successful,” Popal emphasises.
“I think a lot of people are frightened of being in business or following commercial goals, and purely because of the fear of failure, that it may not work out.
“You cannot be shy of challenges. You must take risks in life to be able to make it somewhere.”
Carl credits this attitude to his wide travelling, involvement with a wide variety of companies, and being a parent to his boys.
“Being the father of four boys, working with so many companies, it teaches you a lot,” he said.
“Travelling around the world, interacting with a lot of different people, seeing the challenges and the way they deal with them… That’s something you can’t experience at home.
“I think harsh environments force you to understand how to survive, and sharpens entrepreneurial skills. I think they can only be developed through the University of Life and through experience.
“Success comes before work in a dictionary, but in real life its hard work before success. It’s about sheer determination and persistence. Always be persistent in your goals.”
Eclipse Metals now begins the next stage of its journey as a future-tech mining company with that fearless, determined persistence, pursuing quartz, cryolite and rare earth elements within the inhospitable but beautiful tundras of Greenland.
Carl Popal, on-site at Ivittuut in Greenland this week for a new drilling program.
At home or abroad, it certainly won’t be fear of the unknown that holds Popal and Eclipse Metals back.
Read more on Proactive Investors AU
