Alp’s priority: landowners

Alfred Sasako
In 2000, former military man-turned-businessman, Kelvyn Alp, set foot in Honiara for the first time. Solomon Islands was engulfed in a full-blown civil uprising triggered largely by Guadalcanal youths who felt being left out of opportunities to participate in economic development activities in their own province.
Alp was looking for investment opportunities.
One of the first “big men” the New Zealand investor met on the trip was Waita Ben, then Guadalcanal Premier.
He told Ben, a former Speaker of the National Parliament, that he was looking for business opportunities. Given the situation, however, it was not possible to do anything, for now at least.
On his departure, however, Alp assured Premier Ben that “I will come back”.
As prophetic as General Macarthur’s famous “I shall return” parting words to his troops in the Philippines during World War II, Alp was just as true to his words as the General’s.  
Nine years on, Alp is back in Honiara with his sights firmly set on mining opportunities in Solomon Islands, a country many investors have written off due to the destruction caused during the ethnic uprising which began slowly in 1998 and spread like wildfire over the next four-and-a-half years.
Alp apparently saw something that others didn’t: people—people he believed he could work with.
Unlike executives of multi-national mining corporations who flew in and flew out as fast as they came, Alp took a different tact. Each trip since 2000, he would stay a little longer.
In those early days when conventional investors shrugged off from even considering Solomon Islands as a business destination, Alp used the lull to scout the landscape in search of local expertise—professional and well-connected people who can connect him with resource owners and government.
He found both—in abundance.
In his office set up in Honiara, Alp has, at present seven local staff and a number of geologists.
Comparatively, his workers are more than well looked after, financially. He allowed time  to listen to them as they report regularly on the progress of his application for a mining lease.
“Unlike other investors who come here on behalf of someone else’s behalf, I came here as an investor willing to gamble with my own money, because I believe in the people and their ability to create wealth for themselves,” Alp told ISLANDS BUSINESS in an interview in Honiara.
Apart from paying close attention to his staff, Alp also devoted time, huge financial resources and network to help address the concerns of the local communities where Pheonix International [SI] Ltd, one of the companies in his stable, has secured a 50-sq km mining concession.
Sutakama is located along the Balasuna River, east of Honiara. Initial samplings have confirmed a large deposit of gold and possibly other minerals, including copper.
It is estimated that to-date he has sunk something in the order of NZ$2 million of his own money into the project.
Result-driven: I first made contact with Alp via email earlier this year. A young Solomon Islander put me on to the man I hardly heard of, let alone met face to face. He handed me the man’s businesscard in Honiara.
I was flying back to Brisbane that day. The card shows Kelvyn Alp as Managing Director of CARATAPA—Group of Companies.
My curiosity peaked after reading the economic reform document which Alp submitted last year to the Coalition of National Unity and Rural Advancement [CNURA] government, led by Prime Minister Derek Sikua.
We finally met in Honiara in February. He appears to me to be someone with unrivalled commitment to what he believes in and whatever he sets out to do.
He’s focused, resolute and result-driven. But unlike others in his league, his door is wide open to his staff and friends.
“My staff and friends come first. They are my priority,” Alp said.
Doing more to help the less advantaged is probably what makes him stand apart, and in the process, attracting official attention.
Take 2001 for example. Then Alp entered Solomon Islands twice using a Maori passport. He was helping Maori and their quest for self-determination.
Having learnt of his travel, the New Zealand Government allegedly ordered its high commission in Honiara to inform the Solomon Islands government to deny Alp further entry on the Maori passport.
“If the Solomons Government continued to accept that passport, Wellington would withdraw all the $3 million aid it provides to help secondary schools,” was the alleged order.
A former foreign minister informed Alp of this at a parliamentary barbecue some time later.
Whatever it is that Alp possesses, it is certainly making a difference in the mining landscape in Solomon Islands.
“My business model is of course a fair and just one. I supply finances, equipment and expertise and the landowners supply access to their land and resources, as well as settle all their own disputes and a 50/50 profit sharing in the business takes place,” he said.
“The company also identifies immediate things required by the people and attempts to address those while the business navigates all of the legal requirements to successfully operate.
“The landowners via their trustees appoint an oversight committee for the company’s operations and have access to all of the books related to the operations on their land,” he said.
Locals from that area are employed and community packages are created to stimulate the local economy.
According to Alp, this approach is certainly working. “We have little problems and we pay what we pay the people far above what we consider to be slave wages employed by most.
 “Only one other company operates in a similar vein to us and that is SAM (Solomon Alluvial Mining) under the control of Jan (Dutchy) Boer,” Alp said.
What Pheonix [Solomon Islands] Ltd has achieved in getting the lease for his mining operations is nothing short of revolutionary, when one takes mineral projects such as the large nickel project on Isabel Province.
Forty odd years after large deposits of nickel, cobalt and other minerals were confirmed, no company has been able to get a firm hold of what it takes to get through.
What many in government have forgotten is that ignoring the resource owners and trying to make deals via the government institutions and individuals trying to make a few bucks on the side, does not make for a harmonious venture.
It does seem, Alp knows what he’s doing.