Lara Smith

Lara has been an analyst for over fifteen years, starting her career as an equity analyst at Foord Asset Management and then as the lead analyst as for the Steinmetz Group, Group, where she was responsible for sourcing, analyzing and evaluating potential mining acquisitions in Africa and the Baltic regions.

In 2009, she independently authored three in-depth studies that formed the inception of Core Consultants: the first two provided outlooks for the lithium market and the third was on the global coking coal industry.

In June 2009 Lara founded Core Consultants in South Africa as the first dedicated commodity market consultancy in Africa.  Since this time, under the auspices of Core Consultants Lara has completed over 70 market studies for an array of commodities including base metals, bulk commodities, soft commodities, critical metals and rare earths. She was the first person to introduce the topic of battery minerals and rare earths at the African Mining Indaba when she gave a keynote address on critical metals in 2010. Core Consultants was also the first Western Company to track and analyse rare earths on a monthly basis which culminated in Lara being asked to speak at the Chinese Rare Earth Convention held in Beijing in 2011, where she presented on the Western view of China’s rare earth hoarding.

An internationally recognized expert in the field of mining analysis and a well-known speaker, Lara has a BSc in Chemistry, Statistics and Economics and a BComm Hons in Financial Analysis and Portfolio Management from the University of Cape Town.