Sarah-Jane Tasker | December 29, 2008 Article from: The...

Sarah-Jane Tasker | December 29, 2008
Article from: The Australian
HELPING her parents rent their first home in Australia at age two was just the start of Ines Scotland's career, which has led her to develop a mining company in Saudi Arabia, a country most Western women avoid.

Growing up in various parts of Australia and the US, Scotland didn't spend her childhood dreaming of running a mining company but, at 41, she has reached the top of her game at the helm of Citadel, a company she hopes to steer into becoming the next mid-tier mining house, with gold and base metal interests in Saudi Arabia.

While most people would be fascinated by her achievements in the Arab country, renowned for its strict rules for women, Scotland doesn't seem to take stock of what she is achieving. "We have Saudi joint venture partners and they are easy to be in business with. Most have been Western-educated and a lot have professional wives and daughters studying overseas and would like them to come back to Saudi and have careers and families and normal lives like everybody else."

But the Austrade website still states that women conducting business in Saudi must be accompanied by a man and let the man do the talking, advice Scotland says she hasn't been forced to put into practice.

She has met many senior government officials on her own, something her foreign contacts have not had an issue with.

"I think they like it because they don't get to talk to many women outside their family anyway.

"As a Western woman, you definitely have more freedom but then, saying that, one of the largest Saudi corporations, Olayan, is headed by a Saudi woman," she says.

Born to Scottish parents, who emigrated to Australia in 1969, Scotland and her two older sisters initially grew up in Melbourne, where they had humble beginnings. At about age two, with the family living in immigration housing, a photograph of Scotland was submitted to The Sun's baby of the year contest.

"I won my age category and my parents used the money to rent an apartment. So I got them their first house in Australia," she says with pride. She likens her sleeping habits to a toddler's -- running on about four hours sleep a night -- but she sleeps with her BlackBerry under her pillow and checks emails throughout the night. "I'm a work junkie, so if I have spare time I spend it working. I think I'm a workaholic because I love it. If I didn't enjoy it, I would find something else to fill my time. I wake up every day and think, 'Great, this is what I have to do today'."

Scotland has a 14-year-old daughter who attends boarding school, and she calls Emirates airline her home as she is constantly between cities and will again be relocating when the company moves its Sydney office to Melbourne.

"People make different sacrifices all the time: some have to sacrifice family because they're low-income earners and need multiple jobs to support them.

"But that's the great thing about today's society. There are choices and people respect the choices. No one says you're a terrible mother because your daughter is in boarding school."

You won't catch Scotland dwelling on the sacrifices she has made as she feels Citadel is at a crucial stage and she is ready to see them through.

"Shareholders deserve that you put in the time to meet your milestones and spend time in the market you are listed in, communicating that, so they get share value."

Many people remark on the fact that she is a woman doing business in Saudi, but she says it is just as hard to be a businesswoman in Australia.

"There are very few listed companies with ... women chief executives or women on boards. Some European countries say 50 per cent of boards have to be women. That is a bit extreme and Australia would struggle with that but there needs to be a better representation of women on boards rather than the old boys' club," she says.

Before Scotland embarked on the Citadel journey, taking her to a top position in the corporate world, she started out like most high-profile mining heads, working her way from the bottom up. She studied applied sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, a subject she says she wasn't necessarily very good at. "I was tossing up between that and speech therapy. There wasn't a lot of career planning around it. I just tend to fall into things."

With her degree in hand, she headed to Weipa, a mining town on the coast of Cape York, 838km north of Cairns, to live in the single persons' quarters, mostly populated by men.

For a shy young woman in her early 20s and new to mining, her introduction was an eye opener.

She went hungry at first, because she would hide in her quarters. "I was really hungry for about a week until I thought, 'I've got to go have dinner at some stage'."

In 2003, while working in Salt Lake City for Rio Tinto, she joined a company called Vertex as a general manager for North America. The company helped other firms develop copper projects in Oman, Gambia, Australia and the US.

But Vertex decided to explore its own tenements for development and it re-formed as Citadel, to become an emerging producer in the gold and copper markets. "I was in Oman in early 2004, refurbishing a copper concentrator for one of our clients and had been scouting the region for some projects, when I heard Saudi Arabi was changing its mining laws. So we applied for a reconnaissance licence and started the process," Scotland says.

Establishing Citadel wasn't all smooth sailing and in the early days Scotland didn't receive an income and had to sell her home in Brisbane to fund the initial activities. "You take a risk and believe that you are able to do it. That is the advantage of being younger. I was about 38 and knew if worst came to worst, I could rebuild again. "Historically, Saudi is thought to have King Solomon's mines in it, which is one of the mines in operation, the Mahd adh Dhabab mine, which means cradle of gold."

Citadel, which has mostly Australian investors, is becoming a familiar name, especially since mining identity Owen Hegarty became senior adviser this year. Hegarty had stepped down as managing director at Oxiana, after it merged with Zinifex to form OZ Minerals. Scotland says Hegarty, whom she calls one of her mentors, is a fantastic appointment and will help Citadel become a prosperous mining house. "We would like be the Oxiana of the Middle East, and Saudi is a good starting ground for that," she says.

"We have advanced copper and gold projects and have a nickel interest as well, so it really is not that much of a stretch to become a mid-tier mining house, based out of the Middle East." Jabal Sayid, a large copper-gold-zinc deposit, is Citadel's flagship project and the one it is focusing on.

Citadel sees the Jabal Sayid project, a 50 per cent joint venture between Citadel and Saudi company CMCI, as a potentially world-class copper deposit where previous work, mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, focused on a high-grade underground development.

"Every stage gets more exciting and each stage is different.

"We're working on the feasibility study and some underground development mining is expected by the middle of next year (though) it's a tight squeeze," she says.

Production, which will cost about $300 million to develop, is expected in 2011 and Indian or European smelters are the likely concentrate buyers.

Scotland knows her goal still is a long way off and she is always thinking of ways to improve and do things better.

"Forty is a good age to be doing this, as you're mature enough to understand the things you have done wrong in the past but still have lots of energy. If you cannot slam things down between your mid-30s and mid-50s, then it passes you by."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24850202-643,00.html