Privately owned Nitro is a company that provides the mining industry with environmental approvals, impact assessment, regulatory advice, environmental audits, compliance reporting (due diligence) and environmental economics, policy and legislation advice.

This acquisition will give RPMGlobal a foothold in the ESG space, bringing together its ESG professionals from across the globe into one division that will be headed by Ngaire Tranter, the founder and current CEO of Nitro.

Richard Mathews, CEO of RPMGlobal, said the acquisition and the inclusion of the Nitro team combined with RPMGlobal's existing ESG capabilities would see the company form a dedicated ESG division.

"While our mining advisory ESG professionals have been engaged to perform and manage numerous ESG mandates around the world, until now, we have not had a dedicated division focused solely on ESG," he said. "Ngaire and her team have an excellent reputation within the mining ESG market which gives us great confidence that we can build a world-class, mining-focused ESG business leveraging an ESG team that knows and understands mining from the ground up."

Tranter said she was looking forward to continuing to help mining companies take action to improve their ESG performance.

"Alongside the speed of ESG adoption, the opportunity to be part of a larger organisation with a global footprint allows us to assist the mining industry with the increasing requirements in this space right around the world," she said. "It's clear that RPMGlobal is passionate about building a premier mining ESG business supported by state-of-the-art software products, and I, together with the rest of the team really look forward to joining RPMGlobal on this exciting journey."

RPMGlobal noted that with most major and mid-tier miners around the globe having accelerated their efforts to meet decarbonisation targets in parallel with a broader societal commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the company has been drawing on its technology and its advisory teams' expertise to deliver a range of ESG-focused services.

Tranter said: "With organisations globally rising to the challenge of meeting increasing sustainability demands placed upon their organisations and operations, I see the merger of Nitro with RPMGlobal as an important step forward to supporting mining companies in their quest to meet decarbonisation, governance and social license to operate requirements."

Mathews said this was just the start of RPMGlobal's ESG journey as the company plans to grow its ESG division with mining services capabilities through a range of organic and non-organic strategies. He added: "We also intend to harness the deep ESG domain knowledge of the Nitro team to assist RPMGlobal's technology division identify software products we can either acquire, or alternatively build to service this accelerating market segment."

The acquisition is expected to close on June 30, 2021, subject to satisfaction of several conditions precedent and customary completion events.

In the last year, the company has made acquisitions in the Canadian mining sector. In July 2020, RPMGlobal acquired Canadian mining tech firm Revolution Mining Software; then in October, it acquired Canadian inventory optimisation software provider IMAFS. In November, the company opened a new regional headquarters in Toronto to cater for the growth in Canada's mining investment activity.