Asiamet Resources (LSE:ARS) — Ares Investor Summit

0:02 Welcome to the ARES STRATEGIC Investor Presentation. Throughout this quarterly presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please simply type in your questions at any time and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted then we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company will be most grateful for your participation.

0:30 And now I'd like to play a short video produced by the company. Welcome to Delta, Millard County, Utah. Population, 3,724, Home to the lost sheep mine and the fluorspar plant, both owned and operated by ARES STRATEGIC MINING. ARES, once a junior mining company, is now on the cusp of becoming a manufacturing company. Is still the only permitted fluorspar mine in The US, with their sights firmly set on being the leading fluorspar producer for the nation. 2023 was a pivotal year for ARES, and much progress was made, especially in regards to funding. This made significant progress on both mine and plant construction possible. ARES is pleased to report that the first half of twenty twenty four has been extremely successful.

1:20 So what does that progress look like? And what does the rest of 2024 hold for ARES? Outside just outside this building here, have the process site. Obviously, things are being built there very quickly. We're gonna get some rudimentary equipment going so we can put some initial product through it. And once that's fully operational, we'll have that fully ramped up, modern industrial manufacturing process going here at, in Delta.

1:58 We started on-site in February 2024. We did the site setup, and from there on, we started the development of the ramp, which the intent of it is to get us to the ore body. We are around a 120 feet away from reaching the mineralization, the fluorospore mineralization. We're supported by an amazing team that we have on-site. We have a support of James Walker himself and the entire ARES STRATEGIC MINORITY. From our point of view at ARES, the progress has been very rapid, very professional. The site looks fantastic, and we really are weeks away from the big ore body now. Only in a few more weeks, we can report back that we've hit it. Then once we get to that stage, ventilation will go in, and then we can start pulling out industrial quantities of fluorspar into the fact that it's gonna be the only fluorspar producing operation in the country. Hi.

3:03 My name is Steve Thomas, Pro Bowl Mining. I'm the mine manager at the Lost Sheep Mine, and I've been managing the program since probably about beginning of February. When we first got there, there was a lot of stuff to do on surface to get us where we are today, from moving of a existing mill to dealing with BLM, M SHOT regulations, and everything to get everything up to where we are today. Like, we had three employees to start with, and now we're up to probably 20. We have great workforce, great miners out there that work very hard and do a very good job at, their job. And without them, don't know where we'd be, but it wouldn't be where we are today.

3:54 Hi. I'm Nathan Child. I am a geologist for ARES STRATEGIC MINING, and I have been on this project since 2020 through various drill programs exploration. I have walked all of those mountains of all of our property. So this is an example of some of the core drilling that we have done very recently. You can see that we get into a lot of the really high grade. Through here. It's the very dark purple. You know, you can kind of see how the rock changes as you go along. This is going so where we started would have been ground zero, right? Right at surface. And then we're just making our way deeper and deeper and deeper. So this is a bunch of the high grade here. This is actually a really good run of high grade.

4:48 You know, let's see this started. Two where is that? Two thirty seven. It goes all the way up, you know, two ninety ish. Yeah. I mean, you've got a 63 foot run of high grade right there.

5:13 So that's what we're going after in this program. I think a lot of shareholders have already heard me repeat very often that Florspar is very ubiquitously used in industry, so steel, aluminium, hydrofluoric acid, fluorine, but there are other resurgent industries occurring at the moment that fluorospar supports enormously. Say, for instance, there's a lot of resurgent interest in nuclear energy that's happening in states at the moment, and the Department of Energy is pouring a lot of money into that. So in order to be able to enrich uranium, and you need it in the form of uranium hexafluoride. But to create that product, you actually need, hydrofluoric acid. So suddenly, there is a domestic supply of acid spar, which is the material that's directly used in the manufacture of hydrofluoric acid, which then allows you to enrich that uranium, to give you that nuclear power. So you can't have one industry without the other, and, you know, that's something that Florspar brings to the table.

6:16 We are still looking for additional financing to put into this. Like, as you can imagine, building a mine can be expensive, especially especially when you've got a full cruise working three shifts, even overnight just to get us into that ore body. It's a but it's it should be very attractive to any investor. It's immediately free trading stock under the life exemption. It's at 18¢ with a full warrant of 26. So it should it should have massive appeal. And then also, once we close this financing and we're getting very, very close to manufacturing, we can expect we we would an equal market response that is as positive as the developments here. The good part is as we become a manufacturing operation, we shift away from being that exploration company, and then we attract a whole new base of investors and a whole new set of eyeballs. So it's obviously a good time to be involved now just before production gets started, and I I think it's a very good investment. I'm invested. Every people I know are invested, so it's it's something that you can reach out to the company about as well.

7:25 ARES would like to thank all of its shareholders for their continued support. If you or someone you know can further support ARES in this transitional stage, we urge you to take advantage of the life offering opportunity, which closes 07/29/2024. For more information on the life offering or on how to invest, please contact our team directly. I'd now like to hand over to James Walker, CEO. Hi, everyone. So that's that's not a bad looking video, actually. So I haven't seen it all the way through. No. Looks pretty good. So, everybody, I I think I've a lot of people who are already on this are probably shareholders already, so I've gotta walk through this presentation. But I won't repeat myself too much because I'm sure you've heard this story a million times. But for those who haven't heard it, I'd I'll just run through a good overview of of everything we're working on currently and and how things are progressing and a bit of background about what we're doing.

8:30 Karl, do you wanna flip to the next slide? Alright. So just a bit of background about how we got going on this. Back in, I'd say, about 2019, we were looking for projects that were near the revenue, permitted, didn't need huge amounts of capital expenditure, and we were fairly agnostic on the resource. But we saw a project, an industrial mineral project that was being done in Utah where there were two artisanal miners who were just taking product out of the ground, putting it into a bag, and selling it. And we thought, well, that's an incredibly unique thing in in mining at all. But we realized that it actually meant that the the purity of the product was excellent and that if you if you start with that kind of benchmark to even get it be to a final product that's industrial grade and mass manufactured, it's it would take significantly less processing, which means significantly less capital. So we began pursuing this this project. And when we got down there, we realized that even though there were these artisanal miners mining this area, the whole of the district had become available.

9:41 Because while it had been mined artisanally in the past across this district, a lot of the industry had been shipped overseas or people who retired or people who just died of old age. And so it all became available. So we staked the whole area, and we we amalgamated into one big one big mass, and then we we began developing it. We took it public in January 2023 and then sorry, 2020. And then we began doing the normal things that you would do, geophysics, drilling, plant design, lidar, all of these things that we were building up in exactly a a good plan of how we proceed with this. And and we worked we were quite strategic. We worked around, like, the restrictions they put on us because of COVID and there were shipping delays and that sort of thing, but we we bought plants.

10:31 We got a lot of personnel to site. We built we built the mapping, everything we needed. And in 2023, we closed two big federal and state loans that came to us, and we bought went out and bought 50 acre industrial property with buildings that was already permitted into for industrial use. And then we started buying in sil steel, and and we're starting to erect the plant. And, conjointly with that, we brought in, the mining team as well to clear the whole mine site out, buy the big heavy mining equipment in. And so now we've got a lot of heavy machinery up there, and, we built the portal, shop created it, reinforced it, and now we've we've actually got that ramp all the way into hitting ore now. So an update since that video is that we've now hit that ore body, and the next stages from there will be, just going through that and building the ventilation system. But they're they're ahead of schedule on that. And and how next stages will look is that the processing facility, it's fabricated, it's delivered to site.

11:42 But we'll begin slotting that into the steel structure and turning it on. And hope in the next few months, we should start getting product out the door, and then we'll begin ramping that up. And we should have a a pretty nice industrial manufacturing operation supplying Florspar to The US industry for the first time. So, that's the card. Next slide. So just a little bit about Florspar itself. It's a critical mineral, which means it's, vital to the economic security of The United States. It's actually, regarded as a critical mineral in quite a few countries, Canada included. And the reason why it's it's considered essential to the security of the countries is because it's so widely used in industrial and manufacturing processes. So steel, aluminum, hydrofluoric acid, fluorine, but also things like lithium ion batteries, electronics, nuclear enrichment. These are very, obviously, very important foundational industries to for any, advanced economy.

12:49 And fluorspar is currently the only nonmetallic critical mineral that's a 100% imported from abroad. And there's a bit of history to that too because The US actually did have a thriving and very decent floor spar industry. But when China was industrializing, they flooded the market with cheap produce, and that that largely undermined and destroyed The US market and industry. They got shipped over overseas. And so, obviously, now we're looking to bring that industry back and rebuild it and expand it and have that domestic source and get off foreign reliance. There are two grades, the principal grades used in industry, and these these do break down further, but in principle, you've got metallurgical grade, which is more widely used in steel, glass, cement industries, things like that. And then you've got the acid grade, which is really classified as any purity of calcium fluoride above 97%, and that's used in aluminum, hydrofluoric acid, fluorine, those sort of electronics, those sort of big industries there too.

13:53 But, again, there's been a huge amount of interest in the product that we're producing because it is domestic, because it is becoming increasingly difficult to source. And so we can begin fulfilling some of that demand. Karl, next slide. So the global force of our market has has become quite interesting because, as I said, The US industry was undermined principally by China industrializing a cheap product that flooded the market. But what's actually happened since then is as it's expanded, the reserves it had of that easy minable high grade product have been exhausted. So even China went from becoming a net exporter to a net import.

14:38 And in terms of things like meth metallurgical grade, you they struggle with that quite significantly. And

14:44 and the reason for that is that you can take very low grade floss bar and you can put it flotation systems and you can keep on processing until you get to that 97%. But to produce the metallurgical grade, you need to start with a relatively high grade already, and that's actually something we we have at our disposal. It's it's the grade that we have is is sort of unnaturally high. Natural grade we're getting out of ground in bulk samples is that 50%, and that gives us enormous access to the metallurgical market, particularly because it it can often happen where the the demand of that is so great that even though it's the less pure products, it can sometimes be retail for more than the acid spar product. So there's few countries producing this, and there's a massive demand that's growing.

15:31 And part of that demand is actually growing because of mandates like decarbonizing mandates. So you're looking at things like electric vehicles becoming increasingly pushed. Lithium ion batteries need floor spar in both the anode, the cathode, and the electrolyte. So that's driving a a huge amount of demand. But already, if you think in terms of refrigeration units, air conditioning units, another area where floor spa features in,

16:02 the the demand for those are growing quite quickly, as countries industrialize and people are looking for better quality of life. These units are obviously increasing, and so the demand on floor spars increasing at the same time when there are fewer countries producing this, especially in significant numbers. And that's really driving up the price, but also driving up the the the the actual floor spa market, which is in the billions of dollars now. So we'll start off as a small component within The US, that we'll try and grow out as much as we can, but the market is could take pretty much whatever we can produce. Carl? So there's some interesting aspects, think, that with regard to the company in in terms of where investors are actually getting involved with us now is that the junior mining market, which is what we're currently in and we're we're obviously looking to move out of that as soon as we can,

16:56 that that I think that's a very depressed market at the moment. And so you're probably noticing that if you are involved in junior mining stocks that a lot of the companies have actually been very much undermined and destroyed at the moment. But that's also given people an incredibly opportunistic way to get involved with very good product projects at a time when you can get them at bargain rates. And I would say for for some, they can go all the way to where we are, almost to production where things are very significantly derisked. So certainly where we are at the moment in a better market, things would really take off and you we expect that we'll see that sort of take off as we begin transitioning into that production, into that revenue, into that sort of manufacturing sector. But we already have got to the point where the ramp installations are in place, it's permitted, the plants have already been purchased.

17:48 It's already been backed by the state and by the government at the federal level.

17:54 And so we we have majorly derisked this project and we've taken it right up until the cusp of that of that production in a market that's growing, and there's been a been a lot of demand for the product. And already, sales and purchase agreements are being sent to the company. And while we think that initially we'll start with aiming to ramp up to 50,000 a year final product, what we expect actually is that once we can open up secondary and tertiary mine sites, we can start growing that output even more and begin catering towards the larger industry, especially once that flotation plant arrives online later this year. And we we will start producing the assets that that there's two thirds of The US market. So fluorine, hydrofluoric acid, electronics, aluminum, that that kind of thing.

18:45 But we have an enormously professional staff already in place that we've been ramping up. And, we are also very fortunate that we're in a very mining friendly jurisdiction. And a lot of the infrastructure that mines normally struggle with, roads to actually get there. We got a bit lucky and we're just next to the only brilliant mine in the entire country too whose government so the government has built a massive highway straight to our mines. So that reduces significantly a lot of the costs and the time involved of actually moving product between the mine site and and the processing sites. And even after the processing sites, we've got the rails built out so we can immediately start shipping it around the country. We've got a, obviously, a good relationship with Union Pacific, but also with materials brokers that can help move those things and use their resources to to move this product around the place. And, one of those partners, is, even, putting forward sale agreement to, in place with us at the moment where we're we're currently selling them samples to get customer buy off. That will qualify us for an even, bigger investment, then and we start producing product for them later this year. And the the facilities that we've got down there, they should be able to start pushing out that product quite imminently. So I don't wanna say when, but, obviously, we'll announce that as much as we can, and let everybody know as soon as we get that initial product out the door.

20:13 So, we are at the moment, we we are a publicly traded company that trades on the OTCQX in The US and the Canadian Securities Exchange in Canada. And we also trade in Germany on the Frankfurt Exchange. Germans are very big into industrial minerals and industry, and so it's we obviously receive a lot of interest in Europe, that's another way for people to be involved who are over there. We've I think as we were obviously ramping up our production, we were the share price is improving. We wanted to obviously just do a smaller financing to keep the mining engineers working and and get that RAP completed. And I think that's probably been responsible for the share price being somewhat stagnant since since that appreciation began. But the good part is, typically, the share price will begin to appreciate as soon as that round is closed again. And and that will coincide very nicely with, like, very being very close to getting that product out the door. And then what we can expect is a lot more market interest and, hopefully get that momentum back too. So

21:26 and the good the good part here as well is that I think we have much longer term ambitions to uplist in The States as well, especially once we hit that revenue and we start qualifying for bigger exchanges that will have that greater volume, to bring that big, to bring that greater institutional investment and then bring up that market cap. So it's a very exciting time to be involved in. Obviously, there's a lot of work, but we're we're in a very nice position now where a lot of the work has been done. It's been derisked, and now we can look towards long term growth and growing out the company. So got it. And just to touch on that alongside it, what we're planning here is as we shift towards going from junior mining company into a big manufacturing company, that'll be coordinated again with a big marketing push to raise investor awareness. And so far, we've done a a number of things like update the website, and we're trying to put out more social media to keep everybody updated.

22:30 And, databases where we can answer more questions as they come in from different areas, so the Facebooks, the Instagrams, the direct messaging, and the LinkedIn posts.

22:41 And we'll do we'll keep doing these investor meets too because we regularly make a lot of progress, and the good part is we it's always quite a positive thing to be able to announce what we're doing. And so we'll obviously keep up that drive and just keep everybody updated. But we wanna be as transparent as possible, and I think there's some real advantages to doing that. And part of the part of the marketing strategy will involve that communication as well. So this is just a very high level of the management team. I think it's an excellent team. People I would want to touch on as being fairly significant in this is that Bob Lee, one of our directors, they already run several floor spa mines in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia. So a lot of the expertise we managed to siphon off. We actually pinched directly from them, and we even were shipping several tons of product out to Thailand.

23:34 We were running it through mills so we could optimize design. Because it was quite interesting when we started wanting

23:40 to build out a a big commercial floor spar operation. There were no experts in floor spar that we could get hold of. And for for plant design and things like that, it was better to reach out to people who are actually manufacturing. And Bob, unfortunately, helped us design a lot of the plant equipment, the installation of it, how we process this thing, as well as actually bringing to us to us big customer bases and giving us an insight into the market prices and that sort of thing, which is really invaluable because they're already an existing seller. Paul Sargent, I think he's got about thirty years or something like that of of exploration, but he also has a lot of experience with scaling companies and building up and build and building competent producing ass

24:26 assets. And so he's been key instrument in in the development of the company, taking it from exploration through all of those initial stages of exploration all the way up to where we are now, is currently going into production. And but that exploration will likely continue. We've we've identified other mine sites that we wanna develop immediately after this one when we think we're we're revenue positive, and we're obviously putting in the permits for those two. And he's doing that as well in in in partnership with, Raul. I mentioned there was a deficiency with regard expertise in the, area of floor Raul fortunately worked at Europe's largest floor spar mine, the Minerva project, I think it was, the MINERSA project, in Spain. And so he brought a lot of that expertise straight over and a lot of the deposit types which are fairly unusual with our deposit in Utah, they were things where you had a bit more expertise and can actually hone a lot of what we were doing. So we were very fortunate actually to be able to assemble this team and put everyone together. So, Carl, is there any other slides after this one? Nope. As a thank you from from me, hopefully that was wasn't too long.

25:39 But, obviously, happy to answer any questions from those that have come in since. Yep. Thanks. So just to thank everybody for their questions so far. And if they want to continue,

25:52 even if we can't answer questions today, they will be responded to in short order. So please feel free to ask anything that you'd like. So just for many of us, we've we've been here with ARES from the beginning of the project, I think, so four, five years. What an exciting time to watch the mine going into production. How does that make you feel? Just to to be able to go from from where you were to where we are now, that must be must give you some really good feelings. Well, relief, I think, is a big one because, you know, I think everything was going so well in 2020, and then, obviously, COVID hit, then there were shipping delays. Then then think even things like the USDA financing and things like that, they they essentially shut down as an organization and a lot of our strategic planning, which looked very clever in 2020, didn't look so clever when we were just sitting around waiting for those financings to close so we could buy that industrial land, ship equipment there. So it'll be a big relief. It'll be obviously wonderful to see it's it's actually even now very nice to be able to be at site and walk down 600 feet of that big dugout exactly the the picture that's in front of me now, that that big dugout portal and see it all shot greased and put in there, and the big heavy mining equipment is delivered to site. So it now looks very real.

27:15 So even even that by itself is very nice to see. But, yeah, I think relief, but also there'll be a new a new wave of, I think, of enthusiasm as we begin to optimize the operation, the plants, try and build up that that production, bring on bring new mining sites onto development as well alongside the lost sheep area. So, yeah, that's I would say it's a very nice time to be involved with this project. Probably the nicest time of the whole last of the four years. Thanks, James. One of the questions we received is asking about Enyo and what are the plans for it to start trading? So with Enyo, what we wanted to do there is that we didn't want it to raise money in NU raise money for projects that's within ARES that would dilute the share structure for ARES STRATEGIC MINING. And so if we raise for things like the vanadium project as an example,

28:18 that would have obviously a negative effect. So we spun that out, obviously, to create Enyo with the intention of actually beginning the raises on that company originally. So the the trading of Enyo won't actually start until we begin operations there. Because we're trying to run a very tight ship with as few people as possible and and and keep expenditures right down because to reduce the risk to the ARES project, we haven't allocated any staff from ARES to work on the ENyo project yet. But once we begin to get into that revenue and we can scale up, we can begin allocating resources to so it can actually start operations. So it's kind of frustrating because we wanted to obviously do them concurrently, but it's still not very sensible. It is when ARES is obviously revenue producing, it becomes a big asset in INEO's corner. So existing ARES shareholders got that stock. That stock will become tradable as soon as INC goes into operation, which will coincide very nearly with the ramp up in production of of ARES once it's producing and it's beginning to optimize.

29:22 So we'll those stocks will become worth something as soon as we can allocate personnel appropriately. Thanks, James. One of the other questions here is that here you're going to be at the flooring convention in this October. I think it was on LinkedIn that you're gonna be a guest speaker. So maybe tell us a little bit about that that experience. Mhmm. Sure. So that's that's actually gonna be in Mongolia. Funnily enough, when I agreed to do that conference, thought it was by Zoom or by phone in, so I I agreed to that conference not realizing that I had to go to Mongolia. So I'm off to Mongolia in October, but we'll be doing some keynote speaking addresses to the larger industry, but it's essentially a collection of experts and industry professionals involved in this area.

30:12 It's it's fairly specialist, and they hold it every single year. There's a there's obviously enormous interest in ARES this summit this time around because it will be the only mine of its kind in The US. And it is it's quite rare that some of these projects come online. Even I think recently SEPflora down in South Africa, they were a big one that came online, but still a significant amount of time ago. And I think projects in Canada are now receiving a substantial amount of investments to to obviously kick things off there. But this is kind of a unique situation. So obviously, we're gonna go there and talk a lot about what we're doing here and advertise the company. And, obviously, if if I can record anything and and upload it, I will. I think that'll probably be the intention of the marketing department. But, yeah, it it it should be a very good way to get the company's name out there, talk about it, but also bring in a lot of industry professionals and big players in the floor spa market too that might be interested in The US expansion as well. We'll see how it pans out.

31:20 Thanks. I'm thinking about near production. With real waste spur, is it all in order or is more to be done to get that real start? So, actually, we've done all the renovation on that work, and it's actually signed off by New Year Pacific. We we paid an external contractor to do all the work. So, actually, there's no reason why a railcar couldn't pull up the dam. We could just start putting things in there. What I what I would say is that we maybe we'll build sort of a bit more of a a tailored loading bay, but that's a that's a fairly simple week long project. The other aspect to it too is that some of the partners that we'll be working with will take ownership of that product once it's loaded onto that rail car. So when you get instances like this, sometimes you have to have personnel from that brokerage house or customer actually located in Delta to make sure it goes on-site, that it meets the assay requirements.

32:15 So there could be an office that they want to set up there at the site. We have enough land for them to do it there. But, essentially, we it's it is renovated. It is done. It could be loading today. So that aspect to it is is completed. Then any additional work that needs to be done is is largely superficial. So And then sticking with that, as far as development, a question about flotation plant. Has that arrived yet? What kind of where are we in the the the flotation? So it's not arrived yet, but the actually, some of the major components that have finished the fabrication, what we're doing now is that we're gonna get everything done, the steel, in one go, so we can ship it all in in in one go. Now the the tariffs on some of these things have changed quite a bit. So there was a bit of a an estimation about whether we manufacture the steel in Asia or we manufacture it here and ship it. But I think we've we've solidified those decisions now, but we wanna package up that steel and the plant altogether and ship it in one. Most of the plant is now fabricated, it's being boxed, ready to ship in ISO containers.

33:22 And we'll we'll obviously bundle that all off, we'll arrive on on one go. It's gonna be pretty significant. There's quite a lot of equipment that's gonna be there. And we're gonna be looking at fifteen, sixteen containers of just just equipment that's gonna then be assembled. But the the good part is that the construction crew that laid all that concrete that's putting up that steel that's slotting in the lumps plant equipment can just directly move over to the flotation plant and then start on that initial work to lay the foundations for those devices there. So not arrived on-site, but it's imminent. So we we expect to I expect to actually try and get those that plant on-site by late q three. Fantastic.

34:08 A while back, the company made a announcement about find of rare earths. How has that progressed? So that's quite interesting because that generated an enormous amount of interest from the national labs that have a mandate to explore developing domestic supplies of these these rare earths. And they actually took some of our samples from site, and they ran their own tests and confirmed that the the one that the the mineral they were specifically after, gallium, was obviously exhibited there and exhibited in interesting enough areas. So the the national lab that I'm working with now with in in partnership with ARES, they're waiting for some funding opportunities to come through from the Department of Energy to develop, looking at reprocessing some waste product that would contain that gallium.

34:57 And then Siphonop, it could be a potential secondary line of income for the company too. But that also it also garnered a lot of interest from research universities or research institutions that also want to be involved. So there's a number of universities that are also looking at partnerships with us to develop those other critical minerals. And these are the reason why there's particular interest in these things is that they have they have applications within electronics and microchips. And to have that domestic supply is obviously very important, and there's money coming out for that. So that could be a very significant area of interest in the future. What I would say is that it actually led to some very interesting conversations where those those groups and institutions put us in touch with professionals that were actually looking at DOD involvement in the critical critical mineral supply chain too. And so some discussions have actually begun around those two, and and ARES will actually be submitting some grant applications, to develop, that domestic supply chain alongside that DOE DOD funding opportunities that are currently being released for for the for these type of projects, these critical mineral, rare earth sort of projects that are coming out at the moment. So it's a it's a big cons I think it's a big domestic concern. And especially for, organizations like the DoD, they wanna have that domestic supply chain in in place to ensure

36:30 the viability of their own their own operations. So it it could it could transpire that we we directly benefit from those initiatives. But that's something that also came out that was very positive out of that national lab exploration of our gallium that we we found within our ore. Thanks, James. Can you say how many companies are interested in purchasing our ore? And are there any orders there already? And to add to that as well, what are the current market prices for ore? So there's been a number of companies that have directly reached out to us. So some I don't mind announcing, but because they've been publicly released like Cramer, Royal's Contour that visited the site. They they are they they are principally interested initially in metallurgical grade for the steel industry. They could they could easily take as much as we can possibly produce because the demand is obviously that high. If you think a ton of steel uses 20 pounds of floor spar and The US produces 80,000,000 tons a year, it gives you an idea that, like, how how much is just that one industry requires of this product.

37:39 And currently, they have to source that from abroad. There's been some big chemical manufacturers as well. Obviously, I think if I if I named them, everyone would know who they were. But they're making some visits to sites soon to to do some preliminary investigations of what we're actually doing down there. Now they could they they're obviously their principal interest would be that AcidSpa product. And it could it they could be, again, another joint partner that could come in. They would be looking to obviously manufacture things like hydrofluoric acid, but they would be doing that at their facility. Again, that's a huge market. That would easily eat up everything we can produce. But as we open up those secondary tertiary mine sites, we can begin to cater to more of the wider industry.

38:26 So while I can't name anything because it's a public company and I it has to be publicly released, significant interest from US domestic industry, particularly steel and chemical so far. But it'd be interesting as well to see even the even the electric battery manufacturers, if they want if they do want to derisk a lot of the supply chain, a lot of these rare earth minerals, these floor spar will have to come from the board for them, they may really just want to have that domestic supply and come and and get involved and and buy it from us directly. So some conversations like that have actually started, but we'll see how they they progress as we as we begin to build up that operation, begin to build up that production.

39:13 I'm thinking a little bit ahead to the future. Are there still plans in place to expand to Illinois and Kentucky? And if so, what stage are we at with that? So they're they're actually Illinois and Kentucky used to be the largest producing area of The United States. And when I mentioned earlier about The US industry being essentially wrecked by that cheap Chinese product that flooded the market, that actually doesn't exist anymore. But that those were the principal areas that were hit, and so that industry shut down in those areas. But it only shut down because of cheap product that flooded the market that doesn't exist anymore. So bringing those things back online is something we're uniquely positioned to do because we now have the expertise. We've already we've already been involved in Florspar. We know how to manufacture these plants, where to get them from. And a lot of the personnel we got involved in the company already, we can directly bring them over into these operations.

40:07 So 100%. And I've already I've already spoken to some of the mining teams about this, that I want to I want to identify the e the low hanging future fruits on these targets in Kentucky, Illinois, that area. And once ARES is comfortably operating in Utah, expand over there and begin building these things out because that is potentially, even larger, operation than Utah could be, especially given its history. And, obviously, we'll flesh that out and confirm all of that, but, it's very if we can bring that whole industry back online there, then maybe The US could go for a net importer and net exporter too because the rest of the world is obviously dying for this stuff. We can begin producing a lot of this.

40:53 I think it it could even have it in an inflationary reducing effect because take for instance steel as an example. Like, the cost of steel is almost tripled, I think, in a few years, but that's mostly component responsibility because of component increases in costs. You start bringing down those costs, they can have a trickle down effect to cheaper steel and things like that. So there's all sorts of national benefits that could come transpire us just building back that domestic industry, things that should have never really been shipped overseas or or or destroyed in the first place, but it's you know, time can hopefully correct these things and and bring these things back online. No. Yeah. During the video, you mentioned a gap in funding.

41:39 What potential risks could come from from not raising enough capital? So what what I would say is now that we've obviously that ramp installation is pretty much completed now, but that got us into the first bit of ore. What we would want to do is we just need to install the ventilation system within that ramp system. Once that's done, we can actually then start on an industrial scale removing that product. So that's a big aim that we want to do. We the current financing has gone a long way. It's actually got that ramp to actually hit that ore body. Now it just needs to push through, build that ventilation system, and that's it. Now we've got product, and now it's ready for the plant. So, obviously, the funding, the funding that we've done so far, and for everybody that's actually been involved in that, you've been terrific because that's that's completed that ramp installation and got us there. The the the additional bit of funding we need is just to get that ventilation system in, get that product to the processing site, complete that that plant. Actually, the plant does not need a huge amount of investment now, but it's that small funding gap. And, actually, the the good part is that because there is a forward sale here, even once we start with that low level of production from that initial ore, we qualify for that couple million dollars, that can complete everything else. And then we've we've we were in production. We're self sustaining. We're revenue generating.

43:04 So that's what we're look that's why we opened up this financing just to make sure that we had the resources because the worst scenario would be we're on the cusp. We've got all the heavy equipment. We've got all the plants and the industrial estates and the mines hit or and we and we we just had to ramp down to a point where we couldn't just do that last 3% of what we need to do to to get that thing into production. So that that's what the the raise was about. And thinking about that raise and the life offering, is that close to the closing? And then in additional to that for US investors that are interested in getting involved, is there an opportunity for them? Because, you know, the life isn't available to Canadians. No. Actually, I it we've had we've had Americans invest in that life offering already, so it's it's it's open. You would just do it directly through the company if you don't wanna do it through a brokerage house, but I would just encourage you to reach out to us directly.

44:00 We'll we'll do it. We'll arrange the sub agreements and all that kind of thing. But it does close at the at the end of this month, I think, sometime around about twenty something of July. So we've got a few weeks left on it, three weeks left on it, something like that, before we have to begin starting to close it. So it's it's still open, but it's and and we've got a a margin to bring enough people in. The good part is we we're so close now that even if it's just a little bit, that just gets us into that few samples, qualify for that forward sale, then that derisks the rest of the rest of the operation. Perfect. And there's been a few questions as well about, Nuclear Nano and your relationship with them and how you see that that relationship could benefit ARES in the future.

44:49 And also question about how you would manage your time between Nuclear Nano and and ARES. Okay. Well, the the most significant thing there is that as we build this company up, the best thing about that connection is that it gives us an access to connections that we never would have ordinarily had. Because, for instance, like, if we wanna take the company onto Nasdaq, and I do I do wanna uplift ARES too, we now have the bankers, the connections, the NASDAQ connections that can do that kind of thing, the people who can get that sort of thing done and and do it, do it properly and do it efficiently and do it cheap inexpensively. Now those are sort of things that we would never ordinarily as a junior mining market not have had access to. But the people who can realize those things, now have that firepower because of those connections to bring in and and push this out.

45:39 The other thing I'd say as well is that it's it's opened up, once we're actually revenue generating, much greater access to institutional investment because, that's a very well connected company with very high level people, that ARES can directly benefit from. So it's it's it should actually be in the long run, enormously advantageous. And with regards to spending my time, I mean, I just work all the time anyway. Like, it's there's been no actual conflicts at all. To be honest, I I think I'm not comparing myself to these people, but if you look at anyone like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or anyone like that, the people who actually everyone's heard of, I mean, they they run five, six, seven, eight companies, they they do it all. The the most important thing is to have the right team because even with the mining I'm a mining engineer by background, but I defer to experts.

46:37 And the geology, defer to I defer to experts. Processing, I defer to experts. And when you're working in a in a team, it's the people who micromanage that have no time. You can you can operate, obviously, operate very effectively if you have the right people in place. It's nice to sorry. That leads nice to another question that we have that talks about the correlation we have with other industries and how the US government has been so involved recently in developing nuclear applications. That leads to another question, which I think you can you can tie together because we run that time, about the correlation between another, emerging market in The US, which is AI technology. So maybe you could comment a little bit on those industries and and the correlations that we have with them. So there's there might be a three pronged approach here because the the tech industry to manufacture electronics and microchips and all those kind of things, they need high grade floor spots to be able to manufacture those just at a base level.

47:38 And they're expanding incredibly quickly mostly because of AI. And the AI the the thing is with AI is that even if you think about a human brain, is you if you add a neuron to a human brain, it's not just making it a neuron more complicated. It's all the connections that every existing neuron has to make. And AI works in a very similar kind of way. So the power requirement becomes quite exponential with AI, and they're they're already estimating some crazy figures with regard power that they'll need to power these installations, but that that also has a a knock on effect of where they're gonna get this power from. So, obviously, FluorSpar is a big component of uranium mix of fluoride, which is used in uranium enrichment, and the AI tech centers are actually looking at nuclear now as being able to having to power their installations because they need a power source that can power their their installations wherever they wanna put them.

48:33 And nuclear is kind of unique in that way. That's one aspect to it. But the other is Florspar will actually be necessary for the manufacture of microchips and electronics that they need to build out these things. So there's a big push in this area. It's one, gonna need a lot of chips. Two, it's gonna need a lot of energy. And, obviously, we're gonna be big beneficiaries of that kind of thing, on both fronts. Terrific. Like, some of the some of the power requirements they're they're actually putting out there look insane. But for the power that they wanna output in terms of the sophistication of their software, it's it's either necessary or they stagnate forever. So I I and I don't see them stagnating. So we'll obviously benefit from that big drive in that sector too.

49:21 And then, James, this will be our last question. So thinking about it being an election year in The US and how tightly, ARES is is linked to the, government, How do you see this election year going for the company? Do you think it there'll be a big difference in in business plans? And then also, what are you doing for the July 4? Working. Exactly. Yes. Work all the time. I work I work every day. I barely see my own kids. So so with regard to the election, to be honest, when when I was involved in the mining industry from that 2016 to 2020 period, it was actually a really wonderful time to be involved in the mining industry because a lot of regulations were stripped stripped out and actually to to make big advances.

50:12 At the time, the the regulatory framework was sort of refitted to make commercial projects a lot more viable. I don't know if say there say Trump wins and we shift over to a new administration. If he if he brings back those kinds of initiatives, that's terrific. But the thing is though that even if even if it stays a democrat government into the next elect after the next election, there's a lot of critical mineral funds that we already directly develop from. So whatever happens with the administration, it actually doesn't matter. The US needs certain domestic supply chains itself, and there's the funding exists for those things. So whether we go back to that easier deployment of commercial, entities that we saw back in 2016, 2020, or the the funding of, critical minerals and the building back of supply chains that the current administration is obviously investing in, We win both ways. So I don't wanna say it doesn't matter to us.

51:17 But, like, it doesn't it it either way it goes, we benefit from whatever initiatives both the governments are doing it because there's it's bipartisan building up the states and building up those that domestic industry. So we'll see what happens in November, December, whatever it is. But, like, it should be an interesting election year, but I'm not gonna if you're asking me if I should call, well, who's gonna win, I'm I'm not gonna go that far. No. Thanks, James. So that that kinda wraps things up. So anybody who didn't get their question answered will be responded to shortly. Alright. Terrific. And look, from my point of view, everyone, thanks very much for jumping on. I quite like doing these things. They're they're always very positive, and it's very nice to be able to relay good news, especially as we get closer and closer and closer.

52:08 So, yep, send out any questions anytime, and I'll keep everyone updated with progress, especially as we we we start completing those final steps. Okay, Mark. I think that's back to you just to Okay. Oh, we got a countdown. So yeah. Here we go. But, yeah, thanks, for jumping on, and, yeah, reach out anytime. Happy to