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Meet Senior Metals and Mining Analyst Charl Malan

June 29, 2023

Watch Time 3:14 MIN

Growing up in South Africa, Charl Malan became familiar with the metals and mining industries from a young age which fueled his passion for the energy transition.

I'm originally from South Africa. I was born in a very small town called Saldana, which is about an hour north of Cape Town. Saldana is known for two things. Firstly, it's one of the biggest iron ore export ports, and secondly, it's also home to South Africa's military academy. At a very young age, we moved to Pretoria, and it's here at high school that my love for earth sciences started. It was my mother that initially introduced me to investing and financing. And after completing my bachelor's degree and then my MBA, I began my career at Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank in Johannesburg as a buy side analyst.

Looking back at my time in South Africa, I can clearly remember driving past some of the world's largest gold, diamond and platinum mines, as well as some of the largest processing facilities on a weekly basis. And so I guess mining is essentially part of my DNA. In 2000, Fleming's, better known today as JP Morgan, offered me a position in the United States as a research sales analyst. And so in 2000, I left my family in South Africa and I moved to New York City. At JP Morgan, I was fortunate in that they were the investment bank for many mining companies, such as BHP, Agner Gold, Goldfields, and Exaro. And one of my many roles I had was to introduce these companies to the US investor base. And it's through this interaction that I got to meet Joe Foster and Derek Van Eck. And so in 2003, I joined VanEck. Initially, I joined as the precious metals analyst, but as the firm grew, I transitioned into becoming the senior base in industrial metal analyst for all the active resource strategies. Today, in addition to being the senior resource analyst for base industrial metals, I'm also leading our research in green, critical, and strategic metals as it relates to resource transitioning.

Without these minerals and metals, there's a lot of things that cannot be done. Whether it's building buildings, having flat-screen TVs, having watches on our arm or a cell phone in your hand, but it goes further, it goes to things such as medicine, food sometimes even, and as well as to things such as skin care. So the world of metals and mining is much, much bigger than just building buildings, building new technology.

Energy transition is close to my heart. Being from Africa, being from South Africa, mother nature is very close to me. I feel at home when I'm in nature. So the more we can do for nature through energy transition, through more sustainable mining, through more sustainable mining, the better it would be for me and for how I see the world.


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