Powering the Energy Revolution

0:12 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 3rd Battery metals panel hosted by 6. Today I'm joined by 3 leaders of leading mining and exploration companies in the battery metal spaces. And today I'm pleased to introduce you to Simon Clark, CEO and President of American Lithium, Claudia Turnquist, President, CEO and Director of Kodiak Copper, as well as Terry Lynch, CEO of Power Nickel. In today's panel, we'll be hearing about insights about the impacts that global acceleration away from fossil fuels has had on each of these leaders' companies as well as the commodities that they focus on. As a reminder,

0:44 you can submit questions using the Q&A panel found on the right hand side of your screen at any point during the presentation. And after we get through our discussion, we'll be opening up the floor to those questions. So to begin with though, I'd like to make sure that we're all a little bit introduced and so I'll be handing the floor over to each of the speakers in sequence so that they can introduce themselves and their companies. And to begin with, Simon, I'm going to hand things over to you and American Lithium. Thank you, Cam. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for attending. So American Lithium, we are a lithium developer focused on the Americas. On the front page there you can actually see the basin that our Nevada assets are in. You can see, very importantly from a US standpoint, No species or animals or grasses or any issues from that side. It's a very great part of Nevada to be actually building a Lithium project.

1:45 Moving forward, just very quickly, you can see the Nevada asset I showed is what we call TLC. It's a large mid-grade at surface deposit in Nevada. We also have Falchani, which is a large hard rock deposit in Peru. So combined, one of the world's largest combined lithium resources on an M&I basis. We also control the world's fifth largest undeveloped uranium deposit called Makassani, also in Peru. The Peruvian assets we picked up through a recent acquisition we made. We have a strong treasury and a very strong management team that has been taking the Falchani project in Peru through to battery grade in terms of production and a very strong PEA. And we're in the process of doing the same in Nevada.

2:40 So just quickly, we had a great year last year. I mean, obviously, a lot of that down to the strength of the sector. There's no doubt about that. But we also hit some major milestones. A critical 1 for us was acquiring Plateau Energy Metals, which brought us the Falchani and Makasani assets, but also, as I mentioned, a very strong technical team. And we've continued to just do good work on the ground in Nevada and Peru. We were ranked number 1 in mining on the TSX Venture 50 and we are currently drilling in Nevada and about to recommence drilling in Peru. I won't dwell on this so much. My background, I've been in this sector for 25 plus years. Most recently, I was CEO and founder of M2 Cobalt, which we sold to Gervois Mining in June of 2019.

3:34 I stayed with them for a year as part of that transition

3:39 and then joined American Lithium. Our chair is Andy Bowering. Dr. Stephan and Ted O'Connor came from the plateau side. They took Falciani through to battery grade and they were also the team that discovered Falciani, but also built the Makassani assets. We have a strong CFO in Philip Gibbs, 2 strong independents in Ben and Alex, and 2 very strong operators. Mike was the original founder of the company. He still runs our US operations. And Raul Solis in Peru runs a very good operation down there. We have a team of 18 on the ground. ESG, obviously a little bit of a buzzword today, but absolutely essential for a company like ours. You don't get anywhere in a place like Peru unless you have strong community relations. All of our drilling permits and everything we do is dependent on having community agreements in place.

4:35 We're very good community partners, we like to think. We help on the education side, we build roads, and we have strong support. Our camp is based in one of the communities and we use as much labor as we can as we move into drilling, etc. On the environmental side, Falchani, if you look at the PEA, it's all very much focused on hydropower and best of breed on the environmental side. And in Nevada, as we finalize our maiden PA there, we are using a consultant out of the UK called Minviro, who's doing a lifecycle analysis on our processing options to help us select not only the best option from an economic perspective, but also an environmental one. So just to summarize, world-class scalable assets in 2 great jurisdictions, lots of near-term milestones. We are coming out with our main PEA at TLC by the end of Q1.

5:32 We're also updating the PEAs at Falchani and Makassani, all with the goal to be moving Falchani into feasibility in the second half of 2022. Again, a strong team and both commodities were obviously focused on lithium, uranium. We will figure out the best way to maximize value from that asset for the benefit of the company and its shareholders as we move forward. And both commodities are obviously in a great stage of the cycle. So that's us. Thanks very much, Cam. Thanks a lot, Simon. And with that, we're going to hand things over to Claudia. Thank you, Cam. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for dialing in. My name is Claudia Tornquist. I'm the CEO of Kodiak Copper. Kodiak is an exploration company focused on copper porphyry projects in North America.

6:24 Before I talk about our work and projects, I'd like to say a couple of words about the team. First and foremost, Chris Taylor, who is the founder and chairman of Kodiak. Many of you will know Chris from our sister company, Great Bear, which he also founded. Great gold discovery success. Chris is a very creative, out-of-the-box thinking geologist. That's how he made Great Bear a success. And he's also a big part of Kodiak's success. He very much leads our technical work. Myself, my background is more the business side, financial commercial side. I worked for many years for Rio Tinto, also on some of their largest copper projects in roles like business evaluation, business development, M&A.

7:17 And last but not least, I'd like to highlight John Robbins, our advisor and shareholder, founder of the Discovery Group. Many of you will know John. He's a well-known mining entrepreneur with a fantastic track record. And John has put together the Discovery Group, of which Kodiak is part. Discovery is a loose alliance of companies working together, and it gives Kodiak a fantastic network of whether that's contacts, technical expertise, deal flow, and so on. So I feel very fortunate to be a member of a strong and credible group such as Discovery World Thailand. Now, on to our exploration projects, in particular our MPD project, where we made a discovery last year, which was a real game-changing event for the company.

8:12 You see here on the map where MPD is located. We are in southern British Columbia in a very established mining district between 2 large copper mines, Copper Mountain and Highland Valley, and all the infrastructure there, whether it's highways, the transmission line right over our property, workforce, services, everything. So it's really a fantastic area to work in, not just for keeping the exploration costs low, but also looking into a future. It will make a big difference in the eventual economics of this project to build a mine in an area that's in an established mining district rather than in a remote area. So, very fortunate where we are.

8:58 And as I mentioned, last year we made a discovery, which was a real transformative event for the company.

9:07 This cross section shows the hole that created the original excitement, the discovery hole. It's the hole number 4 in here. The highlight intercept was 535 meters of 0.77% copper equivalent. We saw a big jump in our share price. Tech resources became our largest shareholder. They invested $8 million. That, again, was very much appreciated by the market, which saw that as a big vote of confidence into the project. And

9:41 that discovery success and the subsequent fundraising of 12.7 million set us up for a very exciting year this year. We have a big drill program ongoing, will be by the end of the year, have drilled more than 20,000 meters and have very much expanded the Gates on Discovery.

10:06 On this map you see the start of this year and where we got to so far. On the left, I'd like to draw your attention to these red dotted lines. That's the strike length we had drilled last year with our discovery hole and a couple more. So when we started this year's work, we had high-grade mineralization over a strike of 125 meters. Since then, we've had 2 sets of results. We started drilling in March, had the first batch of results in July, more results in October, lots more to come. But with the results so far, We have extended the gate zone to over 950 meters, so almost a kilometer in length, down to 800 meters, across 350 meters, so we start seeing some real nice size.

11:01 And as I said, we have only part of the results back, actually less than 0.5. We have 15 holes of just under 40. We'll have the next set of results coming very soon in December. So looking forward to that. And then many more in Q1 in the new year.

11:20 So that's in very short terms where we got to with our MPD project. We have a big drill program planned against next year, so more drilling, more results. It will be a very news rich result rich year next year as well and we will continue to grow the gate zone and also other targets on the property.

11:43 And last but not least That's our capital structure. A couple of points to highlight. We're a tightly held company, 49 million shares outstanding, have a full treasury, 10 million dollars in the kitty at this time, so fully funded for this year and well into next, no pressure to finance. Tech is our largest shareholder with 8.5%, and management owns just under 10% of the company. So that's Kodiak in a very quick overview. Important to keep in mind, lots of catalysts coming this year and also next year. So hopefully it should be an exciting year for our investors and shareholders.

12:24 Thank you. Thanks so much for that, Claudia. And with that, we'll hand it off to our last speaker, Terry Lynch. Okay. Yeah, well, thank you for having us at 6X here and great to be on the panel with such good fellow panelists and impressed with both of their companies and what they've been able to do.

12:48 And, you know, happy to sort of tell you a little bit more about Power Nickel today. So we sort of have, I guess, branded ourselves as Canada's newest battery metal company. We've switched from a copper gold background because we were able to acquire a very special project. People that are listening here, you're probably trying to figure out, okay, how do I invest in battery metals and what's the best way to go? So I'll give you the basic pitch

13:18 on our side of things. We think there's a commodity bull market that's developed. It's developing, it still sort of hasn't peaked. We'll talk to you today about our NISQ project, which is our game changer project in James Bay Quebec. We think when you see what we've got, you'll be excited to see that it's got a very realistic probability to grow to be a mine. We think we're relatively changed from a comparables perspective, trading at a very cheap, you know, comparable relative to our comparable companies. And that's always a plus if you're getting in as an early investor. We rebranded as we used to be called Chilean Metals. We were focusing on copper gold. But with this acquisition, we've focused on basically developing this nickel project.

14:03 And we'll be spinning out, we won't spend a ton of time today, but we're spinning out our copper gold assets, which we also like, but that's time for another day.

14:13 Where are we? Well, we're Basically just south of James Bay and in an area where there's a number of, interestingly, of American lithium on, there's a number of great lithium mines being developed in the James Berry area. We're just down the road from the Damascus project that's being commissioned now. It's about 5 miles away or so, 5 kilometers away. And we acquired this property from Critical Elements, which has got a later stage,

14:40 they've got a final feasibility study and they're about to become, I think, Canada's next lithium mine. So they're about 20 clicks away. So a very accomplished mining area, lots of development going on, lots of infrastructure, good relationship with the Cree, who is very supportive to mining. It's interesting in our project that we were able to acquire this, effectively 3 million tons of 2% nickel EQ. That's a very high grade

15:08 project. It's historical, so I have to comment that it's historical, but I mean, there's no reason for us to believe that that won't be proven up in this next round of drilling. And it's interesting that we're focusing, if you look at the map on the left, we're focusing on the NISC main target in this round of drilling, and there's 3 other targets and these nickel sulfate deposits tend to come in pods. So we're focusing on 1 pod just to sort of reaffirm the historical resource and to expand it, and then we'll test the other parts. So this is sort of what it looks like on the geology side. I wouldn't get into it in detail because if you're not a geologist, it probably won't make a ton of sense. But The point would be we're doing some very low-risk development drilling in the States. We're actually drilling right now. We started about a week ago. We'll drill for about another 4 or 5 weeks and we'll start to have results probably in mid-January through mid-February on that. And we expect to release an upgraded 43-101 come end of Q1 or early Q2.

16:10 So when we looked at the project, this was just an interesting study we did. We looked at comparables like Talon Metals in Michigan and Colladium 1, and looked at how much drilling had been done to create so much resource. And without getting into the details, what it showed is that

16:28 there's tremendous prospectivity at our deposit at NISC, And we're looking forward to sort of showing the world that as these projects materialize and come forward with the assays coming in the next little bit. So we'll get through the full top 10. I would say, you know, the number 1 reason to invest in any mining company is if you like the geology and think they actually have a potential to become a mine. And I think

16:55 we are basically 3 million tons. We need to get to 10 million tons to be a mine. 10 million tons project is probably worth 400 or 500 million, like the Talent Metals project, which is virtually the same grade, that's about how big they are. So we're 30% of the way there. Right now we're, I think maybe 15 million in market caps. So we're like a 30th of their value. So it's, I think, a very good risk reward play. And looking forward to talking to the panelists today and learning more about their businesses and the opportunities in the space. And that's the Power Nickel story for now. Great. Well, thank you for that, Terry. And I'd like to thank everyone, all of the presenters, for those great introductions. I think that attendees are better equipped to understand who everyone here is and their companies. So let's get right into the conversation then.

17:45 What emerging trends do you as panelists here today see in the battery metals markets that you think that investors and stakeholders should be monitoring or aware of?

17:56 Maybe Simon, you could kick us off?

17:59 Sure, Cam. I was just in Europe recently doing some marketing and it really struck me in particular over there just how much is everywhere you go in the UK, there's talk about the move to cutting emissions and that side of stuff. But I also spent some time with some Norwegian bankers. And for example, they have a target to get rid of an internal combustion engine and move completely electric by 2025. And apparently they're well on track to meet it. So the feeling certainly when I was in Europe is the whole electrification of the vehicle fleet is well underway. The numbers were continuing to see that we're obviously seeing a lot of

18:46 the commodities do well and a lot of that is driven by the ongoing demand for Lithium-ion, which is clearly the incumbent. So for me, it's really, I think now it's been talked about for a lot of years and Lithium-ion has obviously been a 35-year overnight success story, if you like, but it's clearly here. These cars are being bought. All of the big manufacturers are bringing in more and more models. So I don't see this slowing down, and I think it's reflected in the commodity prices. So more of the same, but I think we're now starting to see the evidence just how real this is.

19:25 I would echo that in the copper space, you can look far and wide. There is not a single market competitor that I have seen who does not see significant growth in copper consumption for green energy, electrification, etc. Goldman Sachs did a very comprehensive study

19:49 a couple of months ago. And for copper, they predicted a supply demand gap of 8 million tons. In a market that's some 25 million tons. So really significant supply gap. And that's really driven by this, the strong growth of all these green technologies and in copper's case also just not much being there on the supply side. Yeah I mean I certainly agree with everything that's been said in the last 2 points. I think the other thing I would add is the security supply. We're seeing the US has now developed a strategic initiative to ensure supply in a local or what they consider safe jurisdictions.

20:31 And certainly, most of us are operating, I think we're all operating in those jurisdictions. And that's becoming a big issue, I think. And that'll drive some interesting sort of developments, I think. And we're certainly watching that. And again, as my fellow panelists just suggested, the price curves for the battery metals complex, I mean, it looks amazing going forward because there is gonna be a supply shortages. There's just no way around it.

21:01 I'm in the nickel space and nickel sulfate is sort of, you know, not all nickels created equal for the batteries. You basically, you need to have the sulfates to really to generate the quality of purity that you need to, at this point, at a price point, get for the batteries. And they're just in super short supply. So I think the price curves are going to look good now and they're going to look better in a year from now. So it's a good time to be looking at

21:27 the sector. So talking about trends and Simon, I think that you alluded to this to a degree in your introduction. But how do you as leaders in the mining industry, especially the battery metals, think that ESG is going to influence the industry moving forward? Is this a major trend? Is it going to get bigger? Is it going to get smaller? What do you all think? I'll pose that to the whole group, whoever wants to leap into that. Go ahead.

21:55 From my experience, it is becoming more and more expensive, important

22:03 every time. That's important. It's what investors ask for. It's what's very high on their list of priorities. And I've had many investors say, look, the fact that Kodiak and MPD is in a safe jurisdiction, British Columbia, where you have just as a starting point,

22:30 very high standards, ESG is a big factor in their decision making. And I think this will not change. This will become more so. Yeah, I think, you know, as much as grade and commercial viability are important, you have to speak to the ESG implications for each of your projects. And and you're going to be evaluated in those merits as well. So, you know, I mean, we're lucky in that we're across the street from a major hydro Quebec substation. So getting green hydropower to us will be super easy, but, you know, others will have challenges. And I think that's just part of the new mix of the new reality of mining. And we still have, it's funny, I still meet people that think miners are polluters. And it drives me crazy because, I mean, there's nobody greener than a miner, especially a Canadian miner. Anywhere you go in the world, you have to take Canadian practices.

23:26 I think it could be a very good thing for Canadian mining because we're already leading the world in terms of our environmental practices. I think that could be a real plus for us. I totally agree, Terry. You mentioned domestic supplies of critical minerals in the US, which is a huge topic.

23:48 There's been a number of Lithium projects in Nevada, for example, that have run into major issues because of environmental and cultural issues. For us, we've taken the view that you're best to tackle all of these head on and early on in the process to make sure there's no showstoppers, but to get your ducks in a row to get through the permitting process. But there's no doubt you have this bit of a dichotomy in the world. People want more electric vehicles and the shift to the new energy paradigm. And to do that, you have to mine.

24:23 But you have to mine in a sustainable way. So those projects that can demonstrate that are definitely going to attract the greater interest earlier in the cycle. And we're positioning ourselves for that. But ESG is definitely here to stay. It's we just did a relatively major fundraising and it was a key topic for a number of the investors, Quite rightly so. Fair enough. Thanks for all those great insights. What prevents new competitors from easily entering this emerging market that we're talking about to increase supply demands?

25:00 Mother Earth is very particular about revealing herself. So that's, you know, we're all in industries where deposits are very tough to come by. And that's why when you see like, you know, breakthroughs like Claudia has made, you know, with Kodiak where they've had such a, you know, a monster discovery that the world hasn't quite figured out yet. You know, that's super exciting because it's super rare. And, I mean, I think that's, you know,

25:30 There's nothing stopping anyone from getting in the business. It's just bloody hard. Look at Simon, how long it's taken for you guys to get there. It's not an easy business and that's what makes it difficult. Absolutely. There's lots of Lithium in the world, but there's not a lot of Lithium that you can get to easily. In Lithium,

25:56 there's no major new supply forecast to come on until the back half of next year in an already tight market with demand starting to spiral. So it's absolutely getting quality minerals in the right places. Just to add on the copper space, and Terry, thank you for your kind words. It's just a question also of time. Porphyries, like the deposits Kodiak is exploring for, are big bodies of mineralization and take 10 plus years to put into production. In the last 10 years, only 4 major discoveries were made, and a discovery that's not made today won't be there in 10 years' time.

26:45 And so it's a very easy calculation. It'll take time for new mines to come on and yeah, very likely there will be a shortage. No, fair enough, absolutely. You know, Battery metals have the direct application to battery technology. I was wondering if any of you had any thoughts about the impact of the development of technology on the battery metal space and your companies. Is the technology accelerating at the right rate for you? Are there any factors that could slow the rate or impact you? And are things that trends that you yourselves are monitoring? Well, I've been involved in the battery space one way or another for a good chunk of my working time.

27:36 I think the one thing that people have to recognize is that when a technology gets developed, it takes a long time to get all the supply chains in place, to get all the risk factors dealt with. And as I mentioned earlier, it's taken Lithium-ion 35 years to get to this point. So I think it's proving itself the major technology. Yes, you're going to see variations of lithium-ion batteries. You're going to see LFP batteries that don't use cobalt. You're going to see batteries that need greater range that do use cobalt and nickel, high-grade nickel. The actual chemistries may vary depending on applications. But I think lithium ion is clearly the winner. And if anything is going to displace it, it's going to take a long time to get there. And you know, we look at for lithium, you know, why would you replace lithium? It's the third element on the periodic table. The only lighter elements that have the conductivity that lithium does are gases.

28:41 So, you know, lithium is, I think, extremely well placed in whatever chemistry you look at. And again, I think you're going to see variations of lithium-ion, but to my mind, it's the clear winner in transportation, in cell phones, in a number of applications where it's already built its supply chains and is now the incumbent technology. Yeah, it seems to me that the engineering or the tactical design of these things is being factored in somewhat into the economics of each of the metals. You're not going to replace Lithium as being a key element. But around the margins, what they're looking at, it seems like they're shifting more and more into the cheaper metals like Nickel, as an example, for the storage side of things to try and reduce costs and keep the vehicle costs down, et cetera.

29:38 And I see a growing trend to buy weight more nickel and less cobalt, less lithium. But there's going to be so many more batteries needed. There's still a giant demand, you know, and supply shortages in cobalt and lithium to come, you know, even with the even with the movement towards, you know, trying to substitute or reduce those materials just for economic reasons. From a copper perspective, what's also an important point to keep in mind is that the actual batteries are only a small part of a bigger picture. And copper is also required in many, many other components and bits and pieces that are required for electrification, whether that's electric motors, whether that's the wiring, whether that's charging stations.

30:30 So never mind what battery technology will go forward. There will always be a lot of other uses, a big part of the demand for copper that will be outside the actual battery. Absolutely. Taking a step back and looking maybe at the bigger picture. What should potential investors that are watching today or maybe in the future come away with? What What lasting points would you want to make to them? How that they should be looking at battery metals in the future? I think it's a great time as an investor to be looking in the mining space. I mean, if you look at the rocket ship that Tesla has become, you know, and crazy valuation. I mean, it's an unbelievable company. You never bet against Elon Musk. He's a genius.

31:27 But if you want to, you know, investing is about risk return. And if you're looking for a risk return, I would argue that the mining stocks are the best way to play electrification. Find a basket of good quality EV stocks that you feel fits your parameters in terms of risk and return and ride those for a very long time because I think this is a sector that's, you know, will do well for many years. And so if you pick the right ponies, they're gonna really deliver the returns. And right now, they're all super cheap, relatively speaking. Whereas if you look at the technology side of the things, that's super expensive. It's also much more risky in my view.

32:14 But that's me. I'm in mining, so I'm preaching in my own church. I agree. I see the space we're in now just becoming more and more mainstream. I think when you look at Lithium, A couple of years ago, how do you fund a Lithium project? Because bankers and the way Lithium was traded, it was all new. And now it's becoming a commodity where all these things are being built out. Again, you're seeing all the car manufacturers move to electrification of vehicles, more and more models. So it's becoming mainstream, and as Claudia says, renewing the grid or whatever we're going to have to do with that as well to provide the power for all the electric vehicles.

33:04 It's just a huge part of what's happening and it's going to spur a lot of growth in a lot of segments of the economy. My view is it's becoming more mainstream. What I find striking is just the magnitude of this mega trend. It's called the mega trend for a reason. The last big trend that really had a major impact on the commodities market was China, which was 1 very large economy that developed. If you look around the world, if you look to Europe, if you look to North America, to South America, to Asia, electrification, green energy is everywhere. It's just such a major trend and it will be here for decades to come. And we're really only at the start.

33:53 So it's a very exciting transformation that the world and the mining industry is going through. Wonderful. Awesome. Thank you for those great insights. Coming back around to each of your specific companies and projects, just before we get into the live Q&A, we've had a lot of questions coming in, which is really exciting to the audience. If you have questions, ask them now, time allowing, we can get to them. But for the panelists, what are your companies doing to make sure that you're staying environmentally friendly while also making sure that you're delivering maximum value to your shareholders? Well, the one and the other doesn't, They're not mutually exclusive. In our case, for an exploration company, being environmentally friendly, putting in place a good, solid environmental baseline program is actually not a large cost.

34:46 It's doing some water testing, water monitoring. And in the overall scheme of things, it's very small amounts of money that you need to spend to actually just get the project off on the right footing. So, it's really mitigating big risks in the future and it's a small expense early on. Yeah, I mean, in Canada, you know, the environmental standards are so high in mining that it's just such a second nature of how you go about any of your exploration projects or development projects that it's a cornerstone of your planning. So it's like breathing, you have to breathe to survive. So you have to be environmentally friendly and have sound practices, or you're just not gonna get permitted, period. So, and if you don't get permitted, you can't create value for your shareholder. So it's pretty much inextricably linked.

35:49 And I think everyone's sort of focused on that and it becomes part of your daily planning and it's just part of life. Yeah, I think Claudia made a great point. The 2 are not mutually exclusive. You know, I think the more you do on this side, you know, the more you attract investor appetite. And as Terry said, you don't get permitted in North America without good environmental practices. You know, For us in Peru, obviously, as I mentioned earlier, community support is key, and a big piece of that is the environmental side. I mean, we're lucky where our projects that were in an area of high rainfall, So we can obviously minimize water usage, but there's plenty supply of it. And we also have the benefit of major hydroelectricity as well.

36:40 So everything I think all of us are doing now, the environment is up there. I mean, as I mentioned, we have a firm of consultants doing life cycle analyses on our potential processing options in Nevada. And so the economics are clearly very important, but as important now is the environment. So, you know, we will choose the right process that marries both the economic side with the environmental side. And it's just the way we should be doing business going forward. And again, I think Claudia's point that the 2 are not mutually exclusive is huge. Great. Well, thank you for that. We've had lots of questions, like I said, come in to the Q&A, so I'd love to hop into that now. And to begin with, Adrian in the audience has asked, should the mining industry engage more in educating the politicians and the general public for themselves buy into a greening of the economy, but possibly don't yet appreciate the role miners play in achieving that objective?

37:41 Well, you know, I mean, one of the other things I've done is the Save Canadian Mining thing, which is basically designed to try and stop predatory short selling. Part of that advocacy is speaking to government and we need to speak to them a lot more because they don't understand a lot of things. They don't understand predatory short selling. They don't understand how difficult and how long as Claudia says, it takes to actually find a mine and then put it in production. And there's a lot more engagement needs to happen with government. And I think it's all upon us individually and collectively through our organisations to take a more forceful role in that because it's affecting our abilities really to grow and prosper.

38:33 Yes. I mean, it's a huge point in the US. I mean, as Terry mentioned earlier on, critical minerals is the buzzword. Everyone knows we need more domestic supply so that we're not held hostage more and more to China and those markets for the supply of cathodes, batteries. And so it's well recognized and the politicians recognize that, but then they don't really understand that you can't spend 5 years permitting a mine if we're going to actually meet any of those thresholds. A combination of very strong environmental policies and projects that meet those needs, those projects should be being permitted in a way faster timeline.

39:24 A huge part of that is educating the politicians because you have that dichotomy between everyone wants electric vehicles, but isn't mining dirty, like Terry said earlier. And so it's coming. There's a number of things in the big bills and some of the big regulation that's coming down in the US and they're starting to understand that. But it is definitely a process where we all have to be more and more involved. As the US has looked at their bills coming forward and that build back better bills and all of that, We as the mining industry have had to write in and lobby to make sure that some dumb moves haven't been made in all of that because they don't understand what the implications are on the industry. And it's not what they're actually ultimately trying to achieve.

40:16 So education is definitely a huge part. And in the States, we do it very much at state level and federal level. No, absolutely, thank you for that. Claudia, do you have Anything to add to that? I actually find that Terry and Simon summed up these points really well and said exactly what I would have said, so I can only agree. All right, well, fair enough, absolutely. We have a question from Jacques in the audience. Do you think that the electricity supply will be able to keep up with the electric vehicle demand? And he's considering that there's already power outages that do happen. So our ability to produce electricity, will it be able to keep up with the electric vehicle demand in your opinions?

41:08 I think, you know, I watched an interesting documentary that a US investment council had put out on energy. And they basically looked at the history of energy from basically from the time we crawled into the cave to now and it really, the GDP growth is tied to the energy multiple. And that is basically how much energy you have to put in to get energy out. So fossil fuels were the big leap. Up until then we were burning wood. So city sizes were like 1 million max. Then fossil fuels made it like 100X because you could really do it. So now obviously going back into wind and solar and these other forms of energy, they're not as efficient. That's the reality.

41:54 And we have to, that's going to have a cost on GDP. What people aren't really sort of talking about, I think is going to become part of the conversation is uranium, as an example. I think it's got great potential. And there's no question that we're going to need a lot more electricity. So we've pretty much dammed most of the easy stuff we can get. And the easy, I don't know, Energy is going to be a real challenge, both in distribution of it and in manufacturing of it. We have to look at some of the other options that are on the table that haven't really been spoken of a lot. I'm a believer that uranium is probably going to be a beneficiary of this battery revolution. I just read a news article this morning about the new government in Germany that's just been formed, coalition government.

42:49 And the largest part of their program and of the news article was about their plans for the energy transition. It's a big, big, big, big topic for the government. And clearly the political will is there, not only in Germany, but around the world. And I think it's a big challenge, but it's being attacked. And yeah, There will be many changes in the decades to come. Agreed. Yeah. And I think that was a great analysis by Terry and Claudia. I mean, the only thing I would add is I'm a lithium guy who happens to own a Uranium project. That's one of the largest ones.

43:35 We've seen a lot of interest in that. Jeff Ballard, back in the fuel cell days in Vancouver, always said, you've got to embrace Uranium at the other end for the supply. So I think you're seeing that happening now in places like China. And I think people have got to understand that it has been a very safe source of fuel. I mean, If you take out Chernobyl, where some smart guy decided to turn off the safety circuit, which was human error, and Fukushima that was built in an earthquake zone that should never have happened, we've hopefully learned from that. There's been a lot of nuclear power in places like France that has worked exceptionally well.

44:25 And in Canada, we've done a lot of work on it as well. And I think it's going to become a real piece in the energy mix that we absolutely are going to have the need to make this transition. Well, thank you for that. Coming back around to specifically battery metals, this question comes from Knox in the audience. Beyond China and the United States, where is demand going to come from? And who do you expect is going to buy from your production? As I said before, I think this trend is not limited to any particular geography. This electrification really is a trend that's around the world on every continent, in every economy, Europe, Asia, America.

45:17 So it's a very broad based mega trend, which is I think why Edge is so powerful. I think one of the things that you'll see happen is even though we're at early stages, we're actually getting calls from, you know, battery developers in Korea and China and saying, who are interested in investing in like pretty early stage development projects because they're wanting to tie up sources of supply. So I think that's one of the trends we'll see is we're gonna see more and more end users, whether it be Volkswagen or Tesla or battery technology, actual finished product manufacturers coming in and investing directly to accelerate the mining process because it's a very capital intensive business, raising capital is a time burdensome chore that we all have to do. And, you know, one of the ways they can expedite the development of these projects, which they desperately need because it funnels their business. Folks that can sell cars, but if they're selling electric cars, they don't have batteries. Well, that's a problem. So I think we're going to start to see more vertical integration from the end users back up into the mining space to guarantee their source of supply.

46:36 Yes. And I think that's probably exacerbated by the fact that a lot of people are frustrated about the pace that the governments are affecting change, certainly in the West. The question was talking about China and the US, but Europe's a massive market as well. And absolutely, A lot of these companies are starting to take matters into their own hands and go up chain because they know they have to secure the supply of these critical minerals. You can end up in a place where China, which I think typically produces 60% to 80% of all refined battery products. You know, ultimately you get to the stage where they say, no, we're not going to sell you batteries of cathodes. You've got to buy the the end goods from us. So if you're the GM of Volkswagen or or GM itself or Ford or whoever, you're pretty worried right now. And I think Terry's right. I think this is a trend that's gonna continue to develop.

47:42 Okay, absolutely. Jim has a question for the group, just in regards to specifically your companies, each of your companies. Maybe we can go around the room in any order. What's the time frame for each of your companies to active mining? Maybe Claudia, you could start. Well, corporate forfeits, which we are exploring for, where we made our discovery, are large elephant deposits and they take a long time to put in production, but then are in production for decades and generate returns. So long story short, it will certainly be many years before MPD will become a mine. If we can continue successfully.

48:33 And looking around the world, porphyry mines are all mined by large companies, the Rio Tintos and BHPs of this world. So I'm not sure it will be Kodiak eventually mining it. It might very well be the case that at one point a major will take interest. I think Claudia is making a great point there. 2 of our projects are at what I would call a robust PA stage, and we're starting to look towards feasibility, certainly at Falchani, and then ideally TLC in Nevada. But it's a process, and there's lots of value creation between now and then. And a lot of the ultimate timeline is going to depend on how quickly you can get things permitted in North America and in some of these places. I mean, Nevada is a fabulous jurisdiction to mine, but you've still got to go through all the permitting hoops. And right now that's a lengthy process.

49:38 Our goal would certainly be to be in production at 1 or more of our Lithium projects by 2025. And I think on the Uranium side, it's probably somewhat similar, maybe even a little faster. That probably has to be in a Uranium-focused vehicle to achieve that. And as Claudia says along the way, We're seeing in South America the aggression of a lot of the big Chinese players buying up Lithium projects and I think that's probably a trend that's going to continue. We build the company so that we can move these things into production if that's the right course. But the whole process may get speeded up by a large company with a very big balance sheet taking on the projects of the company at some stage.

50:30 We'll see how it unfolds, But I think for us, we believe we could get Falciani potentially into production in a 2025 timescale. And with a fair wind in the US on the permitting side, maybe the same for TLC. But these are multi-year projects, but again, with lots of value creation along the way. Yes. I'm thinking in Quebec for us, you're probably looking 7 to 10 years and that would be a good result. Nickel sulphate mines are not geographically huge in terms of, whereas Clodium might have 1 billion tonnes, we'd be commercial at 10 million tonnes and we'd be over the moon with 30 or 40 million tonnes. So they're smaller envelopes and smaller projects but even with that, they still take time. The permitting is not swift and the actual construction process is only probably a couple of years, 18 months, but all the hoops you have to go through beforehand are there. I mean the good news is that they're, you know, Quebec is very focused on turning this into a major focus for Quebec, the green power. They've got a couple of lithium projects that are, you know, being developed now and more to come.

51:48 And they're trying to unblock the various hurdles that companies have to go through. And for us, our job is pretty simple. We'll find and prove the project can be economic, and then we'll sell it to a developer that's not within our skill set to take a mine into production. Great, well, thank you for that. Just being aware of time, there are many other questions that we've had come in, especially some questions specifically for our speakers, but I'd like to offer the chance for each of you to go over what upcoming news and catalysts that you're excited about that you want to share with the attendees here today. So I'd like to go around in order again, just a couple of minutes each before we wrap up for the day. And Claudia, I'd like to begin with you, though we have had a question come in to you.

52:39 Just maybe if you could touch on the updates with some of the flooding in the area that you're experiencing, maybe just provide a little bit of an update on that as you kind of go into what's upcoming and what's exciting. Yeah, well, let me start with the flooding. We are based, our field office and core facilities in Merritt, which was evacuated last week under evacuation order because of flooding. We are fortunate we are on higher ground and our premises are not at risk. We are waiting for the evacuation order to be lifted, probably in the next couple of days to get back at work. So we are very lucky. Obviously, the flooding in Merritt is awful and many people's houses underwater and a lot of damage. So my heart goes out to all those people impacted.

53:33 Absolutely, And any specific upcoming catalysts that you just want to share with attendees otherwise, it's good to hear that your team is safe. Well, upcoming catalysts for Kodiak are drill results. We've made a porphyry discovery, a high-grade discovery in a big porphyry system in an established mining district and we'll be drilling up to well just under 40 holes this year, have only 15 of the results. So lots more results to come in December, the next tranche and then January, February. And of course, next year, another big drill program going on and we will continue to grow our discovery equity. Great, thank you so much for that. Simon, what's going on with American Lithium that you want to tell shareholders about or audience members?

54:20 Yes, I think for us, we have work planned at our project. Right now in Nevada, we have some, we acquired some new acreage around our core claims and we're doing some exploration drilling there right now. That's going on as we speak. We do have the next phase of development planned for early next year on the back of a plan of operations we submitted a year ago for extensive drilling, which will provide us the results we will need to move that project into feasibility when we get there. There's lots of drilling going to be going on from the new year in Nevada. We're also focused on getting our maiden PEA out, ideally by the end of Q1 next year, certainly during the first half.

55:09 And in Peru, we've got rigs mobilized to Falchani and an area nearby which we want to explore. It looks like it could be a similar deposit from everything we can see. You never know until you drill, but it's exciting. So lots of drilling. We will update the Falchani PEA for some infill and extension and reclassification work we're going to do on the deposit. And we will also be updating the PEA for by-products that we have like Cesium and Potash, which will be really interesting. Or with a goal to, once we have the PEA updated and increase the M&I category, we would then look to move that project into Feasibility.

55:55 And then on Makassani, we have a very robust PEA, but it is 6-years-old. We will update that for new developments and some near-term drilling that we have before we decide, do we keep that within the company or is it better to have it in its own vehicle, which is likely to be the case and we retain an interest. But we will look at ways to maximize the value of that asset for the benefit of the company and the shareholders. Clearly, being within a Lithium company long term is not going to maximize the value of a Uranium project. So We want to make sure we do the right thing there. But in the short term, we've got a bunch of low-hanging fruit we will do in terms of work on that project.

56:41 Great. Thank you so much, Simon. And Terry? Yes. We're actually drilling right now and we'll be drilling about 5,000 meters or so over the next 5 weeks. And we'll be getting assays back as quickly as the assay labs will give it to us, which is these days a bit of a struggle, but probably sort of mid-January to mid-February we'll have results. And then that will be used to update, create a new 43-101 on the project, which I think will be the real sort of TSN turning point for the company, because people will start to see that this can become a Nickel Sulfate mine. And that'll be a big sort of company point for us.

57:28 The other thing that will happen in this period of time is, you know, just like Simon's doing, you know, probably some engineering with his Uranium project to create value because people aren't buying American Lithium and expecting to find Uranium. So it's the same thing with Power Nickel. We've got some great Copper-Gold projects in BC and in Chile. And we're going to be spinning those out into a vehicle called Consolidated Copper and Gold. And that'll take place at, probably be approved at our next annual meeting, which will be early Q1 and done sort of corporately probably by the end of Q1 or early Q2. So those will be some events. And then we would expect a second round of drilling to commence sort of in Q2. So it will be a busy, active year and Hopefully a positive one for our shareholders.

58:18 Great, well, thank you so much. Thank you all. Thank you, Terry, Simon, Claudia for coming on today. I think that was a great discussion. I think it was very valuable to anyone watching or anyone watching the on-demand recording. That'll be on six.com in the future once we've put it through the process. I'd also like to thank, of course, everyone in the audience that's come on today to participate and watch, especially those who have asked questions. I'm aware that there are a number of questions that have come in that we haven't been able to get to, unfortunately, just due to time constraints, but don't worry, I'll be making sure that all the panelists receive your questions so that follow up can happen on that front. So thanks. Thanks to you all again for coming on today. And with that, we are going to be wrapping things up. So I hope everyone has a good rest of their day and cheers. Cheers, guys. Thanks everyone.