Rodney

Good afternoon, everyone.

It's 2.30 on Monday, November 27th.

Happy to have a special guest with us today, the one and only Frank Dumas.

So, Frank left us with a bit of a cliffhanger last night on Twitter.

PNRL.

Frank

Well, you probably saw the news today.

So, let's put a disclaimer out there.

Like, I've been looking at that because, you know, we've had numerous discussions live and privately, you and I, about the nickel business and nickel market.

And for the last three, four years, we had some good results in a few companies and the market pretty much yawned for a while.

And it starts to change.

You see money allocation on institution moving from elsewhere going back there slowly.

Obviously, it's not the renaissance of the exploration sector just yet, but it's probably the beginning.

And we saw a few attempts to see this momentum being started since probably the month of May, June.

But they all failed.

And now it looks like it's slowly getting there.

And Premium had all these results that were expected.

And they've started to release some.

But what caught my attention is they've updated their website.

And I don't know if it's a mistake or not.

But they've put some of the, you know, when, and that's the thing with all these guys, (they've) put these high quality pictures on their website.

They don't realize we can just save it, open it elsewhere, and look at the details.

I'm sure I'm not the only one doing that.

But they had some core boxes there that were very good.

Like, it's the kind of things that get me excited with massive, semi-massive sulfur.

And today they put a few things that were interesting, very good intersection.

It's crazy because they knew the material was there.

This is a production project.

But the market was not giving them any attention until they decided, okay, we're going to put an exploration component.

So that they can put intersection out and say, hey, we have battery material, which is kind of crazy for me.

Because you should know that this is the kind of a perfect nickel for that.

And their interaction with the U.S. government, how their interaction with the different players there, that's going to be an interesting story.

And I have it on my watch list for a long time now, probably close to a year, as probably one of the engines that's going to get us going.

On the nickel exploration side.

And you should expect bigger results from these guys soon.

I'm looking at some of these core boxes.

You know, it's not always normalized.

So it's not, there's no standard per se, especially if this is Africa.

But if they have four to five meters on these core box, we're looking at tens and tens of meters of that material.

I'm going to keep watching them, making sure that I don't miss the news.

But I think we're going to see way bigger than what we've seen today.

Although today we're still, you know, I know, you know, too, a lot of presidents of small micro cap, small cap exploration companies that would, you know, sell their mother to get that kind of results.

And they were in the news also.

I know a few people came back.

Said “ah you want to talk about the short and the short situation” because they put a press release out.

You know, we're in that time of the year when we talk to all the funds and the institution because they do a location of the cash that they have.

And they do a recap with us.

There's a lot of that discussion, a lot of lunch, early lunch.

And, and you know, if they have money or not, if they have no money, they invite you for breakfast.

If you can't an invite for lunch, they still have a budget.

They have money to deploy.

And, and obviously we're in financing on some of the companies.

So we're definitely taking these meetings and even just to know how they're going to help us moving forward.

We never say no to these, these meetings.

And we were, you know, discussing with, with, with some of the funds that are in the vicinity or the entourage of Eric Spratt.

And Eric was coming out with this thing regarding shorting.

You saw South Korea put a hold on short selling for a while.

And, you know, I'm, I have a strong opinion on this.

I'm a fan of the market regulating itself, but sometimes it, but as long as it's fair for everyone.

And right now in a lot of the main market around in the U S and Canada and Europe and in Asia, it's not fair anymore.

Because nobody can compete with, with, with quant and, and algo.

So it's not a matter of shorting per se.

If you look, I know that they complained–Premium in their press release–last week.

I think it was Thursday or Friday about shorting and said that they will also join that movement.

We're talking to them.

We're talking to them, we're talking to them, but I have a different opinion.

I don't think you should stop shorting.

There's a few things.

Not everybody's going to agree with me.

You're going to get traders that jump up and down with what I'm going to say, but we used to have the uptick rule across the board everywhere.

They took, they took that away.

There was a reason to do it.

And they're always going to say it brings more liquidity.

It makes a more ordinary, or, you know, a more ordinate market.

I think it's a more coordinate market, which is not a good thing, but right now, especially for micro cap, this should come back.

You shouldn't be able to scare the market, spoofing the ask, creating big positions that you don't have, often.

Because that, you don't even have that short, that stock or that inventory.

Nobody's watching it anymore.

Very happy now that the broker's been reminded that they can be sued, and they can be responsible for that, and be liable for it.

Because it's not the fine from the regulators that's going to make a difference.

It's when the shareholders decide to go after them and say, you've been, you know, killing these companies or delaying development.

There's an economical impact, and especially for critical minerals that you want them to develop the finance and move forward.

If you, if the only people that make money is the people that are gaming the market, that's not, that's not a good thing.

So I think bringing back the uptick rule is one thing.

There is a lot of dynamics.

Like people will say, well, you don't have that much of a short position on XYZ company.

But the problem is, we're not there anymore.

We're not in 1995 anymore.

Whatever is published as the short position is something that's a snapshot every two weeks.

And it's often not the real short position, because you have this phantom short position that traders will move blocks of shares from one place where they would have to declare it by, let's say, the close of the market today…

They'll move it to Stuttgart, they'll move it to Berlin, they'll move it to a bunch of other exchanges where, you know, you don't even know you're listed there.

You're trading there.

They're not exchanged.

They're, you know, markets or trading board.

And that's where the problem is.

And what they do is the intraday short.

So they'll short you, they'll push you down, they'll cover.

And nobody can, like… the normal investor or even the retail trader…

Let's talk about the trader itself.

Rodney

Well, I was discussing this with the fund manager the other evening, and I brought up T plus two.

I was a little bit surprised by his take on it.

What's your take on going from T plus two to T plus zero?

Frank

I'm okay with T plus zero.

But you don't, absolutely don't let anything fail.

Right now, we have massive fail in the system where if you want the shares, like there's people out there that will be in spinoff or other corporate action, and they are failure of delivery of whatever they're supposed to receive on dividend.

Because they bought from a short position, and the short seller is not able to cover, and there's no consequence or barely any.

So this is ludicrous.

Now, you want to stop also that churning and that scalping of half a penny, a penny…

put, you know, put, you know, speed bumps for algorithm, and that's, I think, the best way to bring back some democracy, a fair playing ground for everyone, put speed bumps.

The problem is not the short.

The problem is the short with no uptick rule, and the fact that we don't compete with the same rules.

And I'm saying that for mostly for the traders.

Now, the investors, they will come up and say, well, the investor can come in at a better price.

Yeah, but everything gets delayed because there's undue pressure on these micro-caps.

And, you know, at the end of the day, if you look at the micro-cap, they go public to get finance.

And often, not that many people are financially literate in a sense that they could be a PhD in physics and chemistry and geology.

That doesn't mean that… they don't have the 20, 30 years of, you know, talking to trade [???]

Rodney

You know, it takes a long time to figure these markets out.

They're very counterintuitive.

And if a project is too high of a cost of capital because the stock's been hammered down, then you can't finance them anyway.

So, you know, that's where it really comes in is that nothing seems to be able to get escape velocity right now, regardless of how good the results are, to have a low enough cost of capital to move a project forward.

And if that's caused by illegal short-selling, then there is an issue there.

Frank

Well, and you see that some of the big boards, I look at the Chicago Board of Trades, NEO, for example, they're starting to put and to test or to run tests with the speed bump for algo.

And it's not killing the algo business.

The algorithms have a lot of negative, but they have a lot of positive, also.

They bring some liquidity to a lot of companies that would not have much liquidity otherwise.

But, again, it's just put a little bit of fairness in it.

And you want to avoid the behaviours that are not necessarily criminal or illegal, but they're borderline.

You know, it's okay to put the ticker line in the grey zone to say, okay, this is the line you don't cross.

And if you try to cross it, it's just not going to execute on the platform anyway because they can control as much as they want.

If you look at some of the companies we're involved with, you get days of 60, 70-person short interest.

And you look at the volume, you look at what's happening, and you end up with a lot of the trades that are being pushed momentarily, you know, punctually to dark pools and to ECMs.

Why?

And you're trying to figure, well, there was an execution there that was a very easy one to do.

It should have been your best price discovery, which is another rule that should be in place.

But somehow, somebody intervened and moved this to another platform, and will bring it back later.

So, we'll make, for example, buy pressure look like it's a selling pressure, short term.

When in reality, oh, suddenly when they're covered, they're just gaining time for themselves.

And nobody's sitting in his pajamas from his mother's basement trading a few stocks.

Who's going to do that?

It's somebody that is able to get a dashboard and, you know, visualize where he has problems and what needs to be done.

So, you know, AI is being used more and more with the algo.

That's going to get out of hand if they don't do something.

You want to legiferate? [Ed: légiférer is the French for “legislate”]

You want to legislate on AI?

I'll start with the financial market, because at one point, not only us will have problems,

but the big banks, the insurance companies will start to have the same problems.

And, you know, I have hopes.

Somebody's going to wake up, and at one point, the pressure is going to be there.

And you get guys like Eric Sprott, for whom I have a lot of respect,

that are coming out now and saying, okay, something has got to give.

It's going to happen.

Because the difference between me and him, probably, is that you can get somebody to answer him on the other side a lot quicker.

Rodney

What do you think about self-regulatory organizations, particularly CIRO, formerly IROC?

This is a leading question, because, I mean, I sort of think it's leading the Cookie Monster to regulate the cookie jar.

Do you think that we need to have a fundamental change in regulatory structure for dealers?

Frank

Well, you know what's interesting with the dealers is that some, it's not them that are addicted to volume and fees and credits.

When we say exchange credits, it's the exchange themselves.

They're the ones that want that volume.

They're the ones that collect that tax on every transaction, not the dealers.

And when the dealers see, for a while, it was working for them, because they got two or three generations.

First, they scared the hell out of the Boomer and moved them into mutual funds and into, you know, they destroyed the market, to be fair.

But there was a bad actors that didn't help also in the 90s and 2000s in the microcap and the resource sector.

But you ended up with the Baby Boomer moving to managed money, mutual funds or, you know, GICs attached to a sector of the market, things like that.

And that might be a consequence of the dot-com [bubble] also.

You see, well, it's been going on for a while.

But then you got all these new products that came in for the Millennial and the Zoomer, where they don't pay, they can do it from their phone, and they can put $50 a week in investment.

They decide on the portfolio by sector, and then it's like an hybrid with managed money.

And these accounts allow them to buy stock with no commission.

Now, it's interesting, because they think they're saving money.

But if you look at it, really, they're not, because there's a spread that somebody's making.

And who's making it?

Well, now, that's not the traditional dealer or investment dealer.

It's not RBC.

It's, you know, unless they have a division like Wealthsimple or like Robinhood, they're not making that money.

And now they're starting to realize they're not making that much money anyway, even with these sectors, unless they game the market.

Unless they game the actual execution.

Another absolute conflict of interest.

So, another thing.

Rodney

Yes, the pre-pandemic model of spending money to get market share.

And they get market share, and you're like, oh, how do we make money?

And, you know, it's very easy to start to go the wrong way when you're in that position.

Frank

Well, I think at this point, what's happening is that there's jurisdictions that resist that, and they're doing fantastically well.

And Australia is a perfect example for that.

So, I think the Australians will save us.

And this market's going to have to change just because of the pressure in Australia.

And we're being solicited by Australian firms.

And they're starting to look because they realize, oh, if you had the same company in Australia, it'd be at twice the market cap.

So, for them, it's interesting to do kind of like the ADR, or just the certificate for difference that you see in England, stuff like that.

Kind of a derivative that allows their investor to buy in Australia under Australian taxation rules, but, you know, get a guarantee that they get a delivery of a Canadian company's shares on the other side.

And that, you're going to see that a lot more.

You saw Patriot Metals doing it.

You saw a few- and what we're talking now about, interesting emerging story of small cap.

And I would say for at least one of our companies, expect us to be more serious about getting a listing.

Rodney

Well, a considerable number of people that I talk to on a regular basis are now available in the evenings because they're doing Australian business, because there's capital there.

Frank

And we do.

Like, you're even being solicited.

We did an interview with Bloomberg Australia in St. Georges on the nickel results a year ago or two years ago.

I have a blank.

I'm not sure.

It might have been this year, earlier.

And I was surprised, but they had a following.

They had people that had asked them to cover it.

And they have an interest in not only that.

They have people that are, I don't want to say sensible.

Educated might be an arrogant term there, but they have a sensibility versus resource.

They know their resources.

They know to look at a resource project and put a valuation on it.

And that's something we've lost in Canada.

And in the U.S. it was never there because the Americans have always been really… either you produce and you have revenue or you're a technology company.

And that they understand.

I've talked to hedge fund managers that will come in and have no idea what they're looking at when we're showing them exploration.

But then we move to our hydrogen technology.

We're moving to our lithium technology.

Now that they have an idea of how much it could be worth.

And they have the grid.

They have the metrics to evaluate it.

Rodney

Well, I think there's still plenty of expertise in Canada to evaluate exploration projects.

The average age of said people, though, maybe it's less than ideal.

That's getting to be an issue where I feel like in Australia they've brought up a whole other generation of people that excel in the mining industry and an exploration investment that we simply don't have in Canada.

Frank

You touch a nerve there.

The average analyst and fund manager that talks to me on the regular from Australia is maybe, I would say, late 20s.

But the average of the same in Canada, they're 50 to 65-70.

Rodney

They might literally be twice the age.

Frank

If not three times.

We have a major gap.

What happened, I blame marijuana for that.

Not the consumption, the deals.

You know, when the CSE and the TSX decided to make themselves on microcap, the weed exchange, we lost a lot of expertise.

Rodney

Well, and we lost a generation of risk capital as well.

Frank

Yeah.

Rodney

That's maybe a bigger part of the– you know, I don't hear that mentioned very often.

But, I mean, sure, I mean, some of the guys got down there, you know, Emil and Pat got down and they got their cannabis deal floated in Australia.

But, you know, there haven't been very many.

I guess Charlie got one, too.

But, you know, there's only a handful that ever really raised any serious money in the cannabis sector in Australia.

So, they just didn't burn that risk capital the same way.

I mean, the idea that you're going to invest in a greenhouse where the cap rates for a greenhouse is, you know, prime plus a half.

And you're going to put a rookie operator in for a multi-million dollar investment.

Like, I mean, these things were insane and it's proved out that way.

Frank

And after the end of the day, unless we start to provide marijuana to the rest of the universe, a lot of them, to this day, a lot of them still have to disappear before this becomes a normal business.

Rodney

Oh, and the cost of production is going to keep going lower.

I mean, that's the history of agriculture is the cost of production in a new sector.

I mean, it goes down and down and down and down.

It doesn't– there is no rebound.

It just goes lower.

Frank

So, you were talking about premium on the get-go.

So, we said it's Africa and I'm getting actually texts from someone in South Africa right now.

And it's kind of funny because we've, the one thing I think also we need to look at, when you look at the Australians, they're still in traditional cycles.

They've done some interesting investments.

A lot of projects came online on the uranium side recently in the last (few) years.

And now the calls we're getting is about iron ore.

And that's very traditional.

Usually, you know, if you go back 20-something years ago, even 40 years ago, it's like it's on a 20, 25-year cycle.

You get gold kind of starts to point its nose, start to have a few false starts.

But you get the energy side, and today is a little bit lithium, not much, but uranium.

And then you get iron ore that needs to come in.

And if you look at the numbers that are about to come in this early December, there's a major, major, major shortage of iron ore.

And I think China's going to wake up.

It's going to get back at, uh, at least their cruise speed.

And they're going to start again to buy iron ore concentrate.

And there's a major shortage of it.

Like, you have a three to six months.

It's going to be interesting for whomever's producing iron ore.

And the iron ore companies, like the, you know, LIM or these other ones, like Labrador.

Is it LIM or LIF now?

Rodney

I was looking at CIA – Champion Iron Ore.

Yeah, I mean, and there's no, there's no animal spirit stirring.

I mean, it's not really at a 52-week high.

And Scotia just put out a sector perform on it, which, I mean, those guys are going to do as well as anybody.

I mean, that's a pretty sharp punch behind Champion.

And you see, and it's kind of, we're condemned to repeat the same pattern because gold is over $2000.

Even if you adjust for inflation, you're trying to figure out in constant dollars, we're still not there.

This should go a little bit higher.

I'm not telling anyone to buy gold.

You know, I don't like gold because I don't like the crazies that it attracts.

But I prefer silver, where it's actually also an industrial metal.

So we can figure out at least some of the demand.

But still, we should see gold.

And it should not be totally snuffed by the Bitcoin and Ethereum investors out there in a sense that the refuge should be gold or commodities in general and not just digital assets.

But you'll see gold going.

I don't buy into the manipulation, anything like that.

I think it's just a matter of cycle.

And like, it's been probably 10 years that I didn't talk to fund managers, that I didn't hear from fund managers, the reallocation speech.

And we're hearing it now.

So probably we're at that shift where they're going to move back to some pattern and they go back to old ideas to figure out what to do.

Rodney

Well, I was shocked.

I was in Vancouver on business and I turned on the TV to CNBC in the morning and a guy came on there and said that you needed to have 10% of your portfolio in gold.

I had to check my watch that it wasn't, you know, 2008.

I hadn't heard that in forever.

So, you know, that's a pretty powerful platform to put that out.

If you, an American generalist investor, you know, gets hold of GDXJ, that can go a long, long way.

Frank

Now, we're going to see that coming.

We're going to see that coming.

And it's, you know, good for the gold explorer eventually, three to six months from now.

By the time we hit PDAC, they might get some good traction.

I know the traction is there also in Australia.

They're looking around.

We're getting calls.

They want to see, they want to hear about what we have in gold and what can they do with us and things like that.

So, it's interesting.

And if you look at, this is something that's less influenced by China.

20 years ago, we saw it.

We saw the Chinese intervening in the market for the price of– limiting the rise of the price of gold.

But we've seen the Chinese do a lot of intervention.

I don't know if it's in concert, if they're acting all in concert.

But I don't believe that there is one private company in China.

It might be owned by some billionaires.

But at the end of the day, when the party calls, you know, they pick up the phone and they listen.

Or when they don't, they disappear for a few months.

And, you know, we've seen that recently with Jack Ma and a few of the other guys.

And now, if you look at, and probably tie back into what we said about China, we've seen them do that for copper.

We've seen them do that for cobalt, tantalum, and for nickel, where they would go in, and especially for lithium.

I've seen it personally with lithium, with some companies we're interacting with, where these companies have this DSO, so direct shipping ore, where they have material at four percent, four and a half percent.

The norms to sell, technically, if you buy spot, spodumene, we refer to SC6, so six-percent spodumene.

It's not exactly six-percent, but it's close to it.

And they would go in and buy, for example, in Zimbabwe from a dozen mines, material that's at four percent.

It's not been concentrated, but it's high-grade.

And they would pay the tax, pay the military, pay whomever in the government needs to get paid, and store it on-site.

They would not even take delivery.

What happened is they create a scarcity in the spodumene-concentrate business.

And there's a lot of mine projects coming online, or people moving into feasibility and all that.

And suddenly, spodumene went over $2000 per tonne at the (SC6?).

And we start to see a lot of people, unfortunately, some fell for it and painted themselves in a corner.

But there's also, some of them, I think it was a lifeline.

In a bad market like we were, where capital was rare, a lot of people abandoned the idea of having a tech plant or a metallurgical plant

to convert their concentrate of spodumene into lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate.

And when you have spodumene at $2000, $3000 a tonne, why do you want to do that when you're going to pay $300, $400 million capex to get your mine going?

You put a few hundred million more, you produce twice the amount.

You sell it for a very good profit.

Rodney

Well, in this market, we all know a $900 million capex means $1.2 billion.

Frank

Yeah.

Rodney

You see that over and over again, the $900 million capex.

It's like, well, yeah, it's not going to hit that.

Frank

And on the technology side, and I'm super happy about it, by the way,

But absolutely conflict of interest with St. George on this with the tech that we were developing.

The, you know, bring it on, bring these $2, $3 billion capex for this tech plant,

because we're going to shine out of it.

Like it's, the difference is so big.

But at the same time, a lot of these guys were convinced they needed to be,

and with the pressure of the government, they needed to be vertically integrated.

And they bought into it at a time when capital was available.

They got the first phase of the cash raise.

Now, if they can convince their backers, their financial backers,

to put on hold the tech side and to just do the spodumene concentrate,

these guys would be even happier.

And we saw it happen.

There's a few people that came out and said, yeah, we're going to wait.

The price of spodumene is too good right now for us not to just produce more

and then organically finance the next phase.

Now, in the history of the world, that never happens.

Every time that that happens, a major is going to come in,

he's going to buy the project.

It's going to be a good project doing good return, paying its capex fairly quickly.

They're never going to put the capacity online.

And we're going to run into a wall on this.

Also, in terms of capacity to transform spodumene outside of China.

And that's always the thing.

It's outside of China.

Rodney

You need that low cost of capital, larger company to come and do those capex projects.

I mean, it's pretty hard for a mid-tier junior to put up those sorts of dollars.

And you still get these projects going.

There's not a month before somebody comes out and they have a new discovery in Ontario.

They have a new discovery in Eastern Europe or in Quebec.

For spodumene, you look at, for example, one of our neighbours in St. George,

close to the Manicouagan project.

That's crazy.

We were talking about it last week.

That it's a kind of a zone in Quebec, the Manicouagan area, the north of the Manicouagan reservoir.

That is in between a bunch of things.

Between the border with Labrador, James Bay to the north, obviously the reservoir to the south.

And to the east, sorry, to the west, you have these mountains.

On the other side of the mountain, you have all these copper mines, gold mines, and the Renard diamond deposit or mine.

And the area where we are, there was not that many people.

Now it's getting interesting because we have Isabel, for example, with Stelmine.

So STH, Saskatchewan Toronto Hotel.

She's developing that Mercator project, which is like due north from where we are.

And she's dealing with the same issues that we have.

Like the infrastructures are limited.

These are all like potentially fantastic deposits, but very expensive in a sense that there's not currently an infrastructure.

Like I'm jealous of some of the guys in Sudbury where they can drive with their pickup truck directly on the project.

That makes a big difference.

Not only an exploration cost, but, you know, just the delay for permitting when you need to get a road to go through the wilderness.

Rodney

The grizzled mining speculators of Toronto with Stelmine, you know, they go through their junior mining bingo with, you know, they look at Stelmine and, you know, it ticks all the boxes.

You know, the only catch is that it costs a lot to drill there.

That's the only thing.

I mean, otherwise you've got a proven-up exploration thesis.

You've got a been there, done that management team.

You know, you've got a good jurisdiction from a government side.

Frank

I'm very happy for Isabel.

Like she's been pushing at it.

She's, you know, she has a character in a sense that she's stubborn.

She has, she's, she's determined.

And, you know, a lot of people have probably proposed alternatives to get this going in the past.

And she really wants to keep control of it.

And good for her, you know, I'm the last guy that can complain on these things.

But the fact that she had a lot of people that came to help her from Andre Gourmand and Eleanor to a lot of other people that are now around.

If Isabel was, you know, born and raised in Toronto, this thing would probably be in a different universe already.

This is definitely a company that – give her a little bit of money, let her go in – let's, let's talk about it in two years from now.

But the reason why I really like it is, is the fact that they're close to us.

Like we already have interaction with them in terms of fuels, transportation, logistics.

We're sharing some suppliers.

Well, when you mobilize somebody to go to in the area and you have that other company close by that right after you has a campaign coming, it helps reduce the costs of the mob, demob and these things.

And that's important.

Sometimes it's more expensive.

Just that aspect than the actual drilling or exploration campaign.

And so I'm grateful that she's there.

And just north of her, the same trend.

We now have the WhiteRock guys.

And this is, this is the story because I personally believe that this one will dwarf any other lithium discovery we've seen in the last five years in Ontario and Quebec.

And I've seen the area.

This is like a spodumene deposit, at surface that goes for miles in every direction.

And people have not really picked up on it.

It's a private company, obviously.

But they've, they're getting financing privately, probably easier than us, who are public public, because they don't have to show the graph of their stock in the last three years.

And, I'm a bit jealous of that, obviously, but I'm happy because, again, that brings people to, to the area.

Did we lost you there?

I'm still.

Rodney

Oh, excuse me.

I had, I had mute on to cough.

Frank

Um, no, I thought I was, you had dropped me as well and I've been talking to myself for a while now.

Rodney

Hopefully we've got a few people listening.

Uh, yeah, nobody's fallen asleep behind the wheel yet.

How does it compare?

How would you say WhiteRock compares to Patriot?

You know, they would, they would seem like somebody who could acquire something like this off of their low cost of capital.

Frank

Um, I, I don't know.

Let's say you, you cannot compare them because Patriot has been drilling and advancing and developing a resource.

It's way further advance.

But if you compare them at the same place they were at the same time, there's no comparison.

Like these guys got extremely lucky and this is exploration.

So a good component of exploration is the luck factor.

It's unfortunate, you know, uh, and I don't want to take away from a lot of competent geologists that have a flair and the instinct to find these discoveries, but you still need a little bit of luck.

And, and in their case they got a lot of it and, uh, they had two projects in Quebec and, uh, it's interesting because it's a small family of people.

And, and, and they got the approached, uh, to, uh, to, to, to option the other project.

And then I can probably talk about this a little bit more because I know the other one a lot more than this one, but listen, they, they, they're at a point right now, they might be financed up to feasibility and they're still private.

So there's no comparable that they, that if they ever go public without being acquired by a major, uh, they won the race to dilution.

There's no, there's no comparable there.

And, you know, that's, that's, uh, you sell, uh, you sell to funds, uh, the royalty and you get all the money to move forward.

Uh, it's, it's the, there's no better position than that.

So I would say they've been lucky, but they've been, at least if you compare the luck factor, they're luckier than, than Patriot.

Will they be bigger than Patriot?

Um, they're one of the few that I would say there's a good chance.

And, and again, I'm, I'm always biased, uh, for my own parish, uh – you know, that I own portion of the royalty personally of my family trust, uh, in Critical Element.

So that's another project that's advancing now, but it's been bogged down in permitting and advancing at a certain pace.

Good capex, good, good deposit.

Recently, a discovery that will increase it.

There's a few of these projects coming, but.

Rodney

And CRE, in my limited interactions with management over the years.

I've been quite impressed.

Frank

That's another group with, uh, Jean-Sébastien have been, you know, keep it, his head down and has done everything he needs to do and, you know, just kept grinding and moving it forward.

And it's going to pay out.

It's going to pay out.

I think we're going to see them in production at, within reasonable, uh, you know, capex.

And, uh, so, so it's funny because the guys at WhiteRock had the claims, uh, that, that are neighbouring, uh, the whole, uh, project of CRE in, uh, in the, uh, uh, it's not, it's north of Nemaska area.

It's a little bit, it's, uh, it's, uh, south of, uh, of Galaxy, uh, on the east main, uh, area of, uh, the James Bay.

And, uh, they're close to one of the big electric dam and reservoirs.

It's directly on the reservoir.

And, um, the, uh, one company that did a, an option agreement with St. Georges about a month and a half ago, uh, SLAM Exploration.

So that's, uh, Saskatchewan X-Ray London, SXL.

Um, this company's been down there forever.

Uh, Mike Taylor, their president, uh, has been going at it, uh, in New Brunswick.

This is probably the guy that knows where every, you know, hole and cranny exists in New Brunswick.

Rodney

Well, the thing that impressed me about Mike when I was talking to him at PDAC is that, you know, he's been doing this for quite a number of years, but he took over his father's book.

So you've got generations of, uh, you know, walking around with a hammer, uh, collecting rock.

I mean, that's, that's pretty hard.

Frank

It's your, it's your traditional, uh, prospector geologist.

Like the guy that– you call him, you, somebody calls you with something in New Brunswick or in Nova Scotia or in Maine, you call him, he knows the whole story from 1920 to today.

And, and, and it's not the published story.

Uh, so that's a, he's a wealth of knowledge, but listen, this guy initially was to list this company in the nineties on the Montreal exchange.

So that goes back and been around and that was dormant in terms of market awareness for the longest time, more than decade, probably.

They have a very good, um, gold trend in New Brunswick and, and they have a bunch of other projects around and he's been able to put some of them in joint venture or in, in options with other companies.

But, um, I think Mike has been a one man show for, for the longest time and now he's getting people who are coming around and that's how we were able to be put in touch.

And, uh, that's how now, you know, they're moving into critical metals.

They've made two acquisitions, one in Ontario, one in Quebec.

The one in Quebec is from WhiteRock.

So that's a project that WhiteRock was intending to, to spend, you know, good amount of money, private money.

Uh, into until they stumble upon, uh, what they call the sacred banana with that huge project, North of Manicouagan, uh, or use, but huge potential North of Manicouagan.

And, uh, so they, they, they were keen to do an option to say,

Ok, we want this to be, to stay with us somehow in some capacity, somebody else can go in and drill and go at it.

Uh, and it's interesting because it's on trend with Rose, but it's at the height, uh, you know, close by of the new discovery that John Sebastian did on his own claim, uh, to the Northwest.

So, um, I think we're going to hear about Slam a lot more, uh, in the coming year.

And, and this company is, is changing and it's perfect for us again, big conflict of interest there.

Uh, we own shares of Slam in St. George.

Um, we, we are happy to see them going and see them like structuring their company and, uh, hopefully they're going to go and spend and make some good discovery on the Notre Dame projects that we optioned to them.

Rodney

So it looks like here they've optioned some gold properties to S2 Minerals.

Is it, I got that, you know, the, uh, opening.

Frank

Yeah, there, there's a few things that are like, yeah, some nickel copper projects also are, um, the prospect in, uh, in New Brunswick.

And I think right now, if you look at it from one of my understanding, again, I'm not the company and I'm just the guy commenting out of, out of my behind on this.

But I think that the group of people that he's bringing, he's trying to create a team, uh, Mike has had that, um, I would say awakening that at his age, uh–he's not too old, but he's, again, if he wants to get something in production before he retired, um, it is,

he has about the time needed by, if he starts today.

Rodney

Yeah.

There's all those guys, they start feeling old and then they go out and they hustle and they do a big deal.

Then they try to be retired and that lasts about four months and they end up doing three more last-deal-evers before their careers up.

So, but yeah, he's at that stage where he wants to hurry up.

Frank

Unfortunately, a lot of them are not redeemable.

Like, uh, they are, they are serial prospectors and they will keep finding stuff and somebody else is going to bring that to completion.

But, uh, he's, um, I think he's very serious about the critical mineral and moving it forward.

And, and for us, he has to, we're going to make sure he is at least for the Notre Dame project.

And, uh, they've been talking spinoff and all that.

And I think that's where they're, they're moving away from the project generator business model.

So, you know, the, uh, the, the Mullen, uh, like Canada, Canada Royalty

Rodney

Global Valley Mines model, the Globex model,

Frank

Fancamp, Sheridan Platinum, that, that kind of model.

This is a model from another era.

And, uh, it's too late to get into that game for most people.

Like there's, there's people been doing it.

Okay.

And, and, and these projects often, if you look at it, they're trading below the value of the projects.

Like people don't even give them value for the cash and the shares and the royalties they're supposed to get, uh, until they hit the certain level of royalty.

And now they can calculate the income stream from the royalty and say, okay, this is what it's worth.

But they often still, even when that happens, they still trade a discount.

And, uh, that's, that's a bit sad, but, uh, I think that it's a good idea that they, they, they walk away from this and start to look at where there's a shortage of resources.

There's big talent with Mike and around Mike.

And if they can push on these things, uh, there's not that many, uh, you know, niobium projects in operation in North America.

If he can bring us to the next stage, we're going to be ecstatic and, and wish him luck on the lithium projects, definitely.

Rodney

Well, from what I can tell, he's entrenched with some, some of the sharpest, uh, geological minds from my quick bit of research.

Um, some of whom I know quite well, but he's, uh, he's obviously very well respected, uh, in geological circles.

Frank

I think the problem, the biggest problem Mike had over the last 20 years of being public is that Mike is Mr. Disclaimer.

he's extremely conservative and he, he doesn't have one marketing bone.

Uh, he's just a nice guy and he's going to unload, you know, everything he knows in front of you.

And, and, and, you know, it's nice.

Like it's an academic almost, uh, way to look at things, but I like that.

I'm a big nerd.

So, you know, I like that kind of thing, but at one point you need to pick up your attaché case and, you know, your shiny shoes and go sell this thing.

And, uh, that's not something that, that, that's not something that motivates him.

Rodney

I don't think Mike has any, it has a, any pairs of shiny shoes.

Frank

They all have mud on it.

Like that's a field guy.

That's a field geologist.

And that's what it is.

And that's what he likes to do.

So he needs to get that team around him that will be able to go and say, “Hey, this is good. This is why, and what this is, here's why it's good.”

But, uh, so I know you got a lot of questions regarding St. Georges and, you know, maybe we could address that a bit and, uh, see what you think there.

I know I did a small tweet.

I'm still going to say tweet on Twitter, by the way.

Rodney

Yeah, what would the alternative be?

An X-ray?

I don't know.

I'm a little bit lost as to the nomenclature.

Frank

But uh, I did one regarding…

There was an article in Iceland regarding the lava dike in the Grindavik sort of south section

or the Keflavik Peninsula there, where the airport is, for anyone that knows Iceland a little bit.

You know, south of Reykjavik, the capital.

And we do have some interest.

That's where the Blue Lagoon is, by the way, or in the general area where the Blue Lagoon is.

And the dike has, uh (coughing) the lava dike has started to cool, which is good news.

The airports won't be cut off and the Blue Lagoon might survive.

And also, for us, again, definitely, we have an interest there, is that we have an energy producer in the area

that we're happy to collaborate with for the mud that comes out of the geothermal well.

So, there was, you know, interest for us to keep going at it and could have been put on hold by a major volcanic eruption there.

So, I put it out, and I'm going to make it clear now.

There was no hashtag SX/SXOOF.

As I said, I'm a big nerd.

I was happy to see that things were cooling down, and we know people in the area.

Rodney

So, I know, Villi, last time I talked to him, he was quite concerned about it all.

[Ed: Vilhjalmur Thor Vilhjalmsson was formerly CEO of SX]

You could see the, you know, the tension in his face.

So, yeah.

Frank

I think it's because that's where he idled his gold.

So, in the backyard.

So, but in all fairness, like, I was very happy that it's calming down,

and it looks like it's not going to be an eruption, touching wood here.

And the, at least we're going to go back there.

And we've, we have people, we have staff in the country.

Visit to download your spaces today.

And they're working hard right now on the data collection to finalize,

or to advance the 42-101 for Thor, the gold projects we have,

just northeast of Reykjavik.

And there's, there's a bunch of things that are going on there with us

and with the government and looking at different scenarios of how,

how we're going to realize the value of Iceland.

I think it's a big asset that we have.

It's a, it's a major asset we have over there.

And we've ended up the idea of maybe doing a spinoff eventually or looking at different things.

And obviously none of this is going to happen without having at least the

qualifying requirements, which is 42-101 and some level of comfort in term of

ownerships or permitting for the different projects.

So, you know, that's not a, I want to put the message out there so that I don't get

the annoying message is that if you don't see SX or SXOOF, you know, in the message,

it's just me looking at, you know, articles or looking at papers that I think are interesting

and I'm sharing it.

So, but expect us to be, I would say, vocal about Iceland and what our plans are between now and the end of the year.

And I'm expecting movement there.

Rodney

That's a pretty interesting jurisdiction.

It's, I'm not sure everybody appreciates just how much effort it takes to tie up all the mineral rights for a,

for a nation.

I don't think there's any other listed companies that have the entire mineral rights for a whole nation listed on any exchange.

Frank

I don't know.

There's some, there's some small nation on there.

So maybe, maybe somebody has the right to drill at the Vatican and we just never realize it.

Rodney

Well, that would be, that would be some very impressive politics.

That would be more impressive than what you've done in Iceland.

Frank

Oh, absolutely.

And if you want to, you probably would end up drilling through a lot of gold bars with swastikas on it.

But that's another story.

But, you know, I think you're right.

And I despise some of the comments like that.

“There's nothing in Iceland.”

I'm sorry.

But the size of this country, it's not, it's not a small island.

The size of the country is, there's– and with the activity, the geological activity, there's a lot of potential over there.

But I'll leave it at it because I know it's not the main thing that people want to hear about.

You know, we can talk about probably the first closing we've done on the flow-through this year.

So, we got two institutional investors last week that gave us a little bit of money.

That allows us to start to plan and at least send a very good amount of material to the lab.

There was some of the core, like we've been, we've been delayed this year on the many wagon operation.

One other thing is we got, the government closed the, closed the access to the projects for months over the summer.

That's going to cause a lot of problems for a lot of companies.

There's some people that had flow-through that needed to be spent.

And the government gave us one more year to renew the claims to everyone, to everyone in Quebec, operating in Quebec with claims.

Mostly because of these fires and because they closed the woods.

So, you couldn't do the statutory work required to renew the claims.

But a lot of, they, we have heard nothing about the flow-through money.

So, now that money needs to be engaged somehow.

And we'll see probably things moving very fast.

Some people will have to figure out solutions so that they don't get reassessed or the investors don't get reassessed.

But we were not able to move on it this year.

We have everything now prepared.

And I think as per today or before the end of the week, we should see all these cores at the lab.

So, that's what I consider the first pass on these cores because that's new core we drilled in the spring of 2023 this year.

But we also have the, we also have the, we also have all the cores that were not assayed for a lot of PGs.

And that's, that's a lot.

That's a big-ticket item that could go fast.

These are mostly intersections that were, you know, they were assayed already for, for the nickel and all that.

And interacting, I would say probably – putting that in context – interacting with the, the majors and the actors in the industry that we talk with.

We're exchanging a lot of information with different people.

And they had one thing probably to, that, that helped us, you know, like I was talking to Herb earlier today.

We're saying we're still learning how to go at it on these things.

And we're talking about Herb that has decades of experience, but knows all these things inside out.

And still, not that many people ended up having what they thought was a high-grade nickel deposit to figure out, oh my God, we missed totally what this thing is.

We misidentified it and we used the wrong pronoun.

The pronoun should have been Pt/Pd.

It's, you know, it's, it's platinum, palladium, rhodium.

This is a PGE, the most probably a PGE project and not a nickel project.

It just happened that it has some very high grade iron ore, good grades, high grade of nickel, good grades of cobalt and copper.

But these are, to be fair, probably credits to the fact that these PGEs seem to be everywhere there.

And they've been under-assayed because, like, if you couldn't see semi-massive to massive sulfides on some of the cores, they were not assayed for anything else.

And that's the, that's the interesting part now is that we can send kilometres of core to the lab to get an assay for that.

And that's going to be very important for the 43-101 that we're doing.

And also for us to learn about it.

And we'll probably satisfy some of the majors that were asking us questions and wanted to get, you know, data exchange and improve their knowledge about what we're doing.

But we've been given free advice by a few major companies when they're doing due diligence on our projects and definitely appreciate it.

I see one of their are guys on this call, so it's, or was on this call.

I don't see him anymore, but he was there earlier.

Anyway, pass the message.

It's very appreciated.

And we'll have some good things there.

And we still have interest.

Like, I mean, there's other funds, other investors that are really believing in the story.

Like I said, there's a(n) allocation that is being– a reallocation of funds, that money moving from one sector to another with managed money and with some of the mutual funds and the institutional investors.

And I think we're in line to get some of that.

One funny anecdote.

We were, two weeks ago, on Wednesday, we were having lunch with a bank.

And that has been helpful in helping financing St. Georges.

And the analyst called while we were there.

And the analyst said, well, what you can tell me about St. Georges?

What about there?

Do you have an update for this 42-101 already for Manicouagan?

And it's funny because we're sitting there with the banker.

I said, why do you ask today?

Why today?

He said, well, you know, we have this call with one of the majors every three months where they talk with different Canadian resource analysts.

And they mentioned St. Georges.

They mentioned the Manicouagan project as an interesting project.

So nothing more than that.

Basically, a major is saying to them, we have a few projects that we have on our watch list.

You never know.

That could be one of them that is going to become something.

Again, you know, it's exploration.

You always have the other side of the metal.

Rodney

There's a lot of steps between now and success.

It's good to be on the radar.

Frank

Absolutely.

It's the first step is to be able to see, to say that now we have a few banks, their analysts have us on their radar.

It's easier also, as we want to go and finance, that brokers can offer it to their clients.

And so all these little things help, and they accumulate over time.

And eventually, it's like a river in the spring when the ice suddenly breaks and lets go, and then you get the flow of things going.

And that's going to, I think, I'm confident that's going to happen in regards to Manicouagan very soon.

And when I say very soon, it's the next year, we'll have this story as a, you know, more like a marquee story out there.

And we have some good targets to go drill on it.

So I'm guessing we probably will get some additional money between now and March from the institutions.

And we should be in a position to do an interesting campaign next year.

And in the meantime, I'm expecting to get a solid technical 42-101 to be delivered before that.

And that's also going to help us market the project and show to people what we have.

It's not going to be a resource, but you're going to have the… more tools to come up with your own resource or what we call internally the dream sheet of what should be the resource if all goes well.

Rodney

Yeah, I'm sure you've got a pretty detailed internal model.

I mean, most issuers I've been with have a pretty good idea of where they think deposits are going to go.

Well, you have it for one reason.

And it's funny because people say, why don't you put it out?

We had that discussion internally saying, how much is it?

Let's say in the 5% of the scenarios, like 95% of the time, it won't happen.

It will be below that.

What's your wildest dream in terms of tonnage, in terms of grades and stuff like that?

And we come up with some stuff internally.

And that was important for us because we wanted to know, do we push to get a maiden resource now in this 42-101?

Or do we go back with a few million more and come back with something that's 10, 20, 30 times the size of what we think we have right now

So that the first impression for next decade, when you go to different analysts and to brokers and to different actors in this business,

their first impression is 30 times bigger instead of the one we have there.

And the one we have there, I think, would make a few people jealous.

But it's still not the… you know, if we were in Sudbury, for example, I would probably have a different opinion.

So we have the infrastructure, it's different, but now we need to make a big splash.

That first resource needs to be enough to, you know, legitimize the investment required to get that material out of there.

Rodney

And as the camp develops, though, your hurdle rates go down and down.

Frank

Yeah.

So I'm a big, big believer on this one.

You know, it's funny because people say it's my baby.

It's not.

I'm not going to say what my baby is in this company.

There's things I'm more fond (of) than others.

I like Manicouagan.

Don't get me wrong.

I really like it.

I think it's going to go.

Rodney

I know the parents were supposed to pick favorites.

Frank

Well, that's the thing.

The question, because if you say if it's my baby, that means one thing.

And it's pejorative to a point, is that if a major comes in and put a $500 million check on a table, are you going to say no?

Well, at this point, it might be worth 20 times that in the future.

But $500 million today, most probably, you know, you're not going to hear me answer.

The key is going to be on the table.

So, no, so I want to make sure that I reassure people they're not financing a dream of mine.

We're very pragmatic about it.

But we know where we have to go to get to the next step.

You need to hit a certain level to at least get these offers.

Right now, we have discussions with many majors.

They're interested.

We got their curiosity.

But how many companies are like that?

There's probably another 20, 30 companies in Canada about the same stage of where we are that have the same.

You know, these majors have market intelligence units where they have some staff that do that all day every day.

This is the only thing they do.

They keep, you know, it's a way for them to get a cheap rights of first refusal.

They just stay friendly with us.

Rodney

Well, there's been, the majors have had their folks out and about in the Toronto scene for the last month.

They keep popping up in different places.

So, you know, they're definitely looking at, I don't want to read too much into seeing them out and about, but, you know, they're kind of there and listening and asking a few questions and trying to feel things out.

Frank

Well, I think the biggest difference and the reason why we hear about them a lot more than we used to.

So, if you go back ten years ago, these things were happening.

We had a major forever on Julie that was asking for a few samples, asking for things, giving us good advice.

I've reached out to their people at one point to find a supplier of a certain tech we were looking for.

And they provided, and they provided the intro to that group.

That was good.

So, you know, it's not only one way.

Like, you get some advantage out of talking to these people.

They have a network of knowledge and of contacts that's interesting and could be leveraged if you know what you're doing.

But, uh, what probably light up a little bit of a fire under their behinds now, the reason why they're more aggressive, is they're all going into shortage on different minerals.

And they suddenly have competition from process providers, multinational process providers, chemical companies, and the car makers.

We've never been into, you know… you're prospector, to be fair, or an exploration company, and now we have NDAs with car makers.

By the way, not for the battery, recycling, for the resource in the woods.

You know, that's what they're looking at right now.

They're competing, they're bypassing the majors, saying, we're going to go secure this right away.

So that if you acquired them, you're stuck with us.

And that's interesting.

It's a big change, and you start to see also Japanese and South Korean trade desks doing the same thing.

So, I like it, because somehow this creates opportunity for new solutions in terms of how we move this forward.

Rodney

Well, I think automakers are trying to avoid Swiss trading desks as they put together these new supply chains.

Frank

Are they still there?

Nobody's picking up the phone.

Mark Rich is gone.

And that's, anyway, that's another story.

Rodney

Yeah, who's Mark Rich anyways?

He certainly wouldn't need a presidential pardon.

Frank

Yeah.

So, you want to talk a little bit about the batteries, probably, before we let people go.

It's been, you know, a little bit more than an hour now.

So, I know we got a lot of questions, like, and again, there's people coming back asking for projections, stuff like that.

Never going to do that.

This is the one thing.

I'd say, if you look, before we even get and finish on this, we've said that, for example, on the hydrogen, we're looking at scenarios to monetize it.

We're looking at the hydrogen technology, hydrogen subsidiary, H2SX.

So, this is going well right now.

We might be looking at similar solutions for Iceland Resources.

We're looking at different solutions for technology we've developed that now will require injection of capital to be moved to the next step.

And we're talking to partners, entities that will be able to move this forward, give us something that will be very good, and, you know, limit or eliminate dilution and the impact on our site.

So that we can focus the bulk of our resource on Manicouagan and on the battery operation and the battery processing.

So that's probably one of the messages.

In terms of Thorold, or Ontario, we're in the process right now–

We're basically not sitting on our hands.

There's a lot of things being done in the background.

–But we're waiting, and we are dependent now on the environmental permit coming from the province.

So there's a lot of interaction.

We do have a senior analyst on it.

We're expecting to hear from it, most probably in the coming weeks.

So before the end of the year, for sure.

Are we going to get the permit at that point?

I have no idea.

So that's why, if anybody's asking me, can you make projections?

No.

This has been an interesting learning curve.

There's a dynamic, and I think we've been going at it the right way.

We expected it.

We ran some game theory, trying to figure out, okay, where do we position ourselves?

At the beginning, we were keen on going to the lithium batteries, nickel, cadmium, still are.

But there's probably a rhythm or a sequence of things that needs to happen.

And I think we have it pretty much down.

And we know where we're going with it.

And that's interesting.

So we'll have, we're getting right now a lot of things prepared, built by suppliers so that we can accommodate the employees the minute that we're set up and not too long after we receive that permit.

So the alkaline operation will start fairly quickly after the permit is assigned to us.

Rodney

One thing I've noticed in my fairly extensive travels in this space this fall is that there is risk capital available for this sector in a way that there isn't for certain others.

So that's a, that's a pretty positive thing.

And I guess the other thing is that I've realized is the folks at St. Georges are dead in the middle of all this.

And everybody is sort of the who's who of this sort of technology.

You know, there's not very many degrees of separation to everybody who's involved with that.

So that's been, been a learning process for me.

Frank

But there's an interaction.

You saw it with some of your own contacts in other companies.

There's, there's interaction with a lot of the people.

Obviously, when you start to talk about doing a circular economy and come up with circular solutions, you're going to talk about with a lot of people before and after your process.

And, and it's interesting because they bring other people to the table and the market is too small to all be competitors.

So, you know, at this point, there's, there's synergy with even the perceived competition.

We've seen a lot of them take a step back from a lot of very big announcements they've made.

And, and for us, there's a way to go at it where, for example, in Italy, there is money available.

There is a market, there is a business to be made.

And how do we – forget the dilution in terms of the shares or the equity of the company, but just the dilution of the resource –

How do we go at it without a partner?

For us, it made no sense.

It was a matter of getting the people that can move things faster over there.

And have a guarantee to get the permit, have a guarantee to get grants and, and to be allowed to operate.

And, uh, we would have not moved, uh, in that direction otherwise.

And even in Ontario, keep in mind, this is a first phase, but for subsequent, uh, phases that will come after, uh, there's, we've not eliminated the idea of bringing partners in.

And some people might be surprised who these partners might be, uh, you know, some of the, uh, competition or perceived competition might be, uh, some of the greatest, uh, uh, you know, allies in this.

So we'll, uh, we'll see where this goes, but at this point, uh, we're ready to set up, uh, the stuff is being lined up to, to, to be set up this year.

I'm guessing, and it's a guess again, I'm going to have the final-final on this, but we should be installed this year.

And, and if all goes well, uh, you know, give it a few weeks after we get the permit and we're, uh, we're shredding batteries.

Rodney

Yeah, there'll be a significant re-rating, uh, in all sorts of capital available in production of the project level.

Um, I've got a few sources into project level financing for these things.

And it seems like there are, there's significant amounts of money and there's a lot of money out of the U.S. that isn't necessarily geared towards public companies, but is geared towards project financing.

Frank

Yeah, I think that's the thing right now is that a lot of people have been looking at and they're coming at us and says, so what will be your Capex?

And we're saying, we paid for it.

It's almost all paid for. You know, the, the equipment is there.

The, uh, what we'll need is cash flow moving forward because there's a significant delay between getting the allocation, you know, processing it and then getting paid.

But, uh, in terms of the Capex and reimbursing the Capex and all that, we're not in a corner like a lot of other people have been where they had to put projects on ice.

And some of the biggest, uh, players that were perceived competition are now not even on the radar anymore.

Like they're, because they were supposed to be so big, they would have overlapped over what we want to do on the first few phase.

And now they're put that totally aside and they pushed that for 10, 15 years.

They want to focus on some other aspects where they're, they're ready to go and they'll be able to stay alive.

That's crazy.

And maybe that's the thing is we don't have, you know, we don't have hundreds of millions or tens of millions of debt that needs to be serviced at 10% and over.

And I'm grateful for that.

I think that we did the right thing there.

Rodney

Oh, oh, how I, how I know another story.

Well, but yeah, probably a bit too early getting to the space and, uh, used up a lot of goodwill and capital too soon before the market was really there.

Frank

So I see that Mike is there.

Mike, do you think he has a few questions before we wrap this up?

Rodney

Sure.

Which Mike is that with the black and white picture and a nice beard?

Frank

Mike, yeah, the guy with fish.

Who never fished in his life, but now has a boat and.

Rodney

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

Okay.

I got him.

I should, uh, I invited you to speak there.

Uh, Mr.

Coyle.

Hold on.

Let me try again.

Frank

Putting him on the spot here.

Rodney

Yeah, we're trying here.

I think I actually, uh, ran into his, uh, I think his cousin at the playground about a year and a half ago.

But anyways, that's a, that's a whole other story.

Mike

Hey fellas.

How are you?

Rodney

Good.

How's it going, Mike?

Mike

Good, good.

Can't complain.

Rodney

Yeah, the floor is yours.

Do you have a few questions?

Mike

Yeah, I suppose.

Uh, Frank, why don't you give us a bit of a, an update or talk about some of the synergies around the Thorold area and connections that are kind of driving you guys forward.

Frank

Well, there's, there, there's interesting stuff there.

Uh, location obviously is great.

Um, there's some of the, uh, car companies coming out, you know, online close by on both sides of the border.

So that's, that's, uh, one thing.

Um, you, we just went through the process to get the support of the, uh, local– like there was two sets or three sets of, of, uh, three political levels.

We wanted to have some, uh, confirmation that what we're doing was the right thing and that they were supporting us and that they would be there on the next step.

One is at provincial level.

I'm not going to expand on that one, but we got the, uh, environmental people from different municipalities around.

And we got also the Thorold people and, uh, it's, it's kind of crazy how these people explaining some of the other problems or the excess capacity elsewhere are even waking up to the synergy and exposing us to the synergy.

So, um, I'm impressed by the locals to be fair in terms of their, uh, ability to connect dots and figure out that, “Hey, you should talk to these guys over there because they can do some business with you.”

And that would keep, keep, keep, keep, let's say the value creation in, in the region, in the area.

Mike

So you've had, uh, a lot of people talking about the permitting process.

Can you elaborate on some of the meetings you had and maybe the, um, uh, the letter that you got–of recommendation–and how that's playing into it?

Frank

That letter is one of many we're seeking out.

It's, uh, it's a way for us to, uh, be able to, uh, ask for a fast track, uh, or to, to an accelerated treatment of our request.

Um, we already had went through some, some of the pre-preparation.

And we have, we have a consultant on this.

It's a large firm that, uh, had expected that–they'd come up with scenarios and where we're pretty dead on in terms of timelines and what's happening.

But I wouldn't, I wouldn't still, you know, because I would now give you a timeline, that's when it's going to fail.

So I'm not going to do that, but I'm saying that we were well-prepared.

Um, now that there's a senior, uh, you know, analyst on it or senior engineer.

Uh, we're now expecting either questions or comments, uh, coming back to us.

So, um, if you ask me and that's really me and don't go buy shares or sell shares based on that.

But I think that before the holidays, we'll get that batch of questions, a lot of questions.

So we're going to work overtime during the holidays to answer these questions, if any, and, and get to the level where we need to be.

Mike

Well, I guess, I guess one of the questions that's been highlighted in the, in the market or by an article that came out this week was some speculation about, uh, some resistance for lithium batteries and storage and handling of them.

Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Frank

Well, it is, it is a thing.

Like if you look, uh, and I think I had the discussion in another interview before is that, you know, this is a hazardous material.

There's some States that to cross the state line, you need different transporters and different licenses.

And, uh, and, uh, and there's some reason for it, uh, when these things catch on fire, the lithium mostly, uh, there's a way to approach it and you need certain equipment in place.

And that's–for us to do lithium, uh, battery preparation.

We will have to have these equipment in house because the municipality is not equipped to do it.

But our capex is so low compared to the perceived competition that if that's the only big cost we have, you know, to, to, to have the solution to a potential problem that might never happen, we'd be happy to do it.

But there's also, I would say, new norms in place now and how you're supposed to store these batteries, which was not the case in the past.

And obviously we're the poster child for that because they're not going to the car scrapyards where now they're dismantling EV cars and putting the batteries in one container and nobody's asking them questions.

Where, unfortunately, on our marquees of our business, it's, it's going to be written “battery”.

So we do attract that and, and it's totally legitimate.

It's a matter for us of sensibilization and education, explaining what are the real risks and not the perceived risks or the legend around it.

And, uh, we've had these discussions, they visited the site–the people that made that comment.

And, um, you know, there were, there were all sorts of other issues.

And, uh, to be fair, I was expecting, we had advance notice on that article.

I was expecting a lot more negativity to come out.

If it's only the, if it's the only problem they have left, uh, you know, it's not the biggest problem to mitigate.

Mike

I agree.

There's solutions for everything.

And as long as you cross your T's and dot your I's going through the process, then I'm sure everybody will, will go along with it.

Okay.

Uh, WSP modeling of your lithium hydroxide process.

I was pretty excited about this.

You'd made some mention about, uh, some stuff potentially coming out before the end of the year.

Do you have any insight as to what the plan is for St. George with lithium hydroxide?

Frank

Well, there's two things there.

There's the hybrid operation of where we're going to process black mass, uh, where we will use that technology.

And there's the–and we'll use that technology for batteries, black mass, and for material from, from source, from mine, from resource.

And there's the pure resource, uh, deployment of that technology that comes with hundreds of millions of dollars of Capex.

And we've been engaged in that process, talking to potential, uh, people, partners, you know, backers for it.

Um, I'm confident we'll be able to announce something or to, you know, at least give you, uh, an update on this before the end of the year.

Mike

It would be good to see you guys be able to advance that.

That's one thing on my radar that I've been, uh, hopeful to see.

Um, I don't know.

You kind of–guys caught me off guard here.

I didn't have any questions prepared for this.

Let me just scour (ceo.ca) and see if anybody's got any questions that they'd like asked that I could throw down for you.

I know your channel's pretty active.

So if anybody's listening and they want a question asked, let me know.

Rodney

You're pretty good on your feet, Mike.

That was impressive.

Mike

Well I…

I follow the story pretty closely.

You know, it's no secret.

I, um, I know St. Georges' every move.

So sometimes it's in fact challenging to ask questions because there's things I can't ask about because things aren't developing yet.

So it makes it difficult at times.

Rodney

Oh, yes.

I've been there.

I understand.

Mike

So Frank,

Frank

We're getting, we're getting some question from the Space itself.

I don't know if you see it on your side.

Uh, but, uh, the, uh, it's kind of funny.

So one, one was asking, um, about feedstock and about, uh, Thorold itself, uh, the letter of, okay, so what's the next step, uh, wire, plumbing, tests run, yeah, feedstock.

So all of this is, is being, uh, more than planned right now.

We're, we're in the stage of deployment.

So, um, you should see at least the alkaline line installed in the coming weeks and be ready to go.

So, uh, the, as per last two, three weeks, the electricity, the gas, water, everything is on the wall of the space that, that we have over there.

And, and it's matter now of getting it set up inside.

Mike

Frank, can you talk about the spodumene?

You mean, I know you did a bit of testing with some companies, uh, from overseas, but, uh, we haven't got an update on that lately.

What's the, what's the plan of attack?

Frank

Well, so we've done tests.

It's obviously with the lithium hydroxide technology, uh, and the lithium nitrate.

Uh, right now, we are since September in the process of, uh, with, with different entities, uh, the consortium around it, uh, asking for fairly big ticket in terms of grants from, uh, Ottawa and Quebec.

And, uh, uh, we're expecting to get some updates on this between now and, and, and PDAC.

Mike

Perfect.

Happy to hear it.

Frank

Now, if you want to know where my baby is on that side, it's the shape of the crystal.

I would be, it would be a fantastic thing.

If we're able to do with the lithium hydroxide, what we've been able so far with limited success to do with the lithium nitrates crystal, uh, we might come up with a material that could compete with lithium metal without being lithium metal.

So that's, uh, I'm just leaving it there.

Uh, this is something that, uh, again, uh, tickled the big nerds in me.

Mike

Is there an avenue that your average investor or somebody with an inquisitive mind might be able to look at the WSP modeling?

Like, when's that going to become available?

I know the patents were filed for some additional stuff, but it's going to be a period of time before anybody can even see those because they don't go public for almost a year, if my memory serves me right.

Frank

Yeah.

Well, no, there's still some adjustment for us to do.

So for now, we're not going to put out too much information there.

Uh, I would, I would say, well, there's, um, one question will this company make money in 2024.

Yeah.

We're getting rent in Baie-Comeau.

Uh, I'm cocky.

I hope, no, I hope we're going to get a lot more, uh, going to be fair.

Uh, there might be different income streams, by the way, battery being one, obviously the people will think, but there might be other things coming.

And we're talking with so many people that we'll see what gives first.

Uh, question from Dennis is asking about, uh, the sell price for one ton of black mass from alkaline.

So this is interesting because you have to think alkaline is what it's, it's manganese zinc, uh, and a few other things, but mostly manganese zinc on the black mass, about, 70 to 85% of it.

The rest is a little bit of plastic.

There's copper, there's aluminum, and there's, there's, uh, what am I forgetting?

Uh, copper, aluminum, and steel.

So that, that goes, obviously, these are metals… are fairly easy to figure out.

Um, and from one battery manufacturer to another, you could talk to, uh, to, uh, uh, I was to name one of our, well,

uh, there's Duracell, Energizers, uh, uh, Granger, that's the one I was thinking that doing a lot of these, uh, generic one, uh, and they all have a little bit of a difference in terms of their recipe.

So you don't have the exact same, uh, setup for everyone, but they all go through the same machine anyway, the minute they're alkaline.

Um, so you could look at this as a manganese and zinc, uh, source.

Eventually that will be it.

And that commandeers very high, uh, or, or good pricing, but there's a subsequent transformation required.

And if you send that to fertilizers, um, this is a new business in itself.

Uh, people have done it before, but I mean, for us, and, uh, we don't have a final, uh, pricing there, but keep in mind,

we are trying to set this up in a way that the tipping fee coming from the government,

we've been certified as an RPA.

So if we get these batteries from Canada and process them, um, we're getting, uh, paid per kilo that we process.

Uh, we should be able to, uh, break even if not turn a profit just on that.

So everything else selling the aluminum, the copper, the steel, selling the black mass or selling a transformed black mass should bring us some good money.

Mike

Frank, your, your permit is going for alkaline batteries,

but like, how far off would you be from also going with the nickel cadmium?

Because we know you've done some R and D on those.

Frank

Well, that was the idea.

The idea was to be able to say, okay, we have this, and we're going to leverage off that permit,

of that installation to ask for additional, uh, lines to be, uh, authorized.

So that's the strategy.

There's, it's not because we're not ready.

It's because we think this is the first one that they will authorize,

that we will be able to mitigate, um, or to, to answer a lot of questions.

And that has the, they get comfortable with it.

We'll be able to move to the next step.

Mike

Great.

Can you talk about your, um, project or the joint venture or option agreement that you recently signed with Slam exploration on the niobium project?

That was a project I was watching and I was hoping you'd do something with.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see…

Frank

Well, it's, you know, I think we've, we've heard that a lot.

Uh, and that was the, the, probably the best candidate to be, uh, optioned because that was not our core business.

Obviously it's critical minerals.

It's, it's great, but it requires a certain expertise, a certain attention to be given to it.

And we cannot be at ten places at a time in Quebec.

So Manicouagan is the one we're going to move forward and, uh, we're very happy to have these guys come in.

And the next step, this is fully permitted.

Uh, they could go and drill on it.

They could, uh, you know, do trenching and stuff like that.

So I'm guessing that, uh, as the snow, uh, melts, they're going to be there.

They might be there before that.

Uh, they are, we're still interacting with them with different scenarios on how to go at it and what will be the first step.

Mike

Excellent.

Uh, Julie, what do you, uh, do you have any plans for Julie in the near future?

I know it's kind of on the side at the moment, but I mean, that project's got an awful lot of showings offered over a very vast area.

I've seen it.

Frank

Julie, Julie is compared to Manicouagan, Manicouagan, we now have, or at least we thought we had a model for it.

And now, now we have a new model.

Now we, we kind of have a general understanding of where to go, what were the next step and all that.

Julie is a constellation of different things.

And, and it's very interesting.

It's a little bit, you know, it's geologist porn, uh, to be there, but, uh, it's extensive in terms of it's cost-extensive.

And it will require a lot of different permits, uh, to go a different section, like there are swamps.

There's a few things like that where, uh, it gets complex as we move forward.

We can still go and do some work there and increase the value.

But, uh, short-term, uh, Julie, we're able to renew these claims for a while.

It's probably going to stay on, on, uh, you know, on ice, uh, for a little bit of time.

Like we'll definitely put all our Quebec exploration resources on Manicouagan.

Mike

Okay.

Let's talk about Manicouagan because I think people are, uh, forgetting what exactly has transpired on that project.

And the, the kind of grades that you're getting in not only the nickel, but the PGEs and the rare earth metals.

And you've hit these on a number of different holes, but during the spring campaign, you did hit a hole within that structure.

Um, uh, this is going to be one of the samples that goes out.

Are you putting any of these on priority from the spring campaign?

Frank

Uh, you know, back in the, the COVID days, priority meant something.

Uh, although the problem we have with Manicouagan,

uh, it's not a problem we had at Julie, but Manicouagan, it's for different metals, it's different thresholds.

So you ended up having to re-assay a second time, if not a third time.

And, uh, we realized that we're burning money at the beginning for no reason.

Uh, that if, if it's to hit a threshold, might as well, you know, it's going to be rushed on the second pass.

And, um, we can save that money to, to assay more, uh, the core.

And that's one thing we didn't do in the past because, uh, a lot of the historical [cores] were not fully essayed for PGEs.

And, uh, based on maybe a misleading, uh, misleading impression from historical geologists that historically work on it,

that there was a one-to-one correlation between the PGEs and the nickel.

And it's not the case.

We're going to see the nickel come down at some places and the PGE keep staying, uh, or going up in terms of correlation.

And, um, so that's, that becomes an important for us to really essay for the, the, the PGEs.

Mike

So what area of Manicouagan will be your focus come the next exploration campaign?

Are you going for the deep intrusive or are you going to be going back towards or around the astrobleme?

Frank

That's, that's over my, uh,

That's over my pay grade.

Mike

Aww, I wanted to know.

Frank

Now, listen, we've, we, we drilled, uh, around the astrobleme.

Don't forget, it's also a matter of permits there.

There are, there's zones that we have permits to, to intervene.

Others we'll need to file for new permits.

Uh, so we've done, and, and the, you know, in the middle of winter, like we did, we say it was a spring, but it's, it's still, you know, north of Manicouagan.

You're still fairly high.

Um, there's some intense days there and, and area that are not necessarily, uh, super accessible when, when it's icy.

And, um, so the other issue or the main issue we had, uh, being there, uh, in, in weather like that was, uh, the land of the, uh, water lines.

So the water that you need for drills.

And, uh, so we, we've been a bit limited.

We're probably going to revisit the astrobleme and go edit, uh, differently, but that's going to be a later stage.

And that's, that's me giving you off the top of my head an opinion here.

Uh, that's Herb's call at the end of the day.

But, uh, I think that we're, we're all eager.

We're scratching ourselves, thinking of going after the, the intrusive, the massive intrusive that we identify with the downhole geophysics.

Mike

I would like to see more of that data.

I guess that's all going to be in the 43-101 when you guys publish this.

Frank

I hope so, yeah.

Mike

Yeah, me too.

I'd like to see that.

Exciting times.

All right.

Well, um, Frank, so I guess the one thing a lot of people have been asking, and I've heard you say a lot in this conversation, um, you know, you often have these backdoor conversations with people when you're signing NDAs and you can't mention names.

And I think that's a point of frustration for people.

I think people are like, well, if you're working with all these majors or you're talking to all these majors, why can't you talk about them?

Can you talk about some of the nuances with dealing with NDAs?

And you, you kind of touch base on, you know, majors do make their rounds and call different companies and stuff.

But I think people have this impression that every time you sign an NDA, that means it's going to lead to a deal.

When in fact, it's more just collaboration and working with, with the majors to kind of advance your project and your knowledge of the project.

But I think you need to address this because I think people are just so caught up in the idea of every NDA, every person you talk to has to materialize into a deal.

Frank

It's not even a deal.

It's, there's a lot of people that think that if we don't get a big name behind us, we're never going to amount to anything.

I can tell you.

If I, if we put out a hundred million tons at Julie or Manicouagan or any other place at the grades we're getting, nobody needs a major.

Majors will, will make offers, but we don't need a major to co-assign the press release.

And that, honestly, to a certain point, it getting disrespectful for the expertise we have, because we have a bunch of PhDs that have put things in production in the past.

And I think probably hit my level of answering these things, where at one point I'm going to be less diplomatic and polite, but I'll say one thing though.

You're right.

You're a hundred percent right.

A lot of these companies have NDAs with us.

They're doing significant work with us in the background and they'll never–until probably years down the road–allow us to mention them.

Because the last thing they want is shareholders in micro cap companies harassing their receptionists and asking to verify things.

So that's one of the points I would say.

You know, some of them will be disclosed, I guess, at one point.

But we do have NDAs in place.

And as it says, it's because people, until they pull the trigger, they don't want the competition to know that they're there.

And at the same time, they don't want to be flooded by questions from retail investors.

They have their own problems.

Mike

Fair.

Thank you.

Rodney

I think the power, Frank, is the collaboration that everybody's talking and trying to solve the same problems and trying to reduce costs in the area.

There's a whole bunch of things that have happened by people working together.

So I think that's the real important part about that.

Frank

There's majors with technology that would have probably not advanced as fast if they didn't talk to us.

Because now they know that their technology might match something we do.

And, you know, not moving, or not saying too much about this, is that it's us and a bunch of other people.

They have NDAs with maybe 30 other companies.

But it's that collective puts together like a basin of wealth, of knowledge that allows them to, and all of us, actually, to figure out that, okay, what we do here, if we realign a little bit, it's going to get somewhere.

And that's what these NDAs are good for.

I see another question from Louis Gauthier.

He's asking about the strategy in Italy.

Why don't I go on your show and actually answer it there, Louis?

That would be my answer.

And because we're, I don't want to keep you for too long here.

A question about uplisting.

We are, we're going to finalize these 43-101.

We're going to look at the monetization of a few of the subsidiaries.

And we're going to have an EGM.

So not an AGM, but an EGM.

Get people to vote on different scenarios at one point.

And I think that uplisting, definitely, definitely.

When I said that I have [had] it with Algo and the way that they've been treating us, I'm serious.

I think we're serious in the company.

We're going to take the step to fix this.

Rodney

Excellent, excellent.

Well, that's over an hour and a half.

Should we wrap things up?

I think we're probably about to that point.

Mike

Thanks for having me and letting me ask questions, fellas.

Rodney

Yeah, thanks, Mike.

Much appreciated.

You're quite well-spoken, especially on your feet.

So I'll be sure to never give you time to prepare again.

Mike

Perfect.

All right.

Well, thanks, guys.

I'll let you wrap up.

Rodney

Thanks, Frank.

Thanks, everyone.

That's a good crowd.

Frank

Thank you.

Bye.

Have a nice day.

Rodney

Bye.