Mini-gold Boom in West Africa Brings New Staff

The first four months of 2010 have been a world apart from the first months of 2009.  The gold price has settled at US$1,100 per ounce and West Africa has secured its position as one of the most rewarding investment destinations in the world for companies involved in the gold exploration business.

This mini-boom in the gold sector has enabled our company to return to full employment for all our technical staff and for us to engage a few new team members.  This is most apparent in La Cote d’Ivoire where Stanislas has built up an excellent crew of Ivorian Geologists and field technicians to handle an ever increasing number of Francophone contracts.

Other members of our team are busy in Burkina Faso, Senegal and Mali, as well as here in Ghana.

As is often the case, the focus of our staff during busy times is towards serving our clients rather than marketing our company.  So I thought is best to post a brief blog today summarising the services our Technical Staff can provide the Mining and Exploration Industry in West Africa.

Look out for our revised website in the coming months. In the meantime, you may download a document profiling our technical staff here.

John Coates Joins the Team

SEMS Exploration is delighted to announce that Mr John Coates will join the company’s technical management team in January 2010.

Although he will be based in Ghana, John will have responsibility for the supervision of all the company’s ongoing exploration projects throughout West Africa.

John graduated from Imperial College,London, with an MSc in Mineral Exploration. He started working in Africa in 1984 and moved to West Africa with BHP Minerals in 1988. During his eight years with BHP, he held the positions of Exploration Manager in both Ghana and Mali. He also worked as Principal Geologist in Burkina Faso.

Since 2002, John has been working as the Business Development Manager and Quality Control Manager for Transworld / Intertek Laboratory in Ghana. This role has given him a great insight in the management of mineral sample analysis and related quality assurance procedures. He brings with him over 30 years’ experience of metallogenic environments across the world, including 12 years working on the Birimian Supergroup of West Africa.

The company is very happy that John has decided to return to his geological roots as our Project Manager and Consulting Geologist. We trust that his appointment will give our clients an even greater confidence in the standard of our work undertaken on their behalf in West Africa.

GIS Training Courses a Great Success

In late April SEMS Exploration Services hosted a series of training sessions for GIS professionals in Accra, Ghana and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Two separate courses were held at each venue: Basic and Advanced. Chris Jenkins from PitneyBowes MapInfo co-hosted the sessions with SEMS Exploration’s GIS specialst, James Tetteh. Attendees included companies from the mining industry, government and telecoms companies. More courses will be held in the coming months. You can get in touch with James Tetteh on our page about GIS Training.

New Geologist appointed in Cote d’Ivoire

SEMS Exploration Services is delighted to announce the appointment of Mr Stanislas de Stabenrath to the team in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

Stanislas, 28, is a French national and has an MSc in Georesources from the Institut EGID Bordeaux 3. His African experience began as a child, when he spent two years in Djibouti. He has travelled in Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia and Morroco, and lived for a year in Cape Town. He spent four months working as a GIS in Benin on a sustainable development project. Stan is no stranger to Cote d’Ivoire, either: he spent two, two-year stints in the country in Abidjan and Bouake. He was a professional sound engineer and plays the guitar.

“This is excellent news for the company, and for our clients in Cote d’Ivoire,” said Simon Meadows Smith, Managing Director. “Stan has an innate understanding of Africa, and a solid grounding in the latest geological techniques. These are values that are at the heart of our company’s philosophy.”

First view from the Outcrop

I’m delighted to welcome you to the new SEMS Exploration Services news feed, or ‘blog’. We’ve grown over the last ten years to cover five West African countries on a permanent basis, with a staff of over 70. The new website, which was launched in early February took us to the next level and enabled clients and potential clients to get a good idea of who we are and what we can do.

We have major ambitions for 2009, including a major ramping up of GIS Training in Accra, Ghana, and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. We have also tightened our commercial relationship with Digital Surveying ahead of a big push in downhole surveying.

The last piece of the website strategy is this blog. It will enable us to keep staff and clients up to date more quickly, and with more accurate information. I do hope you’ll become a regular subscriber and reader.

Company Profile: Australia’s Paydirt July 2008

SEMS Exploration Services was profiled in Australia’s Paydirt in July 2008. You can download the article from the link below.

Download here