Chairman
Peter graduated with a B.Sc. in Geology from University College London (UCL) in 1974 and worked initially in and around extractive industries, first as a geophysics technician at UCL, next as a petroleum geologist in Libya, then in mining & metals market analysis. He and Barbara Sotowicz set up Bloomsbury Minerals Economics (BME) in 1993; Peter is its Chairman. Until 2006, BME was purely a research company, but from 2006 it re-focused on investment in small- and medium-size private companies, starting with Mining Journal / MCL (2006-08), FastMarkets (2008-12), Intierra (2009-14) and Roskill (2010-21).
The Roskill investment began Bloomsbury’s re-orientation towards energy transition and the environment. Roskill was globally prominent in production cost, energy use and environmental analysis of battery raw materials. From 2020 Bloomsbury’s emphasis shifted further towards sustainability, by way of an investment in Skarn Associates, which researches the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of mine production, plus water use, flood and drought risk in mining. Bloomsbury has also invested in Minviro, which provides consultancy and software, assisting miners to minimise their environmental impact.
In 2021, Peter and Barbara ( who is also a Non-Executive Director of BNC ) oversaw the formation of Bloomsbury Natural Capital, an 85%-owned BME subsidiary, which was set up to invest in regenerative primary industries. The first such investment was in Cascadia Seaweed Corp. of British Columbia, in 2021. This was followed in 2022 by an investment in the Swiss forestry-related company Xilva AG. Investments in regenerative agriculture, vertical farming and closed-system horticulture will be considered. BME has set up a second 85%-owned subsidiary, Bloomsbury Information Capital, to invest in SaaS companies.”
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