Critical Minerals & Clean Tech: A Route Forward for the West

0:09 Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us here today on a panel on critical minerals, green technology, and the West's attempt to master these things in the decades moving forward from here. I am your host, Matthew Mickleboro. I run a podcast called the Junior Resource Investing Podcast. You can find me on YouTube under that name and the upcoming website, juniorresourceinvesting.com. I'm pleased to have with me today a few different guests here, some of which I've spoken with before. Some of this is my first time. I'm going to I will forego the conversation or the introductions here briefly, but I just I'm going to start off with just a little bit of an introduction just to help kind of square our conversation here or frame it for us. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously wrote in the 1990s about that era marking the end of history.

0:57 The Berlin Wall had fallen, the USSR was no more, The ideological battles that had so plagued the world for generations were now over and liberal democracies and free market globalization would reign triumphant as the natural endpoint for society. Obviously from our vantage point 30 years on Fukuyama's thesis is at the very least deeply flawed. Land War in continental Europe, an ascendant and assertive China looking to erode American hegemony, the retrenchment of ideological and economic divides and halving of the world into camps based on these political and economic differences. Here in 2023, we once more bear the curse of living in interesting times. In the span of barely a year, we have been forced to call into question and recalibrate assumptions about the global order we had taken for granted for decades.

1:45 The offshoring by the West of so much of its economy, ranging from call centres to factories to mines, which for so long had been economically advantageous and served to knit together different regions of the world into a single economic engine, suddenly seemed short-sighted and fatally flawed. And why is that? Geopolitics. Collectively, China and Russia dominate the natural resource sector. Of the 31 minerals designated as critical by the Canadian government, China and Russia are the top producers of over half of them. And the West, sensing its dominance might be being challenged, has no choice but to respond. At the same time as all of this dramatic reorganization of the world order, we have the emerging green energy movement and the incredible demands it will place on our collective ability to mine what needs to be mined, and build what needs to be built on time to meet climate targets.

2:35 In a world where 85% of energy to this day remains sourced from fossil fuels, dramatic revolutionary engagement with metal extraction needs to begin immediately to hit these targets. Data suggests, for example, that more copper will need to be mined over the next 20 years and has been mined in all of human history if we wish to hit our green energy goals. The problem and the solution that lies before us is immense in scope and scale. So this is where our conversation begins today, at the nexus of these separate issues, the necessity of green energy, the need for massive resource development, and the freeing of our global economy. With that out of the way, now it is my pleasure to introduce our panel. We've got Brandon McDonald for Fiery Metals, who was working out of primarily in Yukon.

3:21 Brendan Uric from Electric Royalties. We have Julian Traeger, who is from Kotech, which is a kind of a technological disruptor. And we have Richard, oh, shoot, Richard, where's my notes here? You have Richard, what's your last name? Richard? I apologize. Richard Williams. Williams. Apologies, Richard. There's my first my first flaw. Richard Williams, Bunker Hill Mining, and they have a project in Idaho. Gentlemen, thanks for coming here. I appreciate you taking your time to be here today. Thank you. So why don't we just jump right into it? You know, there's going to be a few different categories here, a few different topics of conversation. First one, obviously, seems globalization, right? As you can tell from my framing that I think that globalization and our relationship with it is a big part of this conversation today.

4:10 Let's start with Julian and move to Richard. Julian and Richard, are rumors of the death of globalization like I just framed it, is it greatly exaggerated? Is it real? Is it overstated, understated? And then maybe what factors do you think are particularly important that maybe I didn't focus on?

4:24 Julian first. Sure, Matt, I think that globalization is dying and we're going to be breaking into global trading blocks. Not that, you know, it's every nation for itself. And so I think definitely the West will have, you know, a trading area and we'll all play to our individual strengths to make ourselves collectively stronger. But the death of globalization is great news paradoxically for the minerals sector because globalization was a very efficient system And now we're going to have all these individual blocks competing, having to have stockpiles, and that's going to create a one-off increased demand in these critical minerals. So it is a big change, but it's not necessarily for the worst.

5:20 And Richard? Yes, I mean, Julian paints a very interesting picture of trading blocks, Western, Eastern, across the world, which certainly geopolitics today indicates is the trend and it's a fair assessment by Julian that that is where things could go.

5:43 Geopolitics tends to sort of lead economics at times where there is a security dimension. And we all know that the security dimension over the last few years has been characterized by firstly a pandemic, a medical shock. If you extend the definition of security being the health of your population, it clearly is categorized as such. And more recently, as you said, the continental war in Europe or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now, do I think that it's going to move quickly into these trading blocks

6:22 and not move through a period of transition that could be reversed again? I'm more inclined to that view. In other words, what we're seeing is that policy makers and businesses, investors following on behind, are looking at the outcome that Julian says and saying quite clearly, we need to secure, we're keeping it in the metals business, metal supply chains that are independent of our competitor. And China has been doing this for some time, of course. However, there are some economic and structural realities that will take some time for these blocks to sort of separate. One of which, and just keeping it in the metal side, is the fact that the majority of mineral refining, say in copper, but we can look at other metals as well, happens with the other side of the Western trading block. In other words, in China or in India or elsewhere.

7:23 And so when we look at actually how quickly these things will materialize, I regional blocks producing metal that can feed downstream industries, which include the power industries. It's not something that will happen over 2 or 3 years and will require some significant adjustments to policy crafted in the 1960s and 70s, related to ensuring the benefits of globalization for downstream manufacturers and consumers are available for all. So I'd say that the picture, and again not disagreeing with Julian, that Julian paints as a possible course of action on a go forward is a legitimate one. But I'd say that the time taken to get there could be very long. And there is also a chance that all of this disruption creates a think again moment and the benefits of globalization

8:20 win over the geopolitics. But again, it's hard to predict. It is an absolutely monumental task. This on-shoring or the return of our economies of scale and the return of economies to the north, to the west or the global north. Massive, massive undertaking for us here. I think both of you kind of articulated that. I guess maybe the question for Brandon and Brendan then here is that what needs to change, right? So, I mean, we're all situated in North America here, right?

8:50 You gents are Canadian like I am. What needs to change? I mean, even from a Canadian perspective, politically, economically, in terms of policy, in terms of culture, what needs to change for the West to actually begin the work, right? Not to achieve greater parity, but to actually begin in earnest the work of achieving parity with China. And is that even feasible in a short term or a medium term sort of timeframe? Yeah, I guess I can kick off. I think we're 2 decades behind, really. China produces around 60% of graphite, 60% of tin. A few years ago, they were producing 99% of the manganese for the battery and EV space. They dominate the rare earths processing, lithium processing.

9:35 So from that side of things, they've already established a position. They've been going around the world for the last 20 years, investing in different countries, joint venturing different projects for rare earths and these critical metals. So they're much far advanced in terms of time and planning that out. I always think about the Canadian policy and you think of the Green New Deal they had in the States, in Europe, and there's trillions of dollars being committed to this transition to clean energy. And I think of the hundreds of gigafactories and plants that are up in our construction, and I think they kind of got it a little bit backwards, because your average construction time on a plant would be maybe 3, 4 years, where your average development timeline for a mine can be 15 years. And that's kind of on average, and I'd say if you're lucky.

10:27 And so I think what you really need to see is some of that money going into exploration,

10:32 and being funneled a little bit more smartly. But there's very little cash that's actually gone into expiration. That's going to help at least kickstart your 15, 10 to 15 year development projects to meet your kind of really long-term need. But even the development projects, quite frankly, the projects that'll be that, you know, those that'll meet demand in the next 5, 10 years, very little of that capital is flown down to them.

10:58 And so I think that's really the key thing. I think that, you know, all this money that's earmarked for the transition, a lot more of it really needs to be earmarked for that fundamental kind of exploration development of these projects or we're going to be in big trouble. Yeah, and I think that there are areas, you know, we talk about we want to compete with China, there are areas that we can't compete. So they think, you know, in a economy that has direction from the top, and where SOEs are integrated, there's a holistic view that a mine or mines can produce at a loss domestically because they're supporting local, you know, the rest of the value chain in that particular metal or industry.

11:45 Given our mines in the West are not integrated with manufacturers for the most part, we need to seek a profit. And so when you're competing with minds that operate a loss happily, that is very difficult. Right?

12:03 And we also know that in China they do not, you know, they don't always pay attention to the state of the environment, you know, we look at the processing of rare earths, etc., that has left a mess in more than a few places in China. We can't do that in the West, right? So we have to make money, we have to mine it right, which already puts us, you know, sort of at a disadvantage versus China. And then you go abroad, particularly in developing economies. Although our mining industry in Canada has a lot to own up to in terms of our history and even current day, how we operate. A lot of Chinese mining companies in terms of bribery and malfeasance and environmental concerns,

12:52 take a look at the Canadian mine industry and kind of say, hold my beer and watch this.

12:57 They're operating on a different level than we are. So how do we compete? I think we have to be better miners, we have to be better explorers, better miners. I think the profit imperative in the West leads to better optimization, leads to greater technology introduction. I think we're just better at it. Right. And I think we can be better partners outside our own countries. So I think that's how we have to compete. And then in terms, ultimately, the other thing we have to do is get out of our own way. Right. You know, you talked to Brandon was referring to, you know, exploration and development assets. Well, I think we have a bigger problem with development assets that get stalled. We have significant exploration success. We have these massive resources sitting in the West, and then they go nowhere. Right. So I think it's it's it is absolutely fair for permitting processes to be rigorous.

13:47 It is absolutely fair for legitimate objections to be heard and upheld. But we have to get out of our way because we have permitting processes that are onerous and without accomplishing anything.

14:00 And we have we entertain objections, which are often fantasy, right? So I think it's understand where we can compete, and then get out of our own way. Yeah, to Brandon's point, permitting is, you know, definitely something that you see in North America, North American development projects, that really is holding up supply and significant. These are projects that you can't really replicate. You might only have a few of them in your country and they've been stuck in permanent process for 10, 15 years. And the fact is, to Brandon's point, we're going to do this better, safer, more environmentally friendly than anybody else is going to on the planet. So from that security standpoint as well, I think that's something that's going to be hopefully changing as we move forward here.

14:46 But definitely the permitting process is a tough one for those developers out there. I can't help but ask a follow-up question.

14:55 And feel free to jump in here. What would you want to see changed? So for me as an outside of the industry, not as permitting as an actual, you know, I just know it takes a long time and it's kind of boring to read about, right? But like what needs to change from your perspective as individuals actually on the ground in the game, you know, what would you like to see changed? Well, first of all, by the way, Japan is part of the West for this discussion. And also one of the major problems in the West, particularly in Canada, is that. The stock market isn't operating efficiently to provide capital to the development players in a way that it should. So I think we need much more, in fact, government intervention, subsidization and more private equity involvement. If we're going to compete with the Chinese behemoth.

15:45 But the government needs to make the licensing process much easier for brownfield sites.

15:52 It needs to make the objection process much less able to hold things up. Basically they need to streamline the way in which things get approved. Yeah, I- If I was jumping in on that to double in, I think Brandon make a very good point. In terms of structural competition, you know, it's very hard because China has freedoms that we deny ourselves. We can't go all the way where China can go. We wouldn't want to. But what has been discussed here is about permitting.

16:30 And I want to touch on what Julian said too, is in access to and cost of capital. A Chinese developer can get hold of 0 cost of capital to develop something and run into the loss, as Brandon outlines. We wouldn't as a model envisage that, except where some particular metal was absolutely essential for something from a geostrategic perspective, unlikely to be something that's common across the industry. But I do think that actually at this particular moment, when we look at how are we going to meet this new demand that's emerging, which in itself is, as we said, on a global sense, is truncated, it's cut, it's regionalized.

17:08 One of the interesting areas to investigate is what is the capital markets going to do to adjust to this? Mining has had for, you know, a decade or more now underinvestment across

17:21 the industry and in most metals. That's been a logical, arguable decision based by the allocators of capital because they've shown greater returns and safer returns elsewhere. How are we going to bring them back into mining? Well, increased demand and promise of higher prices and higher margin is one important part of that. But I'm just going to double down on Julian's point. When 1 seeks and speaks to governments here in Canada or in America or elsewhere as to what they've got to do. One of the greatest impediments I find in the discussion is that most people I speak to look at mining as though it's a manufacturing process. You can just throw capital, you can get it up and done,

18:02 a factory up and running, employ people, and it moves. Mining isn't like that. It takes a lot longer. And I think a lot of what we've got to do as an industry, I'm not talking about the 5 of us on the call here, is be in a position to educate those policymakers that are seeking to help mining, but make them understand precisely what mining is. It's not a manufacturing process. There's exploration, there's risk, there's time,

18:29 and so on and so forth. And how they can intelligently help the markets to bring capital to bear is going to be the biggest things that will relieve the constraints that we find ourselves under. Permitting is a fair one, but access and cost of capital is another. Well, and you know, the average investor for a junior mining company has basically the opposite mentality of a Chinese SOE, right? Which is that they want as much risk as possible because they want, you know, outsized returns and they don't want to be anywhere near production. Right. So so you imagine an asset that a junior mining investor in Canada would look at and say, like, this is boring. I don't want to wait. And I have to wait 5 years for production. I have to spend 500 million bucks when I get there. And you look at a Chinese SOE would look at it and say, this is be risked. I only have to wait 5 years and spend 500 million bucks

19:25 and I'm in production. Like this is easy. Right? So that's, this is disconnect, right? And how do we, we're obviously not going to get retail speculators into the bottom of the Lassonde curve. They're just, they're not. So, so how do we, how do we flatten that chart? Because as long as that part of the Lassonde curve is that, you know, orphan period, project stall, you know, We had advocated

19:51 that for critical mineral projects, flow-through be eligible for all expenses, basically until construction financing. Because it's perverse, quite honestly, that the exact point you lose most of your investors, your cost of capital also goes up because you lose flow through. Right? Like this is this is like it's no wonder there's so many projects in Canada that are wonderful projects that are sitting stalled out. Right. So I think that we have to, yeah, we have to improve access to capital and we need government to, you know, I don't know how they intervene. I'm not clear on that. I think the flow through would make a big difference. I think incentives would make a big difference. But we need to not rely on speculative retail capital to build assets because it doesn't work.

20:37 True, I mean, again, debt finance is interesting too from a government perspective as well. And it is, I mean, you know, I look at the country I used to live in, the UK, I mean, they've denied themselves the creation of a sovereign wealth fund from the North Sea oil for reasons that are well known. They had to sort of pay their running costs. In contrast, you've got Scandinavian countries that have been able to do that, and they can redeploy some of that capital into strategic industries, but done on a commercial basis, not done to deliver 0 or negative returns, but positive returns. And so there are things like that from a structural capital provision perspective that would be interesting. I mean, I would, you know,

21:20 I watch it, we all do in the United States, the rhetoric associated with, we do need to develop independent supply chains that are robust and aren't subject to geo-strategic pressure. Well, what money are they actually going to be putting into this? And this is the United States. What partnerships can they create with respect to sources of capital to deliver this? Again, these are things that I don't have an answer to, but it is going to be something that we're going to watch quite carefully, clearly as an industry, because when that starts happening and you can gain access to capital in ways that Brandon said is denied to us now, things can really get moving. I think that's going to happen. I think for the clean energy metals, specifically, you're going to have to have those car manufacturers, battery manufacturers, start to move down. And I think you're starting to see that, especially with these offtake agreements.

22:16 But I think you'll continue to see them stepping up to participate in the space because they're gonna be the ones that recognize most

22:26 the issue that they're gonna have with supply. They've already built these plants, they're gonna need these metals. It's gonna be an interesting change, I think, as we move forward. And that's a very valid point around manufacturers moving, moving, moving into the business as well. I wanted to circle back here. This is a couple of minutes back, though, Brandon, you mentioned SOEs. And this is a question that I had on my list to ask you, gentlemen. Why don't we start with Brandon, and I'll ask Julian to step in here. So if our listeners or viewers remember a few months ago, the Canadian government squashed a couple of lithium deals between some lithium explorers in South America, Canadian rather, lithium explorers in North America, who had made deals with Chinese state-owned enterprises. And I guess I just want, you know, this is, I guess, to me, this is the reality of de-globalization, right? When you start to ask, like, what does it look like?

23:16 What are the things that we see or don't see happening if we're talking about de-globalization?

23:20 That's one of them, right? Is that government intervention to kind of maintain

23:24 what everyone has called an ordered or orderly economy. So I guess, I mean, Julian, do you think that that was an appropriate step? Is that, is that, is it a necessary evil? Is it something you support? Is it something that you wish didn't happen? I mean, where do you feel or what are your thoughts on that? I think it is always just heartening when the visible hand stops working properly. But I do think that, you know, 5 years into the economic war, and it's going to be a war of decades. And I think Australia, Canada, the US, you know, parts of South America, needs to circle the wagon. And that's just beginning.

24:09 But it's no good just blocking things. I think what they have to do is step up and say, OK, we're going to do this. We're going to fund it. We're going to still get the products that the world needs, they're going to be part of the supply chain. And the EU is going to do that. I mean, they have already raised one of the resources of the world, it's all needs funded by the EU government, which is one of the first states to put in a mining project.

24:35 And I'm sure there have been numbers since then, since the 1915 Act, in small capital strategic purposes. So I think that it's an appropriate behavior. You know, it's interesting. What surprised me most about that move by the Canadian government was that at least one of the companies didn't even have assets in Canada. Their assets were in South America, right? So this is a question of your Canadian company with an asset in Argentina, is it the Canadian government's business that a Chinese SOE owns part of you, right? And I guess the corollary of that is if you're a Canadian-listed and domiciled company with critical mineral projects abroad, should you be seeking a continuance out of the country? Should you be redomiciling your company somewhere else so you don't get interference, right? Assets within Canada, that is fair if the Canadian government wants to block, you know, Chinese SOE ownership, and I don't think I disagree with that. But, you know, the ultimate effect of this is like, let's take Fireweed, for example. I think it's pretty clear that the Canadian government would not permit a Chinese SOE to own us. That's not going to happen. So given that, the ultimate has the knock-on effect of increasing my cost of capital now, because the potential acquirer with the biggest checkbook and lowest cost of

26:06 capital has now been disqualified. So that means that there's 1 less candidate and 1 less bidder and a, you know, please a bidding war for the company. You know, like it's 1 less bidder and the biggest bidder gone, right? So that means that the Western zinc companies know that they're going to have an easier time buying us. Like I said, it all filters down to now, my cost of capital is higher. So this effort to encourage domestic critical mineral production, the first step of basically declaring these things strategic and blocking certain foreign ownership actually discourages development, right? So I think this is how we have to reconcile that the strategy is half-baked.

26:53 Yeah, what's the plan, right? At the end of the day, we're all cash-starved. We're saying there's a lack of capital for the sector. Canadian government comes in and says, hey, we're not going to let you use the capital. Right. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. The lithium industry, they're also the primary end users, right? They dominate that refining. So especially for the lithium industry, they're very key players around the world. So it's, it's, yeah, what's the plan? You know, it seems very political. It's like a lot of the government plans around, you know, trying to actually build a sustainable, critical metals economy. What tends, again, as we all observe, what tends to happen is when there's a security crisis, the security apparatchiks, those who study and are required to apply security solutions at a geopolitical or a national level tend to dominate the debate.

27:48 And so the first response is, how do we secure something? And the consequences of the actions they take on the downstream economy and the systems are often discounted during those early discussions. So what I suspect has happened, will be happening now, is as a result of the Canadian government actions the other day, which seemed fair, is that there's now going to be, I hesitate to call it damage limitation, but there's gonna be some reflection on actually what they've got to do now to compensate for the negative effects of those actions elsewhere. And this, of course, is an opportunity for the industry to engage with them and saying, OK, we understand. And Brandon's point was a brilliant one with respect to the cost of capital and the potential returns for investors in fireweed given that.

28:37 What can be done to encourage investors to get involved in Canadian projects when the potential buyers of those projects have been reduced by 50 percent? It's a good question and the governments to my earlier point aren't necessarily likely to think in terms of mining industry or even commercial perspectives when they're investigating those options. So it adds another complication to our already complicated license to operate relationships. The answer gets messy in a hurry, doesn't it? I don't I don't mean to quash engaging conversation, your gentleman, but just the interest of making sure we kind of move along here. I'm going to switch gears now to more of the green energy revolution. I've got a couple of questions under this category here. This one will be for Richard and Brendan.

29:25 Consensus thinking can be dangerous, right? That's one of those things where if I, you know, I'm talking to a whole bunch of other investors and everybody agrees, I started to get nervous, right? Because it probably means we're wrong, right? Oftentimes in the market, right, if everyone agrees it means they're wrong. It is often the contrarian who does a better job of identifying patterns in the market to successfully exploit. So for the topic of conversation today, and maybe this is a trying to think of things kind of going against the tide here. What are the reasons we have this consensus approach that there's gonna be a bull market for metals and resources coming in the coming years or decades? What are some potential reasons, whether it's technology or recycling or stretch timelines, you tell me, what are some of the reasons why that bull metal market won't happen or why its impact might be more muted than maybe we're anticipating or hoping for?

30:12 Sure. So I can kick that off. I think for me, I kind of look at it from a fundamental perspective. These metals, they form deposits. They take millions of years to do that. Then we have to basically find them. Where are they on the planet? That's expensive. It's costly. It takes a lot of time. Then we have to build them up. There's no way to rush that. So when you think about these deposits, there's only so many of them on the planet. And when we look around and you say there's an average 15-year development timeline, you can actually kind of get a sense in terms of which projects might actually make it into production over that timeframe. Obviously, we have a lot of potential demands that are out there, but even if demand is off by a magnitude, multiple of where we expect it to be, I see shortages really across the board for all 9 of the clean energy metals that we target.

31:04 And I think it's really acute when you look at, our focus is really buying royalties on those deposits in Europe, North America and Australia that could be domestic sources of supply. And when you look at it from that perspective, we've got a royalty on a manganese district in North America. It's really the only manganese district in North America being developed for the EV space. 1 deposit, right? You know, we look at, we have a tin royalty in the U.S. It's the best tin project in the US, but it's probably 7 to 10 years from production. But that's the most advanced and nearest term tin deposit they have. They haven't produced tin there since the 1980s. And so I think It's really just a rare on the supply side. We just don't have enough supply. There hasn't been enough money going in. So there's not enough projects that have been developed to kind of fit that timeline. I think it's gonna be very interesting. I think, you know, at the end of the day, we're gonna need all of the metals, you know, for all the different technologies that we're coming up with and are going to, to really kind of get to where we're going. So I think it's going to be an exciting time for pricing. You know, Lithium prices right now, we're heavy Lithium. Lithium prices have been jumped up pretty much 10 times over the last couple of years. And I think that's going to happen, you know, kind of sequentially to each of these other metals.

32:21 I think tin's a great one. You know, copper, you mentioned copper. We're going to need more copper in the next 20 years than we have mined out to date. And that scares me because, you know, we've been looking everywhere on this planet, scouring the planet for copper already for 100 years. And we've mined out all the best deposits. We're not finding many more. And so even a metal like copper we've been looking at for a long time, I can see serious supply issues really across the board. So even if demand is, you know, even 0.1 of where we expect it to be, I think metal prices are going to have a strong environment here. Matt, I suppose in the spirit of the question, I think Brendan's given a very good exposition of why the bull market is likely.

33:11 And again, I agree with him on that. I think in the spirit of the question is, you know, what is the counter arguments to it? I think the counter arguments can be more found in terms of the timing of it and the extremity of it. And obviously, it varies from metal to metal and place to place. But if we just look at a couple of counter arguments, 1 is as we go into 2023, I mean, we've all read the 15 reports from the 15 banks giving us different views of what's going to happen to the global economy over the next 12 months. We're not entirely sure what the impact of the current shocks to the global economy are going to be. Of course, that can suppress demand and it can suppress access to capital for a period of time, but it'll just be pushing that bull market to the right in a general sense.

33:56 The second thing that is clearly the case is that, you know, we can all remember 5, 6 years ago, or maybe even more recently, the idea of a power transformation and move away from fossil fuels wasn't mainstream. It's very much mainstream now. However, look at what the impact has been on supply chains, courtesy of the Ukrainian war. It's been a move back to some fossil fuel power sources in order to keep the economy going. But again, I don't think that's a sort of fundamental correction that will stick. It's just pushing the bull market to the right. And then the other good point that Brendan make is related to, everyone's made actually, is related to the time taken to adjust the supply. You know, there has been underinvestment in the mining industry for a very long period of time And gaining access to money, from my perspective, certainly Random's recently have been very successful, is very hard.

34:55 And it'll continue to be hard, I think, for a long period of time. So we should end up in this position whereby demand outstrips supply, thereby creating the bull market conditions compounded by this geo-strategic division that will start emerging or not, as the case may be. So I have to say, although you're fishing for a counter consensual view here, I think really it's gonna be more a question of time and extent, when not if, scale not not, and not a negative than anything else. But again, again, I suppose we're in the mining industry. We would say that, wouldn't we?

35:40 But that's certainly how it appears to me. Well, and Richard, you know, you talk about we're in the mining industry. If I could. We're in our own echo chamber here. There's consensus within industry, but there's clearly not consensus in the market that mining is a good place to invest because our valuations are in the toilet. So If this is what consensus looks like, that mining is a good place to be, God help us. Right. There's no hope. I would add to that, that even within the mining sector, we're a royalty company, 90% of our peers are precious metals focused only. And so I think, you know, when you look at just gold versus the clean energy metal space, and that'll be, you know, very interesting, I think, you know, see how that evolves, you can move forward. But you know, the gold sector is still soaking up most of the capital that goes to the mining sector.

36:31 You know, So yeah, I think when you say, are we in the consensus, to Brandon's point, I feel like I'm the contrarian here, not the other way around. A fair point. Julian, you want to step in there? Sorry. Yeah, I mean, I could pop up just from the Co-Tech spectrum. And if you think about the COVID exercise we've just been through and human ingenuity and how the vaccines, which may still be harming us, were created so quickly. In fact, I'm seeing a lot of commodities, technologies which could modulate that demand supply equation. So obviously we've seen recycling and reprocessing But there are lots of technologies now which are providing enhancement technologies which make we have one for fertilizers.

37:24 I've seen some for coal. There are a number in cement which allow the existing commodities to be used much more. And then there's obviously substitution, which can come and ultimately, I think we'll see a bit more of transmutation. So I've seen also technologies which can change the fundamental properties of some commodities. They can transform aluminum into copper and create the properties of copper. So I think there will be some things coming from left field driven by technology which will address the shortages if they are really acute. Although I continue to be a bull on the sector thematics as a whole.

38:12 Well, and I think that, you know, we talk about substitution, We talk about EVs being some sort of solution to climate change. They're not, right? Like if governments were serious about addressing climate change, all the incentives for EVs would be pouring into transit and rail, you know, like rail and buses and cycling infrastructure and stuff like that. Getting people off the road. So probably the biggest case against battery metal explosion is that the projection of vehicle purchases is simply wrong because people end up owning a lot fewer vehicles, right? Which is really what the target should be, but that's not good for car manufacturers and they don't like talking about that. And so they will continue to lobby against that, right? So that to my mind would be a potential knock against the bull case. I think, and just, you know, we're talking about electric vehicles. I think people always try and sum up battery metals and, you know, to 1 wave of demand, you know, and electric vehicles definitely a big part of that. But, you know, for Zinc, for Brandon, you know, energy storage, I think Zinc's going to play a main role in energy storage. I think it's one of those metals that's going to be a candidate to replace other metals to be a substitute because it's cheaper. It's out there. But there's energy storage, there's renewable energy.

39:31 Every time you build one of those big wind turbines, they need zinc to galvanize those big blades. It takes up a lot of zinc. And then you look on top of that, that we're already moving towards an electronic society where laptops, computers, all these things are now part of our everyday life. We have 5 or 6 screens at home, and these are all related around these new metals. Clean energy metals is kind of what I term it, but I think there's a whole bunch of different waves of demand, and so it's so diversified that I'm not too worried about any electric vehicles, for example, puttering out a little bit. I think there's enough robustness to the entire transition to clean energy and the need for these metals that they're all gonna be required in some way, in a shape or form.

40:18 Thank you, Brandon. I got to just say both Brandon and Brendan, actually, the fact that the power transformation is going to require a diversified source of metal is key. I mean, the electric vehicle and the current batteries that are used for it, and the metal that feed that, has caught everyone's attention right now. But I think I just want to double down on the point you both made, is that actually it's going to be far broader than that and for far longer. And I think Julian's point about the fact that there will be substitution, new technology and so on, hard to predict precisely where that will be. But I do think, and I would say, wouldn't I, and I'm trying to say the same, that the case for zinc in there is because the future power supply for the world is going to require diversified solutions that you're going to find a metal such as zinc that's been underinvested in will have a good good case in both the short, medium and long term.

41:15 Matt, I stole that a bit. No, it's perfect. No, I've been enjoying this. This is very good so far. This is a question that I'm going to circle back to again here. And just to say, maybe finishing a thought that I had on it, all 4 of you gentlemen have discussed the need for simultaneously more and less involved government or governance, right? That politics around mining and permitting need to change, it needs to be more proactive, but then also as Brandon kind of phrased it, get out of the way, right? I guess maybe this will be a question for Brandon and Richard, just because you are the CEO or chairman of 2 developers, right? Rather than technology, rather than Brendan and Julian here. What does it look like? What does a government that actually, Canadian government or American government, what does it actually look like?

42:05 Is there a queue or something you're waiting for, you 2 guys, where you see that from the feds and you're like, okay, it's game on. They are taking, this is what I, this is what I'm waiting for. This is them showing me that they're actually taking it as seriously as obviously people in the sector such as us think it needs to be taken that seriously. What's is there a cue for you about the government involvement? Where they finally kind of waking up? Well when it graduates from words to actions I think you know I think on a political level words are very easy. Getting action at the sort of machinery bureaucracy level of a government is a lot more difficult. Generally what I mean by get out of the way is, it actually doesn't mean less political involvement, It means more political involvement. It means that the political level keeps a very close eye on the permitting bodies, et cetera, and make sure that they're honoring timeframes, that they're not creating an excessively cumbersome process, that they're delivering on what they're supposed to do that they understand the urgency, right?

43:08 But you know, I think of what the US government's doing having handed a lot of the critical mineral initiative to the DoD. And I think that we've seen some investment out of there. I think that was a good move. And we know we understand the USI think everyone understands that the government department with the longest time frame and the ability to have the most resistant budget is the military. Right? So if you want something done that has to get done over multiple political cycles, and you needed to have a budget that is sacrosanct, you put it in the military, right? And that's what they've done. And I think that might actually be a successful initiative. And it's something I'm certainly been paying attention to. That's good.

43:55 With respect to governments and permitting and so on, the specifics of our development project are important. And it makes it a bit of an outlier, in that we're fully permitted, but we're coming from an environmental cleanup site. And so we are actually the beneficiaries of 40 years' worth of government cleanup and the permits in place. Our issue isn't that. What we have had to do, obviously, in building a mine in a place that's become tidy, is reassure all community stakeholders, including the government stakeholders, that we're going to be responsible. So we're further ahead. But there is 1 specific and we are in Idaho, which is very mining friendly, is that the management of say the water discharge, which is the critical thing in a closed mine, and there are other things, but we'll put that right at the top of the list, had been passed from a federal agency, the environmental protection agency, down to a local agency, the IDEQ.

44:50 And as with anything moving from a national to a local level, you get a feel for much more attendance, much more responsiveness when that happens. And I'm not doing it to be critical of the EPA, it's just a bureaucratic reality. And I think if that's how things move, as long as you get consistent across provinces or states or regions, that could be very helpful indeed. Local solutions to local problems in accordance with nationally configured laws would be a sort of bumper sticker way of looking at it. Yeah, the challenge I was going to say that You have the decision making too high up, there's too much machinery and it's too slow. You put the decision making too local, I think they become conflicted, right? So it's tough when your permitting body is actually local to the project, then that's literally in their backyard, right? So I think there's a balance to strike there.

45:53 Well, why don't we circle right back to Richard here. I'm gonna let you folks, one by one here, you're going to discuss your individual company and how it connects to green energy movement. Right. And so this is a little bit of a chance for you to kind of give us a bit of a sales pitch, if you wish. So, Brandon, Richard, both of you primarily Zinc. But I'm going to also I will let Brandon make the case for zinc and tungsten, then we'll head back to Richard. And Richard, lead and silver, if that's all right with you. And Brandon, do you want to kind of just take it away from there again? Yeah, actually, Brendan was was talking about zinc earlier, right? And the reality is nothing in terms of infrastructure, infrastructure for anything gets done without zinc, right? So So this is green energy infrastructure, but also bridges and all sorts of things. So there's just no modern society without zinc.

46:45 There's no middle class in the developing countries without a lot of zinc, right? So that's really the bold case for zinc is that it remains completely essential and that there is nothing that has even close to cost parity in terms of rust reduction than zinc galvanization, right? So I think that's, you know, pretty well understood. And the bold case for it really is that it's boring. Right. And the old zinc stinks rhyme is a good reminder that boring metals have the biggest sort of sine waves in terms of their markets, right? Because they get the most underinvestment, which means they get the biggest push at the top.

47:33 So I think that's, you know, Zinx got that going for it. You know, in terms of tungsten, it's a niche metal, you know, 85% of it comes from China and it's produced on a quota. That makes it difficult to compete with that, but it makes the political push for it to be the strongest, among the strongest, like right up there with rare earths and stuff like that, right? So we see an immense amount of political interest in that. But it's a metal, again, that there's no modern functioning society without it. There's no tool steel, no hardened steels. We're not manufacturing anything anywhere without tungsten. It's essential for electronics. It is essential in aerospace and defense. So very topical metal as well right now. And again, if we're going to onshore stuff, and if we're going to build, you know, national, you know, or at least the trade block, you know, resource stockpiles, then we got a lot of work to do in Tungsten.

48:32 That's definitely the exciting thing there. Richard? Thanks, Matt. Again, we produce, or will produce at the end of this year, concentrates that will deliver Zinc, Lead and Silver into the market. And it's a mine that ran for nearly 100 years before it was shut for environmental mismanagement issues that are 40 years ago. So what I'd say on the silver and lead side in terms of its green credentials. You know, silver is a wonderful metal because it sits in the nexus between industrial uses, which are primarily electronic, but also connect directly to solar power, the photovoltaic cells, but also to those who are interested in having precious metal exposure as either a store of value or in terms of particular jewelry manufacturing and other purposes.

49:28 But I'd say that the majority of silver is used when it's produced in that electronic green space, but it's not yet known really or marketed strongly as a green metal. In terms of its supply fundamentals, again, it benefits from the fact that it's precious And there's quite a lot, as Brendan's already spoken about this, quite a lot of people that chase precious metals exposure because you get the precious metal multiple on your valuation. And so as a result, quite a lot of investment has gone into exploration and development of silver businesses worldwide. So you don't typically get these great sort of demand versus supply shocks in silver, because silver supply tends to sort of meet demand as it goes along. However, it is a green metal.

50:16 And secondly, in a polymetallic mine such as ours, the more Silver that you produce, in other words, the more Silver within your Lead-Silver concentrate, the higher your margin. So as a Zinc business, which we are primarily, The ability to have a fantastic amount of silver upside is very good for our long term returns. On lead, which is almost what I always like to call it, the sort of forgotten battery metal. It obviously isn't to our grandparents and parents and maybe even ourselves, but to the junior consumer. But it's one of those marvellous metals that benefits from a huge amount of recycling. For those who are concerned about the long-term future of the planet, lead, where 70% of the lead consumed in the world comes from recycled sources, makes it exceedingly green. And as we know, when we get into our cars and anything else that needs to kickstart itself, lead is in there in the power system everywhere. But again, it tends to be the byproduct of other mines. So it's great that Brandon and I are sitting alongside here because zinc-lead silver tends to come as a package.

51:24 And when you're looking at each mine, you can assess its margin, not just on its zinc grade, but on its zinc equivalent grade, dependent upon those other metals that come with it. So I'd say that we do definitely may not have the sexy cachet of lithium and cobalt right now, but definitely have a long term demand and a place to play in the transformation of the energy system. Perfect. Thank you, Richard. Julian, I'm going to skip over to you here. Kotec is a very intriguing company, right? I mean, I'll let you clarify as we go here, but I mean, you're essentially an investment vehicle looking for disruptive green technology in the mining sector. You know, scream at me if I'm wrong with that description, but you know what?

52:10 Mining I find so interesting because it is, it's an industry of massive budgets, which makes it slow to change, right? Inertia behind a $3 billion budget means that people are sometimes reluctant to try new things, but the same token, that's exactly what makes them primed for disruption if there actually is a truly revolutionary way of going about things. So would you mind just from there, Julian, taking that as a launchpad to maybe discuss Kotech, what it is you do, and maybe a couple of technologies that maybe stand out to you as worthy of conversation today? Sure, with pleasure. I mean, our sector stands out in that it is one of the last that hasn't been disrupted by technology because of the economies of scale of the projects that have been historically required. And therefore there's a gap now for new entrants who harness technology to create asset rich businesses which are applying the technologies to marginal products or waste. And that's really where Kotech is heading. Ultimately we are identifying really revolutionary technologies and we're applying them to assets to enter into them very economically and bring them to scale. And our ambition is to build a mid-tier mining company using this approach.

53:30 And the technologies we're seeing are super interesting because they all use much less heat, much less water. They are much cheaper than historic technologies and they are modular and flexible. So historically the mining sector was built upon large scale to get the lowest cost of production. Today, I think we're ushering in an era of economies of flexibility, where you'll be able to do interesting things with smaller deposits using this modular way of processing. And so we found already you know we work with Tom Albanese and other people from Rio on the board. We found some really interesting technology so far technologies which can make green steel and reduce 1 percent of the world's carbon emissions Technologies which can enhance fertilizers by 8X and require much less fertilizers.

54:26 Another one which recycles magnets and can reuse the rare earths within magnets. And we're applying them to projects like we bought a big stake in a bankrupt iron ore facility in Minnesota which we are resuscitating using these technologies. And it's a fascinating area. I think there's a huge amount of money to be made out of it. We've already seen a technology called Jetty which does copper processing raise capital at a 2.5 billion dollar valuation which is larger than many existing operating copper businesses. And I think that the era of technological innovation in the commodity extraction space is just beginning.

55:13 It's like what Fintech was 20 years ago. And it's a fascinating area to be in where we can actually create enormous savings and be part of the green revolution, but also be very profitable. Excellent. Thank you. And then Brendan, I'll turn it over to you. Electric Royalties, a royalty company. Do you want to maybe discuss for us, what was the decision making process for you to choose battery space as your thematic? And then maybe discuss for us also the criteria that you approach selecting individual projects with? Yeah, so I think the first decision for us was really that we're going to be a royalty company. I think that's definitely a big part of it. It's a great business model. We're already diversified across 20 assets.

56:01 We're basically buying the rights to cash flow from these mines once they enter production. It costs us nothing moving forward. So no capital costs, no development costs. Our G&A is very low. We expect to be cash flow positive this year. And so there's a lot of big benefits to it. You know, we're diversified across ninth and Energy Metals as well. How do we choose this space? I mean, part of it, to be honest, was about the level of competition. You know, when you look at the royalty space, there's a lot of competition, a lot of big guys that have been in that space for a long time. And so you look at what they're paying on deals. And, you know, it's, I think, you know, on average, we're probably paying about 0.1, you know, what we've seen in the, in the precious metal space. So, you know, the other side for us, there was really the 2 decades of growth opportunity. You know, I think when you think about demand in the gold space, people use love, fear, hate. It was always a tough thing to wrap your head around.

56:53 Whereas when you're talking about cars, batteries, energy storage, renewable energy, there's a real ability to kind of match up demand with potential supply. So we like that as well. But really the 2 decades of opportunity. I mean, when you look at the clean energy metal space, the sector that basically didn't exist, you know, 5, 10 years ago, and you look at the sector that we're cannibalizing, which is really the oil and gas space over the next 20, 30 years. That space was traditionally about 5 times as big as the whole mining sector. So, this baby sector within mining that didn't exist becoming 5 times as big as mining over the next 20 years. That's an incredible growth profile. And we just see a lot of opportunity. You know, Brandon's point, a lot of the metals that the best opportunities are, are because they're boring or people don't know about them.

57:41 You know, which is weird in Zinc's case, because it's a very important metal. It's already a 12 million ton in your market. But for a lot of these metals, there's just very few people that are keeping track of them that have an understanding of the supply demand and it makes it easier for us to kind of exploit that opportunity. But we really see that as the opportunity, that supply demand and balance moving forward over the next kind of 20 years. Perfect. No, thank you, Brendan. Just a couple of questions left here. I'm just trying to be a little bit efficient here so I can leave time for some questions that I've got from the audience coming in here. But just 2 questions left. First one, Brendan Julian, Asking for advice for investors who are listening, right? Sometimes it can feel like David and Goliath, where you're just, John, in your living room, on your phone, researching, doing your due diligence, and you're going up against, you know, million dollar budgets, research budgets. You've got entire teams, in-house experts, geologists, right? And so sometimes it feels like you don't even know what you don't know, right? The Dunning-Kruger syndrome or whatever, right? Where you're stuck not even understanding the game well enough to know how much you're getting played at that game. So if I if I can ask kind of boil us down to a question for Brendan and Julian, you have people who are listening, they're buying this macro thesis, incoming bull market.

59:00 Do you have advice for them in terms of how they could, how can they capture gains? How can they actually take advantage of having a working thesis that we all kind of agree is coming? So just general general advice for them, I guess. Well, invest in a royalty company. I mean, Electric Royalty is basically a custom bill for that. You know, We offer exposure to the entire space, lower risk business model. Investors don't have to come in and take individual commodities, individual operating teams. They invest in us and they already are diversified across all the clean energy metals. That's one way to do it. But look, Mining is tough, right? You need a metallurgist sometimes, you need a geologist, you need an engineer. I mean, it takes a lot of specialized people to put a mine into production successfully. And so that's a lot of different fields of background. So for somebody coming in just kind of raw, it's a difficult task.

59:47 It's a testing and mining project. Even people that have been doing it for 10, 20 years, you know, will have trouble sometimes or miss things. And so, don't beat yourself up, I guess, but, you know, pursuing something where, like a royalty company, you know, is one way to kind of ease yourself into that space and get exposure. I mean, obviously, you also have the benefit of diversification with regards to technology. So I could also, you know, punt Kotech if you're interested in disruptive green things. But I actually think it's follow the money but follow the smart money. You know if you're investing in companies don't don't follow where people are promoting and offloading their stock.

1:00:33 Follow it when they're actually putting a lot of their own skin in the game and they really can identify that they believe and they're willing to take a risk and they know what's going on. Or alternatively, follow like really smart investors and the projects that they are picking. So I think use other people as a proxy but don't listen to the promotion. Just look where the dollars are actually going and who's paying for that money. Excellent. And then so second question here for Richard and Brandon then, and we were talking backstage beforehand and they've already got their pick here, we'll see what they say, But which metal or resource do you think the market is sleeping on the most in terms of future demand and supply disparity?

1:01:24 Yeah, I, you know, it's funny, the ones that the market's sleeping on are the ones that are the hardest to play. I mean, it's often right. So so niche byproduct stuff, very hard to play. And the market doesn't understand it. And there's, there's very little direct exploration and construction, you know, on the weird things like the, the indium and rhenium and gallium and germanium and stuff like that, like very difficult to play. Right. But I, you know, in terms of the bigger metals, I think in automobiles, this is like a counter zinc thesis. So, you know, like I think there's gonna be a lot of move to aluminum frames as well, which goes a little bit against zinc in terms of galvanization of frames. It is more expensive, but it is lighter in an era of hyper-focus on energy efficiency, whether that's fuel efficiency or battery efficiency, lighter frames are going to matter. And I think other light, strong metals like titanium could also be, you know, it's one that people perhaps are paying attention to.

1:02:28 And Richard? Well, I've just got to say Zinc really. Because Brandon didn't. But I think his point about, again, off the radar metals is a very good one. But the reason one would say Zinc, but it could apply to other metals too. It's all got to be related to, and you got to look on the supply side. Has there been significant investments in new production? When are they coming on relative to demand in the, we've spoken about a green energy driven demand, a bull market compounded by the geopolitical challenges. And then the next thing you've got to look at is valuations. And Brandon also touched on the fact that, courtesy of a number of other places for people to put their money, a lot of mining stock has been undervalued for a very significant period of time. And if we are moving into a bull situation and you have and you do have those specifics of being able to contribute to secure supply, then you should be to go to Julian's point, attracting the interest of the smart money, which makes it for both retail and other investors a very interesting place to be.

1:03:40 Thank you, gentlemen. I'm being told I don't have time for audience questions, but I'm going to ignore that. Sorry, Kevin, I just want to ask one here for you, gentlemen. I'll let anybody just jump in here. Just Michael Paris is asking, who is lobbying federal and provincial governments or state federal for you, Richard, I suppose, right? On behalf of the industry to educate them on development hurdles faced. It is critically important for Canadians to develop Canadian resources. So yeah, is there active lobbying efforts ongoing right now? Yeah, well, you have the PDAC, you have the Mining Association of Canada, you have AME BC out of BC. I was recently on the board of Yukon Chamber of Mines at a Yukon does it and I can tell you this is for the first time Fireweed is probably engaging lobbyists, right?

1:04:27 Which is probably a sign of the times So I think it's it's all of us You know I one of the benefits of being in Yukon is I have direct access to ministers and the premier. Most jurisdictions, you don't have that. And certainly I cannot just get Jonathan Wilkinson or Justin Trudeau on the phone as easy as I can, that they're Yukon counterparts. But there are associations doing it. And I think it's something that's incredibly, incredibly important. Yeah, my only comment to say is I think that there won't be a serious mining company leader that isn't involved in lobbying directly or indirectly the requirements into governments. And I think that the bodies that Brandon's outlined, of which there are many globally, all contribute to fusing those views in ways that hopefully influence policy makers.

1:05:25 And so there is a process out there that everybody's actively involved in. But as we know, with governments, there's a lag between requirements and execution, and there's complications related to the various government and electoral processes that they're involved with. And so we've got to be realistic about the, shall we say, flash to bang, the time taken to get these things done and the need to be sort of consistent about what we do. Perfect. Okay, I think that unless someone else here wants to jump in, I think I will mercifully call it here with respect to your time. We're just a couple of minutes past the hour here, so we're a little overdue. Brandon, Brendan, Julian, and Richard Williams, got your last name now, sorry, Richard. Right, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much for coming, guys. And yeah, thanks for everybody tuning in.

1:06:13 And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to these gentlemen. 4 very strong companies here today. Thanks for your time again and have a good day everybody.