Andy completed his PhD at the University of Witwatersrand in 1977 and in the same year, he emigrated to Vancouver, Canada. In his new country he started the first international branch of SRK Consulting. Several offices in the US were formed under his guidance. SRK is now one of the largest international mining consultancy firms in the world, with 40 offices and consulting on over 30,000 projects.  

He supported the development of Gemcom in 1981, the mining industry’s first PC-based exploration database as well as ore deposit modelling, and open pit mine planning software system. For his consulting business, Robertson GeoConsultants, he served on several peer-review panels and independent review boards for some of the highest and most challenging tailing dams in the world.

The concept of InfoMine was first developed by Andy and Graham Baldwin in 1989. It launched with the vision of making mining information more accessible to the industry. Andy spearheaded the digital strategy and under his leadership, InfoMine expanded to include Costmine, EduMine.com, CareerMine, Mining Intelligence, and MINING.com.

InfoMine was one of the pioneers in the commercial application of the Internet. It was acquired by Glacier Media in 2019 and today MINING.com is the most widely read mining news website in the world and Edumine is the leading provider of online education to global mining and geoscience communities. 

“Brilliant but kind”

Andy’s colleagues remember him as a remarkable visionary leader with shrewd business acumen, and as a gentleman known for his kind heart.  

“He was brilliant, but kind,” remembers Jennifer Leinart, president of InfoMine USA. “He gave so many the opportunity to expand their careers while counting them as family. He had more great ideas than was possible for anyone, including the team at InfoMine, to manage.”

Andy woke up every morning at 5am, but instead of getting up, he would lie silently thinking, and said this is when the best ideas came to him.  

Cecilia Jamasmie, founding editor of MINING.com magazine, remembers the day in 2007 when Andy approached her with the idea to launch his vision for mining industry media.

“He told me he had this long term dream to create a magazine, but from the inception it would migrate to purely online. He saw this as an instrument that could fill the gap between the print world and the online world,” Jamasmie remembers.

“InfoMine was an internet base service provider to the mining industry, so of course he had an interest in bringing this generation online,” Jamasmie says.

In 2014, Andy was recognized for environmental management and stewardship and inducted into the International Mining Technology Hall of Fame. Andy was instrumental in pioneering the use of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis – one of the first systematic techniques for failure analysis – and Multiple Account Analyses to engineered solutions in the mining industry. Throughout his career he focused on setting the environmental stewardship bar high for the industry.

The following year, InfoMine received the Industry Partnership Award from American Mining Hall of Fame and was recognized for being a “world leader in providing mining relevant knowledge.”

Andy’s wife Renee passed last year, and they are survived by two sons and two daughters. A celebration of life will be held in the coming months and an online memorial is here.