Rare Earth Minerals (REM) has appointed a chief executive and a finance director to help the company progress as it moves into the second stage of exploration at its partially-owned Mexican lithium concessions.

Kiran Morzaria, who has 14 years' experience in the mineral resource industry and has worked as a director of African investment company Lonrho (LONR) and AIM-listed Vatukoula Gold Mines (VGM), is to become chief executive; while Donald Strang will be Rare Earth's finance director.

Strang is also finance director of oil and gas explorer Polemos, tin miner Stellar Resources (STG) and Nigerian agriculture business Afri Agri, as well as a non-executive director of Doriemus (33WT).

The appointments followed a flurry of activity in Mexico, where a stage two drilling programme is due to begin shortly at the Fleur and El Sauz lithium concessions.

Rare Earth increased its stake in the concessions to 30% at the beginning of September and the $1 million (�0.62 million) which it paid to do so will fund a threefold increase in the scale of of the stage two drilling in comparison to the first stage.

"With the pace at which we are moving the project forward the board concluded that it is timely to appoint two key executives to manage our development," commented chairman David Lenigas, adding that Morzaria and Strang came with a "wealth of experience".