Securing Tomorrow: The Race for Critical Minerals

0:04 Welcome to another sixth panel. This one is titled Securing Tomorrow the Race for Critical Minerals. I'm your host, Matthew McElborough of Junior Resource Investing. Just a quick reminder that this is being recorded and additionally also note if you're listening in that there will be time for investor questions at the end. So please, yes, feel free to type your questions into the chat. If they're particularly relevant, I'll sneak them in, but otherwise I'll make sure there's time at the end for this. The topic of today's panel is especially relevant considering the huge wave of support the resource sector is receiving recently, but I won't waste too much more time here before handing this over to the panelists who we've all gathered here to listen to. So individuals that they're here with me, thanks for coming, but why don't we just start off by classic elevator pitch, just introduce yourself and your company. Who are you and how has your company engaged with critical metals? And Rick, I'll let you start first. All right.

0:51 Thank you Matthew I'm a lawyer by training. My interest is international corporate affairs and commercial affairs I was recruited some 35 years ago to manage the highest yielding dividend mining company in North America. And as part of that, I was managing a sister company that we sold to a major for over a billion dollars. Fast forward 30 years,

1:23 I'm now the president of a junior and I sit on a number of boards. In this particular case, I replaced a CEO who had some health issues and we did a strategic review and took on a project involving tantalum, Not so much because of the metal itself, but because of the possibility of getting to production in a relatively short time for a modest amount of money. And this is in the backdrop of 10 years of a downturn in the sector where money was hard to come by and dilution is something that we're trying to avoid. So we took the project on and I have some exposure to tantalum.

2:15 One of my mentors was the discoverer of Burnick Lake and then the Tanko Mine, which is one of the producers in North America. And subsequently worked with Avalon, which is also involved with tantalum petalite and the big whopper. So that was exposure. And I have a colleague who is probably the foremost expert in tantalum out of South Africa. So all those things made the metal interesting. Then I also had exposure.

2:48 Never worked in Bolivia before, but have lived in Panama, lived in Costa Rica, worked in Mexico, speak Spanish. So I wasn't concerned about that. And I also have a colleague who's now invested a little over $65 million down there in a Canadian company. And he has been kind enough to make some introductions and help out. So that's basically what we're doing down there. Thank you, Rick. And Rita, yourself. Thanks, Matt. Titan Mining, I'm the President and CEO of Titan Mining. We are the fourth largest zinc producer in the United States. And we're also a natural flake graphite developer.

3:34 We operate the Empire State Mine in upstate New York. We've been in production for over 7 years. And we are today advancing the Kilbourne Graphite Project, which

3:46 positions Titan to become the first domestic producer, an end-to-end domestic producer of natural flake graphite in the United States in over 70 years. Our strategy is pretty simple. We have an existing producing cashflow positive mine and we're looking at developing the Empire State Mine and the surrounding areas really as a critical materials complex, supplying zinc. We recently found germanium within our processing flow streams, and then obviously graphite or materials which were absolutely critical for defense and for obviously energy supply chain needs for the United States. Thank you, Rita. And David, on to you. Hi, thanks, sir. It's a minute or 2 late there. Busy, busy times these days in our sector.

4:37 As everyone here, I'm sure can attest to. I'm David D'Onofrio. I'm the CEO of White Gold Corp. I'm also a principal at Power 1 capital markets in Toronto, a mining merchant bank, and investing in financing junior exploration and development companies for I guess over 2 decades now. And the critical mineral sector is something we've always had a big focus on before it's sort of become en vogue in the last several years going back as far as 15 years, we were founding shareholders of Lithium Americas, which is a company that's certainly made a lot of headlines recently and following those teams onto successive projects such as Neolithium. We've really been invested in almost the full gambit of companies, identifying the need for them early on.

5:28 The markets typically are reactive. We like to pride ourselves as being able to be early on in the curve and other such opportunities that are hitting the headlines these days like Greenland Resources.

5:43 We're investors in one of the world's largest and highest grade molybdenum deposits. Clearly, Greenland has become very political these days. Magnesium, tungsten, for example, lots of interest there in a very high-grade project out in British Columbia and Happy Creek Metals. An enormous new Copper-Gold discovery in Columbia with collective mining. That's a really interesting project. I think it's getting tons of notoriety worldwide.

6:12 And Lithium as well, we're still very large investors and I think there's a great project in Lithium Ionic, which has a very high-grade near-term production opportunity right beside Sigma in Brazil, Nevada Lithium in America. Jurisdiction is always very important. As it relates to White Gold, we are in a very unique and fortunate situation. The White Gold Project is based in the Klondike district of Canada's Yukon. This is

6:38 a prolific area. There's been over 20Moz of Placer Gold mined out of the creeks, but it really wasn't until recently when our partner, Sean Ryan, went there to try and look for hard rock sources of some of this mineralization. It took him a long time and we quickly realized why people have not been there exploring. There's just been no glaciation, so there's no outcrop. But over the course of a decade and a half, he was really able to hone in on a protocol that was extremely successful in first identifying Gold deposits. White Gold now has a 3Moz Gold deposit in the White Gold district, it's the highest grade deposit in the Yukon,

7:13 wide open for expansion and exploration, which we are actively doing now and really excited about the prospects there. But what's really unique about White Gold and what Sean did that was so exceptional is he tied up an entire camp. So this area that we own is 300,000 hectares. It's within a landmass. It's about 110km north to south and 50-60km east to west. And Sean used the same protocol that was so successful in finding these initial Gold discoveries to basically carpet bomb the entire area and from that cherry pick the best of the best. Now when you own an entire camp in an area that's as prolific as the Yukon, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that we were able to make new discoveries along the way of minerals other than gold. We've now identified 2 very large copper or gold porphyry type targets. We have tungsten

8:09 targets and there's a number of other opportunities. And when you consider the fact that within this district just to the south is the Casino Project that's owned by Western Copper and Gold, which I believe is the largest copper, gold, porphyry in all of Canada. It shouldn't come as a surprise that there's going to be other similar instances within this big trend where we own the majority of the real estate. So We've been spending a lot of time recently focusing on our critical minerals as well as our advancing our goal projects.

8:39 Thanks Dave. Rita, Bill, I'll ask you to lead off the next round of questions here. Just you're a Recurring Zinc producer and a Graphite Devco. If you follow the space, obviously those are 2 critical metals, but then sometimes the zinc and graphite sectors we've seen individual companies struggle to get off the mat whereas with titan you I mean go look at the ticker go look at the the news release that newsfleeve created obviously that's not a problem for you. Why are you succeeding perhaps for others or maybe struggling a bit more? I mean, I think Matthew, we offer this unique proposition. We're an existing mine. We have existing production. We've been in production for a while. So first and foremost, when we have investors look at us, they have a downside protection coming from existing cash flow.

9:28 Obviously what we have been very fortunate to find, and we didn't go looking for it, but we obviously found it pretty easily, is

9:36 a pretty significant natural flake graphite deposit, which is co-located alongside our zinc operations, about a mile from the existing mill. And then I think the most important thing for us, we are US domestic. So I think if you take the full package of factors in, we are an existing mine. We're adding on another critical mineral. We obviously have federal government support for our zinc mine, and we became US Ex-Im's first mining partner. When you take all of those factors into consideration, I think

10:11 it reduces the risk for investors while obviously providing this completely unicorn and significant amount of upside really for folks to capture. Excellent, thank you. Dave, I might circle back here. I was going to discuss and ask you how gold exploration, Devco, fits into critical metals and you touched on that with your longer term exploration. But maybe I'll just ask you, maybe off the cuff here a bit, but should gold be considered a critical metal as is? Obviously it is critical to the economy, critical to geopolitical negotiations, but what are your thoughts on there? I've heard other people say that gold should officially be added to the critical metals list. Do you think that you agree? Do you think that's necessary? What are your thoughts on that?

11:01 That's actually a really good question. I've never thought about it previously.

11:05 I guess it comes down to what's the purpose for this critical metal designation? Is it basically the government highlighting something that they think should be accelerated towards production. If that's the mandate, then I would say yes. Gold is maybe not as utilized as an industrial metal, although it is. I think I saw a stat over the weekend, it's maybe 20% used in industrial applications. Now, those applications are more on the high tech and advanced sides, chips and stuff like that. So from that perspective, I can certainly see that. But is it critical to other stuff? Is it critical to, you know, treasuries, reserves? Probably You see this as becoming something more topical. And we're living in a war. And probably the reason we're having this webinar is a lot of these metals have become politicized and even weaponized. Well, is that kind of happening with gold, with people having different views on preservation of wealth opportunities, not from a personal perspective, but from a country type perspective. So, I can see an argument for that.

12:07 And I can also see a world where they interplay together. A lot of this

12:12 support is for infrastructure. And why can't both benefit together?

12:18 So the short answer is I think so, yes. And I think, but as a country, all of our resources are critical. Canada is in a unique situation right now where we can leverage this enormous neurological wealth that we have to really sort of put us at the top of the list of advanced nations. And I think that's all critical. We should definitely as a country be focused on finding ways to do that. So why don't we, I'll give Rick a couple of seconds here to see if he can sort himself out. But Rita, maybe I'll just ask you, I'll let you lead this off this next round. What is the next step, right? Your company's growth and maybe more importantly for this webinar, the value proposition for investors, what's next for Titan?

13:00 And you're, sorry Rita, you're also on. Yeah, 5 years post COVID still doing that. But for Titan, as I mentioned, we have 2 growth engines. One is our steady state cash flow, an asset which we've obviously had an operation for a very long time. That is our zinc asset and I think mine. We are looking to expand production by 30 percent by 2028. So that is you know just a natural organic growth which is built into the asset. We also

13:35 found some very interesting IOCG targets in the region. And so we see a wider polymetallic opportunity, be it in copper, be it in gold, be it in zinc, all coming from the Empire State Mine. As I mentioned earlier, we also find germanium in our process streams. So, we believe there is quite a neat value add opportunity there. As we know, germanium is obviously one of the critical minerals, which is really pretty core for defense uses and also for fiber optics. So you know post our announcement we certainly have received a significant amount of inbounds from the defense primes and other and other strategic uses.

14:18 And that's all just based on the asset that we currently have. So there's a significant amount of upside coming from there. And then more importantly, we'll be transitioning our demonstration facility, which is on producing natural flake graphite from where it currently sits today to a 40,000 ton per annum commercial facility. Really, you know, giving investors

14:40 exposure to a fully permitted brownfield complex. We have existing cash. We're looking to grow that by significant measure in the next 2 years and really complete direct alignment with US government priorities, which I think makes Titan one of the sort of leaders of the path. I certainly do want to discuss the sort of government support and funding that we're seeing increasingly coming into the metal sector. But Dave, maybe I'll just ask you first though, yourself, right? What your own company's growth, but as I say, more pertinent to this conversation, value proposition for investors, What can you say to that? Yeah, there's a ton of opportunity here. When you look at White Gold and somebody mentioned this to me the other day, they refer to it as a super junior. And I think that's a really accurate representation.

15:29 We have 19 different projects at different levels of advancement.

15:33 I could see a case that this could be easily split up into 4 or 5 different companies and all of which would have merit and all of which would have significant value appreciation opportunities. In that lieu, that's actually something we had identified about 2 years ago, once we really had a better understanding of the prospectivity of these critical mineral projects. And we're actually in the process now

15:56 of isolating certain of these projects and we're going to set them into a new company which will distribute out to our shareholders. If we're trading, which we are, at a discount to our peers in the Yukon within Canada, just on the Gold ounces we have in the ground, notwithstanding how big we are, the growth upside and being the highest grade in a great area, that means we're getting 0 value for all these critical mineral projects. So we've identified that as a great way to unlock value, but also as a way to provide the focus that it needs, build a specialized team that can focus on moving these forward in the next little while. And with considering where they are, the size and the prospectivity, we saw that as a really exciting opportunity to advance in all these projects.

16:38 Excellent. And Rick, if you've decided, if you can manage to… I'm being challenged here. Well, I'll fire off here and hopefully we can make this happen. But Rick, why don't you just set the stage for us a bit, just discuss actually tantrum itself a little more for people who are unfamiliar. Use, market, maybe what to look for, kind of the idiosyncrasies that are maybe make it more unique or make it unique compared to other metals. Yeah, it's quite an interesting market. About 35% of it is in electronics and you wouldn't have a computer, a cell phone, a camera, and you won't have AI without capacitors.

17:14 And so That's a big element of it in electronics. And obviously it's growing with AI and all the money going into chips. Another element of it is medical. It's got some

17:29 unique properties. So it's when you have a hip replacement, it's a titanium unit covered with tantalum because tantalum is biocompatible, which means it isn't rejected by the human body. So when you have a hip replacement, dental implants, knee replacements, and so on, there's a component of tantalum. Probably the biggest growth element right now is in defense. Again, it's got a number of properties. It's one of the hardest metals, it's harder than diamonds. And it's used all sorts of applications. It's used in

18:12 making blades for helicopters, making, it's used in nuclear plants. So all sorts of applications. It's one of the metals that I think is unique properties being if there were more of it, they would use more of it. Scandium might be another one of those metals, but this one in particular, if there were more of it, they would use more of it. So I think it's pretty special. Maybe I'll circle this right back to you, you're sort of speaking to the metal. Why don't you speak to your company specifically, right? What are the next steps that will continue to drive your company and more importantly, sort of the value proposition for investors? Well, we're still on the line. So yeah,

18:59 this is somewhat of a makeover. It's an opportunity that came about. We took a strategic pause and were looking for something that would allow us to get to a production decision in a relatively short time. This was an opportunity that came to us. The equipment's already on site, So some of the issues now with China not only stopping the sale

19:24 of critical metals, but they're also stopping, they're talking about stopping the sale of some of the equipment that they provide. So in all of these things, it's not only the extraction process, but then

19:39 how you can get it to market. And in this case, we've got some good relationships with our lead advisor, who's Dr. Peter Cox out of South Africa. And they've got some methodologies for recoveries. And that's another critical element of this. So we're a makeover, everything's lining up very well operationally. There's just been an election in Bolivia. They've moved from 20 years of socialism back to capitalism and they're looking for foreign investment. They're way behind in terms of dollars and

20:18 mining is about 30% of GDP right now. It's going to increase, they're open for foreign investment.

20:25 We are currently waiting for our exploration license. We expect to get that in the next 30 days. And around year end, we should get a exploitation license, which would allow us to go into small scale production. So all of those things are lining up quite well. We will have to go to market to raise money to do some additional exploration

20:50 and get a 43-101 and make a production decision. But again, one of the motivations was this is a project that would allow us to get into production in a relatively short time. Very good. We'll circle back to a topic that Rita brought up there. Government participation in mineral plays is becoming increasingly common in this sector. Maybe I'll just ask you folks, and Rita I'll let you lead us off, maybe just provide evidence of what your own jurisdiction is doing in this regard. So in part A here, what funding have you yourselves received, Rita, or potentially able to receive or have applied for, that sort of thing?

21:24 Yeah, I think for us, as I mentioned, we're an existing producer. We became the United States Ex-Im's first mining partner. We've already received $16 million from them to expand us in corporations. And really the premise of doing that was, you know, to build a longer term relationship.

21:44 As everyone's very aware, you know, A number of US federal agencies haven't directly invested in mining in a very long time. So really, there was a learning curve there, both for us and for the federal agency.

21:57 But that was the first step. And obviously, we have access to those funds to be able to expand us in corporations. And again, the premise of that was, you know, it frees up cash flow for us to be able to use towards developing our graphite project without diluting shareholders. So, you know, That's a huge endorsement, which we've already received from a federal agency and all the underwriting that they've done. We did disclose a few weeks ago, we put out a press release. They will also be supporting us with up to $120 million in a 12-year loan facility for our commercial graphite operations.

22:35 Again, we're the only graphite operation, really, in the United States, which they're supporting. So I think we're very well positioned to work with the US government agencies, the non-diluted capital. As with other critical mineral companies of scale in the United States, obviously, we continue to be in discussions with the White House, with the Department of War and the Department of Energy, with various other funding initiatives.

23:04 Because when it comes down to things like graphite, the market has been controlled to a very significant extent by China. China introduced MOFCOM 58, which was a couple of weeks ago, which obviously now restricts the export of any form of graphite, be it in blended form for batteries,

23:25 which really has put a lot of pressure on US customers. And I think we already have a lot of US government support, but I can see more of that coming through really over the course of the next 6 to 12 months. Yeah, very good. Dave, I'll ask you, we have 3 different jurisdictions here, so 3 potentially different questions, 3 different metals, etc. So, Dave, any sort of comments you can make on government funding support or potential support for white gold? Yeah, I think we've seen some great initiation of support.

24:00 I think the Canadian government has really identified the fact that these opportunities that they have with some of these critical minerals and other resources in general can really help advance the country economically. And there's a lot of advancements or protocols that are being identified and put in place at different levels of advancements. I don't think the Canadian government is quite at the point of the US where they started writing these big checks into projects, although they have in certain other capacities on the infrastructure side, but I do see a pathway to getting there and we have seen early days of that type of support.

24:36 In our region, in the Yukon specifically, it's actually been quite tremendous. It's sort of in 3 different capacities. The first was called the Resource Gateway program for between the territorial and the federal government. They are investing to upgrade infrastructure specifically to support mining, exploration and development, which is great. That is what is going to unlock a lot of these opportunities. For White Gold, we've been a huge benefactor. With such a large land package like we have, actually 2 of these roadways are gonna come right through our land packs. And that really unlocks the leverage that, you know, we always viewed as the big prize here of owning an entire camp. Once you have the roads coming through it now, you know, whatever you can discover has a better chance of being economical because you have easier access to the different facilities. So that was the first step.

25:23 And it's really been fortunate. I think now in the more recent years what's drawn a lot more attention and a lot more

25:30 funding opportunities is this casino deposit I mentioned. So that we're tied right onto that. That is the largest copper deposit in all of Canada. So you have something like that in your backyard is bringing attention. And there's been a couple of big projects that have been advanced to further support that. One is more roads. The other one is a study to bring power from British Columbia up into the Yukon hydropower. That would be a total game changer for the whole territory. So that's excellent. And then the third part is to upgrade the port in Skagway. That would be the exit for a lot of these minerals. So we are seeing a lot of support and we see a lot more

26:06 support in the works and being, you know, look to be identified. So I think we're definitely headed in the right direction and really grateful and appreciative of what's been done so far. And yourself, Rick, government initiative, government funding support that you see evolving or already occurring? Well, this is a small market. It's about 5 million pounds, and it goes for $100 a pound. And recently, the US government has stated that they want to buy $100M worth of tantalum. So I don't know where they're going to get that. The DRC and Rwanda represent about 30% of production.

26:45 So there's a shortage of supply and there's growing demand. So that's quite comforting. As I mentioned earlier, Bolivia's just had, our property's in Bolivia. They just had a presidential election. They're moving away from socialism back to capitalism. They're favoring mining,

27:06 they're short of US dollars and wanting foreign investment. So all of that bodes well. We're not in a production scenario yet. We don't have any off-take agreements, we're not in a position to do that, but we're moving, I think in the next few months we're going to be in a position to make a production decision and I think we're well-placed to go forward from there. And Rick, you're transitioning nicely for us into sort of the Part B here, a natural follow-up I think is in government support, but then also thinking more globally or internationally,

27:42 I'll ask you individuals and Reid, I'll ask you to lead us off here. Just what, for investors looking to acquaint themselves or understand the space, what are international events or policies or politics, upcoming sort of international macro influences should should investors be aware of in terms of how they pertain to Titan mining, Rita?

28:01 I think specifically for us, really, as I always call it, we're part of the broader rare earths complex. I think what has become very obvious over the course of the last year, really, is that some of these restrictions which China has introduced, they're not just there to come and go, they really are a part of their national security and a part of their national policy.

28:29 So I think what that bodes for other countries, including the United States, is just to be able to develop independent supply chains, probably together with certain allies, which the United States is doing. And I think for every country now, looking at projects within their own countries, being able to onshore everything from mining all the way to downstream processing. I mean the United States has close to 5500 data centers and China has close to 450 data centers. We sit at the top of you know basically the AI AI revolution. And I think you know if we want to continue leading the way we are, particularly in the United States, we have to continue to position critical materials projects just like this current administration has done.

29:18 So just by way of ending remarks, I don't think this is, I think the government, the investors, I think there's a whole sort of value realization that critical materials or mining or whatever we'd like to call it, is an absolute essential. And obviously we haven't had a significant amount of investment in this sector, but it's really good to see, as David said, a huge amount of inflows, a lot of strategic support, which will hopefully help us do more. Very good. And Dave, over to you, just international events or policies or politics that investors should be keeping an eye on? Those are all really good points, which I totally agree with. And the other way to look at it, I think is, and this really got highlighted, I think more so during the COVID pandemic and all the supply chain issues it caused.

30:08 Countries were exposed for how dependent they were on other countries. So I think that really brought that to the top of mind and say, as a sovereign nation, we cannot be totally reliant on other countries. We're seeing now that that's been identified, countries try to understand how do we get ourselves back into a position of sustainability? And then the other part of that is something that Rick touched on is where are you going to get it from? There are access to these minerals other places, but are those places operating with circumstances that would be aligned with the value system of the countries you live in? So those are the 2 big things which I think is going to drive a ton of investment. And frankly, you know, it's a fact that most Western countries have just not invested in exploration and development like many parts of the East. And so We are really playing a lot of catch up and I think that's a tremendous opportunity for companies like the group on this call here today that are leading the charge into that.

31:08 So it's been realized, now we're in that process of how do we get it done and it's going to be companies like this that really identify the opportunities and execute on those plans. And then layered on top of that is not only do countries want to just be sustainable, these metals, a lot of them have become politicized and even taken to another level of weaponized. So it's this perfect storm we have setting up here where the people that have the good assets and the good places to address these problems should be properly valued in a matter of, I think, sooner rather than later. And it takes a lot of work and time to get to these levels. It's not like you can overnight say, oh, we need more this critical metal or that and just go get it. It takes decades to find these things, to finance it, and most importantly, to have the technical success. Your odds of finding a economic deposit is 1 in a thousand or less.

32:04 And ourselves and the companies on this call are there already. So this is the real opportunity in my view, and it's a good position to be in. And Rick, you sort of toed into this with your previous answer to the questions, but if you had any follow-up content or ideas, please feel free. Yeah, I'd like to mention it's not just recovery or finding the metals, it's also the recovery process that's critical, and the Chinese control that right now. There's very few places, partially because of environmental concerns that were passed over to China, but also because the technology hasn't advanced as much as it should. And it's finding the metal is one thing, recovering the metal economically is quite another.

32:53 And that task still remains. And my biggest investments are in vanadium batteries, which I believe are superior to lithium batteries for grid scale operations, solar panels. And I think China is way ahead of us in a bunch of these areas and can do a lot more because they have an authoritarian government and they control the media. And if they want to build a road, they can say we're going to build a road. They don't have to wait 2 years to get the permitting. So all of these elements come into play. We're very slow here in terms of permitting from discovery of a mine to production now, I believe is about 17 years.

33:40 And that's a very long time to wait. So the element of being able to find and get to production, get to cash flow, get a product out to market is getting more and more critical. And on a competitive basis, the West has to address those issues. Excellent. I'll pass this one right back to you, Rick, to switch gears here a bit. Even in the midst of this very remarkable recent push in the metal space, what do you think is still being overlooked? What do you think that investors are still maybe not quite understanding or are missing that might help them succeed more? Well, as noted, there's been a 10 year absence of funding for the junior sector overall.

34:28 So even Our area has been, people don't know what it is. There's an awareness. Obviously, I was fortunate here to introduce a few of the application of tantalum, but there's a whole education process to be held. And people have to go back and teach kids that having a cell phone is reliant on metals. And if we didn't have the metals, the environmental aspect of it is such that it's one aspect. Excuse me, can you go up please? Sorry. Yeah, there's an education process.

35:22 Dave, what about you? Is there something that you think that investors are maybe not quite twigging to yet or what would you draw attention to? Yeah, I think we touched on a few of them, but again, I'll come back to just, you know, where are you going to find these deposits? And what's the real value of them today? And the market I don't think is priced in, especially companies that have, you know, resources or near resources and are in good places. The amount of time and effort it takes to get there, the market's not factored in at all. Just to give an example, because people understand maybe the gold market better, the average junior is probably trading somewhere between 30 and $50 an ounce in the ground. Gold's trading at 4,000, even if it was 3,000. Like that is such a big discrepancy. If you look at like a white gold, 3 million ounces, even tempered at $3,000, that's $9 billion of value.

36:11 Even at 10%, it's like 900 million. So clearly the market's not valued these properly And why is that? You know, it's a competitive force as people are investing in other areas, but there's a lag in the cycle. It's just coming to the forefront of people's attention now. Yeah, I want a data center. Yeah, I want electric cars. Well, where are you gonna get all this power from? How are you going to conduct all this power? We need to increase our defence. Well, where are you going to get all these rare earths? And that's the first step. So I think we're in that awareness phase. I think we're in very early. And now you see the government leading, saying, OK, well, let's go after and we're going to need to support these projects. And what that should do is bring more comfort and more validation to the opportunity and allow for these investors to sort of follow that. So I think it's really just looking for those opportunities in good places that can support this, what I believe is now a totally global initiative.

37:08 And I think there's going to be a fight over all these minerals going forward. Rita, yourself, any daylight there you can contribute to those thoughts? No, I think I agree with everything that's been said here. I think one of the key things, really, which we've discovered with our project that, as David said, it's important to be in a good jurisdiction, which is often underplayed. You do need something which is economic. But for us, it's really become about near-term production. That's what it's become. And, you know, that I think plays the key key role here. In the United States, we've clearly taken steps to reduce permitting measures to effectively align things such as Fast 41. But I think that's the advantage here and that is what you know critical minerals investors should really be looking for is near-term economic opportunities you know which really have infrastructure, have resources, are in a tier 1 jurisdiction, all of those things that really make development easier, so you can get a return on investment, but more important, production.

38:16 And I think that really needs to be focused upon. Well, Anrita, I'll come back to you. I think that maybe you're already toying into this, the next question here, sort of a flip side conversation to what I just asked is cautionary words, right? Investors who are perhaps new or undereducated or still learning as we go, right? And still just want, no, they want exposure, but maybe aren't sure they're getting themselves into. And you spoke about the criticality of near-term production. Do you just want to discuss maybe a sort of a cautionary thing or sort of an educated approach to help people navigate these waters more successfully? Yeah, I mean, when we think about it, and clearly, you know, we, the way we think about and this is a second project for us, obviously, we are an operating mine. So, you know, what we really think about is how do we have a capital efficient project so that's, you know, low capex but with scalability and have significant size in the domestic industry, particularly across niche materials.

39:18 We think about really all of these projects do need some sort of demand underpin because things like graphite don't really, they're a contract market, they're not traded openly. So I think focusing on projects which yes, are near-term production, but have some sort of demand underpinning, or really if you're based in the United States then you know you benefit from some sort of policy mechanism such as a price floor which the United States government introduces for domestic projects. I think so long as you underwrite your investment across, you know, all of those very known variables that hey You know, these guys can come into production. They have a manageable capex They may have an offtake or they have government support which really underpins their cash flows I think there is there's there's huge opportunity for value creation And you know, it's it's a whole new world for the mineral sector.

40:12 And I think you get it, just the flows that we're seeing and the macro, and the macro funds that we're seeing. I mean, I'm seeing multi-strats come into the industry, which I never have. So, you know, I think there's a great opportunity here to create value. But obviously, you know, certain key things do need to be flagged for investors. Very good. And Dave, on to you. Yeah, those are great points. A couple of things that maybe I could add to that would be investors need to understand the size of the market. There's a lot of very strategic needs for some of these things, but if it's a small market, what is the real economic opportunity? That's one thing to be mindful of. The other thing, you have to understand metallurgy. That's a factor in all types of deposits. I think it's even more of a factor in some of these rare earths and other types of deposits.

41:05 There's the old saying, great is king and metallurgy is God. That's part of the reason we're so excited about White Gold. I think we really check both those boxes, but it can get really complicated. So be careful, you know, just chasing headlines and look for companies with assets where the work's been done to check those boxes also. Very good. On to you, Rick. I guess I agree with everything said. I guess one of the major elements to consider is always the social license. I would think on any project now, about a third of the project should be attributed to social license. And that means where the people are, how they're being treated, whether you're being accepted locally, what you're doing for the community, their participation.

41:53 So I think that's an important factor in every project now around the world. Again, just going on to what David said, it's one thing having the metal. It's another thing recovering it. And so how the costs get in, what the cost of recovery is, who does that, where? In our case, we're looking at something that's new tech. It's an old technology that has been revamped and they're talking about vaporizing and then you get much greater recoveries. I don't know how the costs will factor out but it's something we're already looking into even though we're not in production. But I think we're going to see a lot of technological advances on the recovery side.

42:40 So that's the only thing I'd add to that. Very good. And just one more question here and there's quite a few audience questions coming in here now, just a quick reminder to get those in, we'll have lots of time here at the end. Maybe just to end it and Dave I'll let you lead this one off, but where are things going from here, right? I mean from my watch list the last week or so and things track gold and that's not always true, I know, but gold does drive the bus for a lot of metals, for better or for worse. And so gold obviously had a huge run and then has taken a bit of a breather here the last couple of weeks. I guess my question to you, Dave, And then I'll let the other ones chime in as well. But where are your thoughts on here from where the market at large is headed? Do you think that we're kind of going to be trading sideways here a bit or where are we in this bull run still? I think there were very early days.

43:29 Nothing goes straight up. There's gonna be ebbs and flows. You're right. I do agree that the Gold will leave it all because one thing you have to understand, we're all sort of participants in this venture ecosystem. I think more people are familiar with Gold as Gold price appreciates. You look to make more investments are more comfortable redeploying capital there that provides capital to the venture ecosystem, which may be that will then get redeployed into other lesser known metals. So I do, you know, just based on historic cycles, I think we're in the earlier phases here. And what you also have to remember, there has been a dynamic shift globally in the underpinning of these markets, be it for Gold or be it for these critical minerals. It's human nature, the markets will get ahead of themselves, they'll pull back, they'll consolidate.

44:16 But what is important is these topics are now becoming front and centre in global headlines. The capital is not going to rotate overnight, but you do see the early steps happening with large investment organisations hiring on the expertise to evaluate that. And that's going to take them, I don't know, 6 months to get the right people in place, 6 months to do the analysis. But unless you somehow think that global stability is going to come back overnight and the push for advancement is going to come back overnight and companies are no longer going to have sovereign resources to themselves. I don't see what's going to slow down this train anytime soon. Rick, your thoughts on that one? Where the sector is headed from here? The sector is heading up. The demand for these metals is growing. The applications are getting better.

45:11 And I'm quite comfortable in saying that. On the gold front, I think the retail line today is profit-taking. I'm not sure that's quite what's taking place. I think if you go back and look over the last couple of weeks, there was a little play in London on the physical silver side, And there was a concern that there was a squeeze taking place and the best way to counter that is to reduce the price of gold. And I think that's what happened. So I'm not going into some theories here, but that may be what's taking place longer term I think that that we're still on an uptrend and on these critical metals there's an awareness that they are in need There's an awareness that the West has fallen behind and we have to catch up.

46:09 Very good. And Rita, there's a couple of questions from the audience I'll lead off with you, but I'll just give you an opportunity there to follow up on just where you think maybe the market at large is headed here over the next short order? Yeah, I think, I mean, I agree with everything that's been said. As a U.S. Domestic producer, you know, for us as a producer, we obviously seen the uptake in commodity pricing, which we have direct leverage to. But more importantly, I think what we are seeing is just this is a reindustrialization phase for the United States. And, you know, in this phase, demand doesn't grow 1 X or, you know, 20 percent, 30 percent. You have multiple folds of fundamental demand. That's largely because, you know, you've displaced huge producers and you have to find domestic solutions.

46:56 So, you know, and I don't think that's I don't think that's specific to just the United States. Overall, North America is going through that. Europe is going through that. So I think that the fundamental demand pathway continues to move upwards. You have a lot of flows coming into the sector. As we said, there are lots of projects out there, and it's about selecting the right ones, ones that we've all discussed, which have the characteristics going from resource to metallurgy to funding to social license and all of those things. So yeah, I believe that it's up from here on. Yeah, excellent. Well, I think that brings it to the end for my questions here, folks. There are quite a few questions that have come into the chat and Rita, as promised, I'll bring it right back to you. There's a couple of questions here for you and maybe I'll just, Michael has one here just regarding germanium.

47:50 I'll just read this verbatim and I'll let you work with it. But germanium prices have doubled in a couple of months. Could that change priorities for Titan in the near term to begin recovery from zinc tailings? And then as a follow-up to that, how soon could production start from there? Yeah, I mean, I think we put out a press release last week, we're already evaluating the opportunity. I think prices have almost gone up 40 percent over the course of the last few months and we kind of see them moving upwards from here on. That program is ongoing and we expect to be able to understand the wider impact on our zinc business over the course of the next few months. And then I'll follow up with 1 from Bruce here as well, who appreciated the conversation and the answers that everyone was providing.

48:39 But to Rita as well, how closely are you working with North American manufacturers and suppliers for your consumer goals? Are you working within North America specifically or looking globally? Or where's, what's the, where are you? So the irony of the situation is most of the North American producers do actually have Asian roots. You know, one of the largest producers of really batteries tends to be Panasonic or LG. So we are obviously very focused with their North American procurement teams, with their North American leadership. But most of the technical expertise still lies in Japan and in South Korea. So yes, we are in discussions with most of our potential offtakers based out of North America. But I would say they have a global presence.

49:26 OK, thank you. Dave, on to you. Just for White Gold, what's the, and this is from Launch Boardroom, What's the exploration strategy and expected timing for spinning out your critical metals assets in a separate public company? And how should investors think about valuing this new entity? Okay. 3 question questions. The exploration strategy is we've deployed the same proprietary protocol that's been used to discover millions and millions of ounces of Gold in our district so far. It's all very applicable because what it's looking to identify is mineralized systems. And then as we advance through the different steps of the protocol, we're able to hone in on what the prospective mineralization might be. That's what we've been doing. We've now taken most of them through the geochemical analysis.

50:11 We've, last year and continuing to this year, done the geophysical, which based on the prospectivity there will lead to the drilling phase. That is the really exciting phase. That is the truth-telling phase. And that's what we'll be doing going forward, in addition to looking for more targets. But we do have several very advanced targets that will be drill-ready or are drill-ready now. So really excited for that. We have some of these, as I mentioned, besides one of the largest Copper Gold targets in all of Canada. I think if you can have some success there, you asked about what's the House of Messrs be thinking about that. I think that would be extremely well regarded by the market. We're in the process of identifying which properties will go into the spin out. And how can they think about valuing that? I would say the best thing I could point to is a company called Yukon Metals.

51:01 It's been put together by largely the Birdall Group, the same group that was responsible for that Snow Lion big discovery in the Yukon. And they had a number of interesting projects. Unlinked White Gold, which Sean Ryan had put them all together. They sort of kept them separate. We had them all together and now we're going to be spinning it out. They're similar in level of advancement, types of mineral opportunities. And I think that one's trading at a US$50M market cap on its own. So I do think these are truly high prospectivity type targets. They're in great places. The best place to make a discovery is near an existing discovery. That's what we're fortunate to have. And once they have the proper identification and are being run by the right team and the story is being told in an isolated opportunity, I think we're gonna see a lot of traction there as well.

51:51 Very good, and so we just have 2 questions left, very quick ones. We've got the long-winded ones out of the way here. This one's for Rick though. Rick, just Dwayne's asking, do you have plans? Are you listed in the US? And I don't think you are. And just so the natural follow-up I'll ask for him is, are there plans for an OTC listing at all? And not at this time, no. We've got a lot of growth opportunities. And when we get a little bit bigger, we'll look at that. Very good. And so same question on a somewhat further down the trajectory here for Rita, just a similar question here. When, what are the expected timelines for listing on the NYSE for you? So we're pretty close. I think it all depends on when government shutdown opens and we're able to file with the SEC.

52:37 I think we will have more updates on that in the coming week and obviously look forward to being listed on the NIC in the next few weeks or the month again, depending on when government shutdown opens. Well, folks, that's it from me. Thank you very much. This has been a very informative conversation for me. I hope everyone listening in enjoyed it as well. Just a reminder that it has been recorded, so if you want to see the recording, I'm sure that 6 will get it up onto YouTube here in short order. Otherwise, my name is Matthew, and to the 3 panelists, thank you