Ever wondered what Kiwi and Munster rugby legend Doug Howlett plans to do following his retirement? Mining bauxite in Guinea probably wasn't high up your list of
possibilities.

Howlett, now a corporate ambassador for Munster, has joined OCI, an Irish investment firm that this week raised £10 million (€12 million) for Anglo-African Minerals. AAM is a UK-listed, Irish-headquartered exploration outfit that is on the hunt for the aluminium ore in the west African state.

OCI principal John O’Connor says Howlett will be on the ground, helping AAM “implement its work programme”.

Apparently, he has form. O'Connor says he met Howlett when they were both helping another former Munster player, Freddie Pucciariello, set up a bio-energy plant in Argentina.

O'Connor, a veteran resource investor who owns a farm in Tipperary, assembled "an international consortium" of investors to stump up for the AAM loan notes. It has four bauxite licences in Guinea, a hotspot for the stuff.

Big play

AAM’s big play, according to O’Connor, is a prospect where

it need only build a 15km road to bring the stuff to market. Depending on when and how, OCI’s loan notes could be converted into up to 30 per cent of AAM’s equity.

O’Connor has a few rugby connections himself. The Galway native moved to England when he was six, and played for London Irish from schoolboy level up to its first team.

He was also once a shareholder more than a decade ago alongside Denis O’Brien in National Utilities, which wanted to buy energy assets. O’Connor says he recently bumped into O’Brien at a rugby match, of all places.

“We had a good laugh about how premature the whole thing was,” he said.