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  welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn De Guzman with investing news.com we're here at v i in Vancouver and I'm sitting with Killian Charles of President and too of Brunswick exploration hi kilan a pleasure to be here yes it's good to have you so let's talk about lithium um 2024 hasn't been a good year you know it's been a challenging year for lithium but maybe give us your take on the prospects uh for lithium in 2025 that's a good question you know when when you think about 2024 it was it definitely

was a challenging year but it's it's not all bad I mean lithium demand grew more aggressively than what people expected you know there's always been a hubub about you know lithium or sorry electric cars sales going down I think that's just a lot of noise you know when it comes to decarbonization when it comes to lithium demand it's a much larger pictured in that and when you look to 2025 I think we're going to be surprised on the demand side because one of the main Avenues of growth has been

renewable energy installation uh I I think we're now reaching a point where there's one gwatt of solar energy being installed on a daily basis that's an astounding number 15 years ago it would take us half a year to reach that installation rate and we're doing it on a daily basis and I was just reading China is looking to install roughly about 10% of can's total power generation we generate a lot of power in Canada uh in Renewables and that's a lot of lithium demand because Renewables

need ways of storing that Excess power during the day and that's where a lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide batteries come in nice and clear and so I expect lithium demand to continue surprising on the upside which is obviously um going to make for a much healthier lithium price going into uh this year into 2025 so I really do believe that the the darkest part is behind us when it comes to lithium price and you know when we look to the Future it's going to be a healthier price and I think a lot

of companies juniors are going to benefit from that and you know we hope to be in there as well benefiting from a healthier lithium price but ultimately you know companies are judged on the strength of our of their projects and you know we have to have some pretty strong projects in Brunswick as well irrespective of the Litin price right and you know speaking of projects you've had some significant successes with your Mirage project in Quebec tell us a bit more about that and the progress uh uh

and what are your plans for this year yeah so you know Mirage is an asset that we discovered in late 2023 uh Green Field Discovery and then we we pushed it quite hard you know we've now drilled almost 177,000 MERS uh we're about to initiate iate a new drill campaign uh where we're looking to drill probably another 5 to 7,000 M you know we're we're all we always take the view that we need to move our assets ahead you know the lithium price might be weaker so we're a little bit more careful in

how we move uh or Advance our assets but you know we're we're hoping to demonstrate strong Metallurgy of the project demonstrate that it can be a lowcost producer and and show the scale of this ass continue showing the scale and scope of this asset you know Quebec is blessed with a significant number of frankly world class assets and um and Mirage sits in probably one of the most exciting areas in the James Bay in Quebec uh having you know some pretty interesting neighbors across the board

be it Patriot be it Winsome and you know we're out there delineating another massive lithium Assets in the province as well so it's it's definitely the right place to be with the right asset and the right company right and then you have another uh lithium project in Greenland and I think uh investors will be interested you know to know about that part of the world and what what makes that project compelling yeah look uh Greenland is definitely one asset or an area I should say that is heating up geopolitically to

a certain extent um you know what we are in Brunswick is we're we're explorationists I mean we understand how to explore for lithium we're here to make lithium discoveries and you know we had gone in explore across allanda from almost those Coast to Coast I mean from the maritime straight through almost through Alberta uh we explored across many many provinces in the country and uh you know we quickly realized that the potential geological potential in Quebec is just outsize and so focused there but

we still wanted to leverage that expertise we built and so I'll be honest Greenland is something that's been in the back of our head for about three years now and 2024 we finally got around putting pen to paper uh staked a significant portfolio in the country we were the only ones there looking for ex for lithium and we Remain the only company looking for lithium in greenand so definitely had first mover Advantage uh for the first time we went there in 2024 and it took us about 3 weeks for us

to make a discovery it was very very fast we made it right next to the capital of Nook 25,000 people lived there uh easily accessible by number of international flights and we hope to grow from there we've subsequently expanded our POS position in Greenland uh we've done a lot more staking because we want to be uh we see a lot of opportunity I should say we see significant opportunity in the country uh and again it never saw lithium expiration so we believe that uh there's a lot more to be found and that's that's

our bread and butter I mean we're here to find and delineate uh lithium assets and we're going to absolutely be leveraging that in Greenland so the discovery I mean it's easy accessible it's you know on Tide Water it's a short short flight out from the capital by helicopter it's pretty much everything you want to see but obviously we're going to be going back there this year there's a lot more work that needs to be done we as I mentioned staked a lot more so it's going to be another pretty uh

pretty exciting year for Brun exploration irrespective of what the lithium price does right and you've probably you know you've articulated some of it at the beginning uh uh of my question but like we're here at v i and you're speaking to investors what should what are you telling them why should they remain excited or optimistic about lithium yeah look at at the end of the day you know you you you notice Trends and I think that's one of the key things and when it matters for why it matters

for lithium is cost of power I mean that's that's something that Everyone likes to to forget in the equation it's not it's not so much oil versus this versus that policies versus you know right-wing policies versus leftwing policies set that aside for now ultimately solar power is now at such a competitive level that it is one of the cheapest energy sources out there and it's scalable from a small you know solar panel you're putting on your house to a large Industrial Field and ultimately

when people make business decisions you know they're going to take a good hard look at that overall cost base and if the cheapest power available of solar they will invest in solar alongside energy storage which is is where lithium comes into the picture and so that's why I tell people look you need to have exposure to lithium and now's the best time to be owning it you know a lot of these companies on the either be expiration or production you know you want to be a shareholder with

with visibility on that front over 12 24 36 months and lithium has a lot of room to to grow especially from these lows and you want to be involved with companies that are active look we're definitely active across you know now two countries I guess you could say kada and Greenland across two assets and we're going to continue leveraging that expertise we have I think we have more discoveries to make um I'm I'm quite convinced that we're we're still just getting warmed up getting warmed up and

we'll leave it at that thanks again Killian for taking the time to speak to me today thank you my pleasure and thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another edition of CEO insights if you like this video like or leave a comment below we'd love toar hear from you and if you haven't already done so subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive interviews and updates