David Lotan

David Lotan
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Mining executive, company co-founder
Title	Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Employer	Group Eleven Resources Corp.
Known for	Co-founding and leading Group Eleven Resources, a zinc exploration company focused on Ireland

David Lotan is a Canadian mining executive and co-founder of Group Eleven Resources Corp., a Toronto-listed zinc exploration company whose projects are concentrated in Ireland's Carboniferous-hosted zinc-lead district. While many junior mining companies chase commodities in conventional geographies, Lotan built his flagship venture around one of the world's most prolific but underexplored zinc belts, staking ground across the Irish Midlands at a time when zinc was drawing renewed institutional attention as a metal critical to galvanizing steel and, increasingly, to battery technology supply chains. Under his leadership as Chief Executive Officer, Group Eleven has assembled one of the largest exploration land packages in the district, advanced the Ballywire zinc-lead discovery in County Tipperary toward resource definition, and maintained an active drilling program through multiple commodity cycles. Lotan has become one of the more visible advocates for Ireland as a destination for base-metals exploration capital, appearing at industry conferences and engaging regularly with Irish mining policy bodies.

Early Life

David Lotan was born in Canada. Details of his early upbringing and formative influences have not been disclosed in publicly available sources. His professional trajectory, however, places him within a cohort of Canadian mining professionals who received their grounding in the capital-markets and technical culture of Vancouver and Toronto, cities that together account for a disproportionate share of global junior mining finance.

Career

Background in Junior Mining Finance

Before founding Group Eleven, Lotan accumulated experience in the Canadian junior mining sector, a world defined by tight capital budgets, continuous investor relations demands, and the need to move exploration projects from grassroots targets to bankable resources. The Canadian junior mining ecosystem, centered on the TSX Venture Exchange, has historically incubated executives who specialize in identifying undervalued geological jurisdictions and financing exploration programs through equity markets. Lotan operated within this environment, developing fluency in the deal structures, geological thesis construction, and institutional fundraising that define a successful junior company chief executive.

Co-Founding Group Eleven Resources

Lotan co-founded Group Eleven Resources Corp. with the explicit objective of building a focused zinc exploration company in Ireland. The company was incorporated in British Columbia and listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker symbol ZNG. The strategic rationale for Ireland rested on the country's track record as a world-class zinc province: the Irish Midlands geological belt has produced mines of global significance, including Lisheen and Tara, the latter holding the distinction of being one of Europe's largest zinc-lead operations. Lotan and his co-founders identified a structural gap between the geological prospectivity of underexplored portions of the belt and the limited exploration activity that had occurred following the closure of Lisheen in 2015.

The company's business model from the outset was consolidation-oriented: accumulate a large, strategically assembled land package across the Irish Carboniferous limestone sequences that host zinc-lead sulfide mineralization, drill systematically, and advance discoveries toward the resource milestones that attract major mining company interest. This approach required sustained equity financing and careful management of exploration expenditure across multiple licence areas simultaneously.

Building the Irish Land Package

Under Lotan's direction, Group Eleven assembled a land position spanning several counties across the Irish Midlands and western Ireland, applying for and securing prospecting licences through Ireland's Geological Survey of Ireland licensing process. The company's licence portfolio at various stages covered ground in counties Tipperary, Galway, Roscommon, and Sligo, among others. This geographic spread reflected a deliberate attempt to hold exposure to multiple geological targets within the same carbonate-hosted structural setting that controls zinc-lead mineralization across the district.

Lotan oversaw the geological prioritization of targets within this portfolio, directing the company's exploration spending toward areas where geophysical surveys, soil geochemistry, and historical drill data suggested the presence of shallow, high-grade zinc-lead intersections. The Irish government's regulatory framework for mineral exploration, administered through the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, required annual work program submissions and environmental compliance reporting, obligations that Lotan managed as part of the company's operational cadence in the jurisdiction.

Ballywire Discovery

The most material technical development in Group Eleven's history to date has been the identification and initial drilling of the Ballywire zinc-lead discovery in County Tipperary. Lotan announced initial drill results from Ballywire that included high-grade intersections consistent with the style of Irish-type sediment-hosted zinc-lead mineralization, characterized by broad intercepts of sphalerite-galena in bedded carbonate sequences. The results attracted attention within the zinc exploration community because high-grade zinc discoveries in established mining districts are comparatively rare events, and Ireland's Carboniferous belt had not seen a new discovery of comparable grade and scale announced for several years.

Subsequent drilling programs at Ballywire, conducted under Lotan's oversight, extended the known mineralized envelope and provided data for a maiden mineral resource estimate. The company engaged independent geological consultants to prepare the estimate in accordance with National Instrument 43-101, the Canadian securities standard for disclosure of mineral projects, which governs how publicly listed Canadian companies report their resource and reserve figures. Lotan's public communications around each drilling milestone consistently framed Ballywire within the broader context of the Irish zinc belt's established mine-making potential, drawing comparisons to the geological settings of Lisheen and Tara to contextualize the discovery's significance for investors.

Zinc as a Critical Mineral

Lotan positioned Group Eleven's work program within the context of growing global attention to zinc's role in industrial and energy transition applications. Zinc is essential to galvanizing, which protects steel infrastructure from corrosion, and has been identified as a material relevant to certain battery chemistries. Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy, released in 2022, identified zinc among the minerals considered important to Canadian economic security and to the supply chains underpinning clean energy technologies. While Group Eleven's operations are in Ireland rather than Canada, the broader policy environment elevated investor awareness of zinc as a strategic commodity and provided a favorable backdrop for the company's financing activities in Canadian capital markets.

Lotan cited this macro context in investor presentations and public commentary, linking the discovery-stage work at Ballywire to themes of resource security and the long-term structural demand case for zinc. His communications noted the limited number of new large zinc discoveries globally in recent years and the aging profile of existing major zinc mines, arguments standard to the zinc supply thesis that circulated among base-metals analysts during this period.

Financing and Capital Markets Activity

As CEO of a development-stage company with no producing assets, a central part of Lotan's role has been maintaining access to equity capital through successive financing rounds on the TSX Venture Exchange. Group Eleven completed multiple private placement financings to fund its Irish drilling programs, with proceeds directed to exploration expenditure and general working capital. These financings were disclosed through press releases distributed via CNW Group and Newsfile, the principal wire services used by Canadian junior mining companies for material news dissemination.

Lotan also developed relationships with institutional and retail investors in the Canadian junior mining community, presenting at conferences including the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada annual convention in Toronto, the primary gathering for the global junior mining industry, where companies with active exploration programs present to a concentrated audience of mining financiers and technical specialists. His investor relations efforts extended to European audiences given the Irish location of the company's assets, with engagement directed at fund managers and analysts covering European base metals exploration.

Industry Engagement and Advocacy

Lotan participated in the activities of the Irish Mining and Quarrying Society and engaged with Irish state bodies relevant to mineral exploration, including the Geological Survey of Ireland. His involvement in these networks positioned Group Eleven as an active stakeholder in discussions about Ireland's mineral potential and the regulatory conditions affecting exploration investment in the country. Ireland's reputation as a politically stable, EU-member jurisdiction with a well-mapped geological database and a demonstrated history of large zinc-lead mine development made it an attractive setting for investor presentations, and Lotan drew on these attributes consistently in his public communications.

He also commented publicly on the importance of zinc to the Irish economy and to European supply chains, contributing to broader industry discourse at a time when European governments were examining their dependencies on imported base metals. Ireland's Tara mine, operated by Boliden, remained the largest zinc mine in Europe during this period, and the prospect of a new Irish zinc discovery entering development held economic significance for the region.

Recognition

Group Eleven Resources' Ballywire zinc-lead discovery received coverage in industry publications including The Northern Miner and Mining Journal, outlets that track significant exploration results across global junior mining markets. The company's Irish program was cited in trade discussions about the resurgence of exploration activity in the Irish Carboniferous belt. Lotan was identified in these accounts as the executive leading the most active new exploration program in the district at that time. The company's drill results were also referenced in analyst commentary disseminated through Canadian brokerage platforms covering the TSX Venture Exchange junior mining sector.