From Vision to Reality: Power Nickels Nisk Project Feasibility Program

0:08 Hello everyone and welcome to the PowerNickel Live Summit hosted by 6. I'm pleased to introduce the speakers for today, Terry Lynch, the CEO, and Duncan Roy, the VP IR. Terry and Duncan will discuss today's press release, provide some company updates, and after that we'll be accepting questions. As a reminder, you can submit your questions in the chat at any point during the presentation. As always, this summit is being recorded and it will be available to watch on six.com.

0:32 Without further ado, I'd like to hand things over to you guys to get started. Well, everyone, it's a big day. Happy day here for us at Power Nickel and for all of our shareholders as well. So Duncan and I are pretty psyched about the announcement. I think it's, you know, it sort of comes a little bit out of the blue. I mean, we did tell people what the next money in would be strategic, and this is it. It's actually, you know, the first part of ultimately will be over a 7.5 million dollar investment. And it will lead to ultimately having a feasibility study, you know, prepared at NISC. And there's several reasons why that's important. I mean, generally speaking, mining projects, you know, started some an idea about, you know, what might be in the ground.

1:25 And, you know, some geologists, some geophysicists comes up with some concept of why minerals are there, and they present maps, like you see that are on the screen and they say, hey, we think those little red things down there might have some prizes, and so you drill it. And that's the first step. So you gotta ultimately have an ore body and then if the ore body is really good like ours is. So that slide there is an example just to refresh people's memories. Over the last 2 years, I guess, we've been drilling on our project and had a number of really great results, and we call it the River of Nickel. And this is sort of this one square kilometre section that lays that out.

2:17 And what was interesting for CVMR is they're looking for nickel, class 1 nickel that they in turn can ultimately process through their procedures into finished nickel products. And what these guys do that's really interesting from our perspective, they make pretty much some of the top technical nickel products in the world, arguably. I mean, they Basically, the super collider up in Sudbury has several nickel tubes, and they're $10 million per tube, and they're made with 5 nines of purity, and these guys made them, CVMR. The US $100 bill is printed on a nickel plated, you know, money press, I guess.

3:12 And the nickel plating was done by CVMR. So obviously their technology is top tier and that technology gets superior pricing. You know, one of the things we had put in the press release, that's sort of, you know, that was in our press release and over on the left hand pie is sort of what traditional nickel miners get when they produce a nickel concentrate. You get that pie. And on the far right, This is the pie that you're able to get when you're able to process the nickel into powders and anodes and wires and the various things that CVMars refining process can do.

4:00 So that is obviously a significantly bigger pie. I mean, we're talking almost triple. So if you think about it from just a general business perspective,

4:14 to make maximum profit, there's several things that are directly correlated to maximum profit. So higher pricing and greater margins is definitely one of them. And this is what happens in this process, is you get higher pricing and greater margins. So that's going to mean for every ton of ore, we're gonna get a lot more revenue and that is gonna be super profitable for us. And obviously the more profitable it potentially is, then obviously it excites people to bankroll the investment to build a mine because maybe you're going to be able to pay it off in 6 months or a year versus 2 or 3 years like it for an ordinary mine.

5:00 So that's what's really exciting about this, is that that's world leader in this space, one of the world leaders certainly, with the collection of names that they have, the US Department of Defense, US Department of Energy, US Department of the Treasury, pretty much all the general dynamics and the defense contractors and, and obviously the battery guys. So, I mean, they have a, you know, super high-end clientele and they're, and they're telling us that they can't really make enough of their product, that they just need more supply to make it. So what they need as a supply is they need class 1 nickel, ideally in North America. So certainly, you know, from what they're looking around, ours was certainly a supply source that had not yet been locked up by others.

6:01 And even though we've made this deal with CVMR and they will be, you know, they're, they're we're doing the feasibility and we think it will lead to a long-term partnership with them. We still maintain our free agency. That was an important principle for us as a, as a, you know as a small miner. And they understood that we said, guys, look, we want to you know, work with you and help me hopefully have a long-term relationship and build this mine and have you operate it and have our shareholders get these very healthy dividends going forward, but we need to be able to, if there's some, as we move this along in order to keep everyone honest and make maximum value for our shareholders, maintaining our free agency was a must. So there's no off-ticket agreement here that's still to be had in the future by possibly other partners.

6:50 There's still a, you know, at the end of the day, CVMR probably will have 5 to 8 percent, you know, through this agreement and that'll be very healthy for them. And, you know, what most importantly they'll have is direct knowledge about how valuable the ore body is and what they can do with it. And I think what we're seeing on the screen is their economics are gonna be better economics than what we could expect to get from traditional nickel smelters. So that's why it's attractive to us. It's just better business. And this is why we were able to come together and why we sort of, you know, went the extra mile working with these guys. We just found them to be straight up, you know, very frank and honest about how they approach business. They have, you know, a number of joint ventures worldwide, 18.

7:38 And they have that because they're good at what they do. And they're obviously good at what they do, and they do it in a fair way such that people are joint venturing with them all over the place because this is a practical approach to doing good business. So, I mean, at the end of the day, we as operators of a public mining company, we're stewards of shareholder value. Really we're trying to do is find the best way for our share price to appreciate so all of our shareholders can benefit through their ownership in the corporation. And we think today's move with CVMR is the best move we've made so far with, I guess the best move was buying NISQ and developing it because the ore body is fantastic.

8:26 But, you know, you know, then in order to create further value, to make sure that we get to the finish line and get the maximum bang for our buck, we need to be able to show a pathway to commercialization and ultimately at some point, possibly even commercialize the process, which we could never do as a small nano cap miner. We just don't have the skillset. We can certainly find the ore. I think we're very good at that. I think we'll show that we're fully capable of doing a great job of exploring this deposit and verifying how big it can be. But obviously, you know, making it into finished products, that's a whole different league. And there's only a very few players that actually know what they're doing there. That's the biggest guys in the business. The, you know, the Glencore's and the BHPs and the Valets, the Wailus, et cetera, you know, the Vincennes and so forth, you know, also CVMR.

9:20 So, so, so the fact that we're able to, you know, start a really great relationship with one of them that will help us, you know, prove that this thing is feasible to develop and, and, and will be, we believe, super economic to do so. It's going to advance the project in leaps and bounds in over a short period of time. I mean, they'll be able to do this over the next 9 months. And we think that'll really give the investment community a lot to think about in terms of how far NISC has come. And that'll allow us to keep on exploring. And as Cameron, who's the CEO, Cameron Cozen of CBRM said, he said, really, there's 2 things that will make the value of this mine. One is, you know, how big is your deposit?

10:10 And the second is how profitable is your deposit? So, the profitable side of the deposit is what we're doing now. That's the feasibility study of actually figuring out, we take a standard ton of our ore and we process that, there's several different ways to process it. And this process will actually, in the feasibility to look at all 3 of them, the hydro metallurgy smelting and the chemical metal vapor process. And basically, they'll each output certain type of product and a certain type of product that has a certain revenue stream. So at the end, there'll be a cost base for how much it costs to build each of those and a revenue stream, and then you net present value them, and then you figure out which is the best.

10:58 So It's interesting to note that when we looked at, you know, we were doing our due diligence on these things and looking at the Talon Metals, which is, we often refer to Talon, which has got a fine deposit in Tamarack, and it's called Tamarack, and it's in Michigan, Minnesota border. And Talamels has done a PEA, sort of a preliminary economic assessment. And they looked at those 3 processes, smelting, et cetera, and they found that ultimately the highest NPV, highest internal rate of return, was on the product side that produced powders and the things that we think the CVMR process will do for us. So that was pretty interesting to sort of see that that's what they got. And this is what we sort of think will happen here. And that's why it was such a great thing for us to be able to bring this forward today and to start the process to show the world how economic this thing can be. All at the same time as, Duncan I'm gonna get you to switch this over back to the maps again.

12:13 And I just wanna talk about the, what we're doing on the exploration side, because that's certainly what CVMR wants us to do. Like we've got enough ore probably to make a plant commercial day 1 right now, but what we think we can do is We think that our project area has certainly got a ton of upside in terms of where we can go from here. We've been working now with fleet technologies. They started about 3 or 4 weeks ago. We'll host another podcast probably later in August on the fleet technology and what's being done there.

13:01 So far, it's been pretty impressive stuff. Just go down to the map, the broader map. Yeah, keep on going. One more.

13:16 Yeah, right there. So this is our land package, right? And I think every one of you are sort of familiar that NISP Main, we've drilled a number of holes there, probably about, I guess, 18,000 metres or so since we took it over. We expect to update our 43-101, get that out in early Q4. We think that's going to show somewhere 8Mt north and 100,000t of Nickel and that'll be enough to be commercial. That's just this one pod. The way Nickel sulphide mines work around the world historically is that there are multiple pods. Every single one that we're aware of that's ever been produced was multiple pots. So there's highly likely this will be the same. And we've obviously proven that with some of our step outs. So, you know, the, go up one more slide.

14:17 No, 1, the other way, the other up. Yeah, the other up, okay. Good, good, yeah. So this is where we had stepped out 5 kilometers to the, I guess, the north and east And we hit this bonanza hole of almost 8 meters and 1 ounce palladium platinum, which is above our massive sulfides. So pretty indicative that, you know, there's this whole area is charged. And and there's likely to be, you know, we believe a lot of very valuable metals there, both Nickel and PGMs, that we can produce within our plant complex.

15:04 We're actively working now with Fleet and with other techniques to identify that. And, you know, I've seen, I saw the early stuff on Fleet last week, and it was pretty eye-opening really for us just to see the initial visualization of the main deposit at depth. It was quite interesting to see where we had hit and then where we missed a couple and what it looked like, where we missed and why we missed. And now we saw, so, wow, you know, we see, you know, clearly that, you know, the thing just dropped off. And then, but what was interesting is that just on the other side of the missus where it looks like another horizon of good stuff. So obviously that'll be stuff that we'll be testing, but I mean, it's really sort of powerful to be able to look at it with these technologies.

15:51 And I think that was what was impressive for CVMR when they decided to invest is that they thought that we were going to have things the right way and that this was ultimately going to be a much bigger project at the end of the day and that they could, by getting in early,

16:06 providing us leadership and guidance on how to possibly commercialize it, they could get a good opportunity to become our partner going forward and to create value together. And at the end of the day, all we wanted was great value for our shareholders. And, you know, do that with good people and good investors and good partners. You know, so I think, you know, we're we're off to, you know, pretty bang and start. And maybe now would be a good time to turn it over for questions from the from the audience and see where they'd like to go with with the questions. Max. All right. Thank you for that, Jerry. So the first question here is, is this the same process that Tesla plans to use with Talon?

16:53 Is this the same process? I missed the last part. Yeah, that Tesla plans to use with Talon. I couldn't really say. I don't know enough about the TALEN

17:09 process. They're at, they're still, they just finished the PEA, so they'll be going through, you know, they'll be going through their feasibility or pre-feasibility study now, and that's when you'd probably get into more of this. They certainly looked at 3 different types of processes, and one of them would have included this. So this was the one that looked to have the best economics was on the powders outputs and stuff like that. So that was what was in their PEA. So you can go over to the talent site and look at that. It's pretty evident that that's the case. And The 1 thing in common really is also fleet. So we're both using fleet.

17:53 These guys have had their first crack at it. And it's been significant in helping them find additional resources and do it more efficiently. And so the expectation is that we'll be having similar kind of success

18:14 and usage of funds to do our work. Awesome. And another question here, will they probably CDMR also be technical advisors for PMPN, so to say? Yeah, so I mean, basically, they're gonna obviously providing all the engineering and technical input we need to develop, you know, a series of studies that will lead ultimately to a feasibility study. And they have internal engineering resources. And at the end, we may also add in an external resource when we go to print it out, so to speak.

19:03 But they have the full capabilities in-house to do it front to back. Okay. And what's happening with the A&T ambient noise tomography? So the ambient noise tomography is what we, is basically a technology that's owned by Fleet Space Technologies. So when Duncan was talking about Fleet being used by Talon, that's how we found out about it, and then we're using it now. And so we've been using it, I guess it's been in operation for about 3 weeks or so. And we're obviously getting data back now. Basically, we've got about 100 geodes and they're spaced in almost 100 meter grids, each unit and then sort of like done in a checkerboard pattern.

19:54 And you basically, you know, send your sonar pulses down, comes back as a sound map and it's captured. And then it's correlated, pardon me, with the scientific data we have for that particular area. So obviously we started first over our core NIST main where we have all the drilling collars and azimuths and drill results, of course. And then we move further on up. And then as we move away from where we have known draw results, we have other technical results like downhole EM, airborne EM, IP, gravity, et cetera. So they can still correlate with that as well. So it's interesting to sort of see how it can all be sort of brought together. And then we'll take it all the way up to the very end of our project where we drove the 8 meters of the Bonanza Hole. So in fact, I think that's being done next week where the fleet will be looking at that. So that's the ambient noise tomography that was referenced in the question. So that's where things wrap with that.

21:00 Awesome, thanks. And can you talk a little bit more about CBMR's track record or background? Yeah, I mean, obviously, they're a private company. So, you know, they're building right now, there's a $2 billion facility in Emerald, Texas, is a rare earth metals processing facility that they're in discussions to build. And then

21:26 they bought the land and I think they're going through the process with the government down there. And then they're also doing another multi-billion dollar project in Burundi and the Congo. And they've got currently 18 plants operating around the world in the United States, in Canada, in Africa, in the Middle East, in Russia, and in China. So they're a global operation, and they make everything from the nanopowders for 3d printing and Batteries and stuff like that, but also for you know for for coins and for you know Treasury for the nickel plating of the dollar They make unique nickel objects that are highly technical, like the supercollider tubes. They make anodes. They make wires.

22:26 If you go to their website, their website is a private company website. They've got a very impressive client list there. Anyone can go in there and see everyone from General Electric to General Dynamic, the U.S. Treasury. It could go on U.S. Department of Defense and so forth, Barrick. They're just the who's who really. They're a substantial, profitable, big organization doing some big things. The principal behind it was, interestingly enough, I think he was born in, I believe, if he wasn't born in Saudi Arabia, he's of Saudi Arabian descent.

23:17 Ultimately, spent some time in, I think, Austria, and then was raised in England, came to Canada early on and got involved over here and worked in the government here for many years at a senior level and left. He was a chemist I guess by background or he had certainly some knowledge of this space through his work, and had seen this technology with Inco, and I think Inco initially was one of their shareholders back in the day and they started CVMR maybe 25 years ago or so and then they've had just an amazing run of it. They've kept it private and it's been a very good business for he and his sister who own it.

24:08 They've gone into one of the largest concerns in the world. Super practical, hardworking people that have done well. Obviously, if you go to the website, you'll see some of their accomplishments. You'll see that they're held in pretty high esteem everywhere they go, and because they're doing this cutting-edge work and doing it well. So, yeah, I think it's, when I was initially introduced to them, I thought I'd never heard of them before. And I thought, wow. And then when I went and saw all they had done, I thought, you know, it's so surprising that They haven't been front page news for some of the things they've done. But I guess when you're private, you don't really need the headlines. You just go out there and do your thing.

24:55 So that's the difference. But yeah, in terms of capabilities, Wow, very impressive. Yeah, it does sound very impressive. Thanks. Any visual indication on the August drilling or are you still evaluating where to drill? Yeah, no, we're actually drilling right now. So we'll put out the, you know, we, this, we thought, you know, everything is, I swear I'm going to write a book. And the title of the book is, it always takes more time. You know, We signed the contract with CMER on August 2nd.

25:35 Silly me, I thought this would be out shortly thereafter. There's always regulatory hoops to jump through and so forth. Here it is, almost 2 weeks later, we get it out. So we're a little bit behind in our press release schedule. So next thing out will be the, you know, that we'll advise people that we've been drilling and we're drilling now and We'll keep on drilling. So

26:04 that's happening. And then obviously, as we're drilling now, we're getting real-time feedback from the fleet. So we can see the first initial holes were designed before that because we had some unrealized

26:21 targets that we wanted to get to right off the hop. So that was our first start. But then going forward, our plan was to start to incorporate the technology from fleet into the drilling program, and we'll be doing that in real time. Awesome. Another question here. What happens at the end of the nine-month agreement with CVMR? So I mean, basically, first and foremost, what we expect to have happen is the feasibility study will be released out to the public, and it'll be, we hope, show that this is a highly economic project to build, that it will cost X and that the returns will be,

27:13 I would think, north of 50% IRRs and possibly much higher, and with significant MPVs. The MPV total will obviously depend upon the ultimate tonnage.

27:30 I've been on record of saying this will be 1 billion dollar deal before the end of the day and I'm not going to change that record. I believe that now more than possible. So I think that'll be one of the outputs of that. And then at the same time, you have to sort of make sure that the mine makes sense commercially. And then of course, in order for it to make sense commercially, you also have to go through a number of permitting steps. Excuse me 1 sec. Excuse me, I knew that sneeze was coming. My apologies. So, you know, at the same time, we'll start to, you know, work on the permitting side of things, you know, to, you know, go through the processes with the environmental steps, to work with our Aboriginal partners, the James Bay Cree, and to work through the community relationships and how we can make this a win for everyone.

28:28 And I mean, at the end of the day, what we want to do here is turn NISK into the world's first carbon neutral Nickel mine. We think it will produce some phenomenal products that are going to be much needed in our society. We think we can do it in a very cost competitive way, in a very environmentally friendly way, the most environmentally friendly nickel mine in the world. And that's our objective. That's what we wanted to do. So we think that working with C&E already helped us do that. And then at the end, once this is all sorted, once we get this output, there'll be obviously a certain amount of capital will be required to build this thing. And then it'll be, okay, who will be the partners to build this? Well, obviously we're gonna own the ore body so that we're going to be 1. And then it's like, obviously, CVRR would be a very logical group to look at to possibly build the thing with and operate.

29:30 And so we'll look at that. I'm sure they'll look at their whole economic situation, see if that makes sense for them. And I mean, that's where the deal-making side comes in and that's where the free agency thing is, keeps everyone sort of honest and then keeps other people possibly at the table. And this is where other partners could possibly come in. Like there's obviously a number of offtake, you know, interested parties, whether it be, you know, battery manufacturers that are in our, you know, data room right now, or big auto manufacturers that are wanting to have access to the class 1 nickel for their cars. So they'll all be part of the mix. So these are things that will be developed. But in order for it to make sense for anybody, They all need to see that there is a logical, coherent, normal course process to build a plant and a refinery process here that makes good economic sense, that justifies the investment and can deliver the output of products that are needed and that we can make a significant return such that we can finance this, whether through equity or other types of investments.

30:44 So That output will happen in 9 months, and then we'll obviously be looking to advance it forward from there. Awesome, thanks for that, Terry. So that looks like all the questions that we have for today. So thank you both for taking us through the updates and Q&A session. Also want to thank everyone who's submitted questions. Feel free to also reach out to Terry directly and submit more questions that you may have. Today's recording will be available to watch on demand in the coming days, so feel free to look out for that. And before we wrap up, I'd like to pass things back over to you 2 for any closing remarks you'd like to make. I'll let you guys take the first shot. Well, I'm just curious what the title of your book is going to be. You know, we look at this project and we're pretty excited about it, but when someone else comes in from outside and comes to the same conclusion, I mean, that's a pretty strong message and it's with these guys, with their level of expertise and reputation.

31:49 It's certainly the good housekeeping seal of approval. I suggest to people that the real issue here with this NIST project is time. And what this deal does is really quickens up the amount of time it's going to take to get to fruition here. And that's a big deal. Like mining stories can last a decade before you get from A to Z. And in this case, we're going to change the timeframe significantly here and that translates into money at the end of the day. So that I think is incredibly important. Yeah, I think Doug hit it on the head. I mean, that's what was really impressive for us. I remember talking to Cameron, the CEO of CVMR and the principal, and I said, well, because this is my 1st nickel deal, I said, don't we need to go through, you know, you know, PEA and then pre-fees?

32:52 And he says, well, you can if you want, you know, it just, it's super expensive and it ultimately ends up with a lot more dilution for your, your shareholders. But he said, I think you really got enough to be a mine here. And so you can cut to the chase and do the feasibility study now and save your shareholders a lot of dilution and get this thing out the back end a lot quicker. And I was like, I never really thought of it like that, because that's typically not how it's been done in this space. But at this point in time, with the green revolution and the urgent need for class 1 nickel, I think DHB put out a commentary just a couple of weeks ago where they basically said, I think by 2030, they need 4 times the amount of nickel that's being currently produced. Well, A, there's no chance in hell we'll ever get there because you just can't find it and produce it that quickly, but it just goes to show you just what's needed. So if we really want to make an impact and sort of provide jobs for our citizens in the battery metal space, they're going to need class 1 nickel and obviously lots of copper and graphite as well and cobalt. But we can certainly provide some of that now.

34:05 And this is an accelerator to get there and get there quickly. So that's good news for us and hopefully good news for our shareholders in the longer term. And hopefully people will start to realize that as we get out there and now take the story out to the, you know, the funds and the, you know, the family offices and the, you know, the shareholders we currently got and just explain to them what this means and why it should be a really big win for us. Awesome. Thank you both and thank you everyone for participating and I hope you