Vincent Mascolo was one of the mining industry’s larger than life characters.
Whether he was electrifying a room or crackling at you off the screen in a Zoom meeting, there was always an energy about him that was infectious.
Sometimes you didn’t know quite where he was going to go with that energy, but over the course of several decades in mining he managed to build up a confidence in those who knew him that wherever it was, it was going to be interesting and worthwhile.
Latterly he was the driving force behind Atlantic Lithium Limited (AIM:ALL), a company that had recently emerged from his successful stewardship of IronRidge Resources and the eventual spin-out into a separate vehicle of a portfolio of highly prospective gold assets in Central Africa.
Make no mistake, Mascolo had really built something at Atlantic.
Its shares hit a five-year high last month, and not just on idle speculation either. On the contrary, the company’s funded, has a powerful joint venture partner, and is well on the way to construction and production.
These are not easy things to do, as any mining company executive will tell you, and yet Mascolo set about these tasks with a cheerful demeanour and an optimism that sometimes flew in the face of market conditions and the vagaries of the sector generally.
A fellow-traveller, at times, with Nick Mather of SolGold, Mascolo nevertheless ploughed his own furrow.
He was on the boards of several companies over the years, always bringing a unique contribution and a fresh perspective.
And he will be much missed