Shares in the West Perth explorer surged nearly 50 per cent on Tuesday after it revealed the acclaimed mining executive would take the helm, joining specialist lithium geologists Gareth Reynolds and Mark Calderwood as other recent appointments.
The announcement comes after Cygnus struck a deal in July to farm into the prospective Pontax lithium project in Quebec and extended its footprint in the area via another agreement struck last month.
Pontax sits in the same province which hosts Allkem’s 40 million tonne James Bay project and the Corvette lithium discovery owned by Canada’s Patriot Battery Metals, which former Pilbara Minerals boss Ken Brinsden joined in August as non-executive chairman.
Mr Southam said he was excited about the ground Cygnus had amassed in Quebec and the speed at which it had secured it.
“They have hardly done any work and they already have historic high-grade drill intersections of up to 2.6 per cent,” he said.
“You don’t have to be much of a geologist to figure out there’s pegmatites there, they’re sticking out of the ground and you can see them from the air.
“We’re about to follow that up with a 10,000m drilling program, so the pathway to an initial resource should be pretty quick.”
Many in WA’s mining sector see Canada as the next frontier for hardrock lithium mining after the development and expansion of WA’s successful industry. Other ASX-listed companies with interests in Canada include Green Technology Metals, Sayona Mining and Piedmont Lithium.
Mr Southam, who will begin as a non-executive director at Cygnus before starting as managing director in mid-February, said the James Bay area of Quebec was under-explored for lithium despite its potential.
He said the area was close to established infrastructure and had access to renewable energy but noted North America was a long way behind Australia in extracting battery metals.
Mr Southam is widely credited with bringing Mincor’s shuttered Kambalda nickel operations back into production earlier this year, boosting the company’s market capitalisation from $70 million to $1 billion between 2019 and 2022.
He will receive an annual salary of $600,000, a short-term incentive package worth up to 25 per cent of his salary and can earn up to 18 million in performance rights subject to company milestones as well as long-term incentives worth up to 150 per cent of his salary.
Mr Southam said the performance rights tranches were linked to shareholder value creation.
Bellevue Gold founder and managing director Steve Parsons is a substantial shareholder of Cygnus with a 5.7 per cent stake. Other significant shareholders include Cygnus directors Michael Naylor (4.2 per cent) and Michael Bohm (3.9 per cent).
