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 [Music] welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn dezman with investing news.com we're here at pdac and I'm speaking with Ian Roger CEO of jindel Le Hi Ian hi thanks for having me yeah it's good to have you so You' recently sold a non-core asset to realize additional funding walk us through that transaction and what it means for gindy's work program over the next 12 months yeah for sure um so Ginder Lee for a bit of context Ginder Le has been around for you know 20 odd years and we've had create a lot of

value for shareholders through expiration success and partnering assets and this was um I guess a tail end of of of that strategy uh we had some Australian assets U some interesting Greenfield expiration was fund them out to years ago and this was the last 25% stake and it liberated in the order of $2.75 million Australian and then lithium bare Market that was a really non-d delution way to get uh funding in the door and be able to progress our Flagship m project so in this year ahead we've got um you know major perming

mileston and government funding um and we're investigating U you know Partnerships take the project forward into feasibility study and that this funding really allows us to execute on all those right so let's talk about the mcdermoth uh project that's the one of the largest lithium deposits in the US what's your strategy to leverage this dominant position against the backdrop of the North American supply chain yeah well um the McD project whaty said one of the largest um in the in the US it's

also one of the most advanced uh sedimentary lithium deposits in the US we completed to the PFS last year it's one of four um that has a reserve and you the PFS showed a a long life low cost large scale um you know bottom the cost curb type um project so lots of uh potential and then in a lot of ways the the project looks you know has a metrics like a copper P free asset in terms of big capital investment but long life production in the order of you know 60 years um production B with only a small

portion of the resource and so how do you take those um uh projects forward is through Partnerships and so there's been a lot of spite the market head wins uh in terms of equity Capital markets strategic players have now continue to show interest in the space our neighbors and with the Americas recently upsized their their um deal last year with General Motors to 945 million us and so we're close to appointing some advisors to help um bring in a partner to help uh develop it it through the ability stage

to a final investment decision in a couple of years time so that's a core Focus for us and then the other part of the strategy is Government funding we obviously um the project could be a you know really glow cost long life source of americanmade battery grade chemical so um there's a really strategic value we've got a government grant application f with the Department of Defense um which could co-fund the next stage of work uh alongside you know potential partnership funding so that's our

strategy and with that application we should we should um know whether we're successful in the first time St for this year so um we've got a couple of K CS in the pop one so let's uh elaborate that uh for a bit that um strategic agreement with the Department of energy you've had that um talk about that partnership and how that enhances the development of the mcdermid project yeah so in SE I think it was September last year we signed a Cooperative research and development agreement with um the department of

energy through their through some of their Labs it's um part of this What's called the CMI Hub and that's in in in um collaboration with some Regional universities including Lawrence Berkeley um also the local mines department and the scope of it covered a couple different items one is around cost reduction um uh the other ones around you know improving sustainability outcomes reducing water usage for example and the other key one is um investigation byproducts there's all co-products there's a lot of other um

elements that are in the in the deposit that potentially benefit particularly the develop of energy Department of Defense so that that work um you know as early days they've been on site a couple times over the last couple of months um we'll see where that where the outcomes of that work but it has the potential to feed in and improve you know the outcomes of the the Fe um sorry feed into the scope of the feasibility study alongside our own optimization work that we're doing with our Engineers right

we've talked about the um extensiveness expansiveness of the mcdermit uh project um and with the increasing demand for lithium uh and and the the push to secure domestic of Supply in in North America can you talk talk about some of the key economic uh and Technical factors that make the project a competitive source of mithum yeah okay yeah I think like the project like I mentioned is is one of more advanced um withum sedimentary um deposits it's also you know a higher grade than than a lot

of our peers not all of them but it's it's you know it's a high quality um um deposit it's also really efficient way to get to chemicals if you look at from a North American perspective you know spine in Canada um um but compared to say spine it's a it's much more efficient less intense and complex way to get to to lithium chemicals which also in the in the US which is a um you know obviously really strategic um given the any Administration is doubling down on on sourcing domestic critical

minerals so they're some of the key the key aspects the the other bit I guess to differentiate ourselves is that it's large scale you know and long life like we arbitrarily cut cut off the uh um project at 63 years um um uh Project Life as part of the the PFS but it only uses like 15% of um resource base so it really has the potential to produce lowcost chemicals I me that's I think a differentiator for us and I I think from a commercial point of view I think the mark you we the PFS only came out last

year the Market's been soft um we want you know the irn is we one of the more advanced we're also one of the the cheapest um on on any basically valuation metric so we'd encourage you know investors that look at it through that context and are there any upcoming catalysts that investor should look watch for yeah we're pretty close to pointing some advisor on on the on the partnership side and that that'll be a process that you know extends through the middle of of this year uh we've got

a um our plan of operations is is due for approval uh middle year Q3 hopefully uh and then we're also working on this dep Department of Defense Grant application that I mentioned U we haven't disclosed the amount of that but it could you know could Co it's material given to the size of the company it could co-fund up to 50% of the next stage of work including a feasibility study drill program and uh test work so there's lots of uh even in the down Market that funding's really allowed us

you know if you look at you know if history is a guide um you know the market are all cover um you know when people don't expect it and those projects that are um have managed to progress through the bottom of the market are going to be best positioned and so that funding's really allowed us to continue these key um uh um work streams and what we think will be positioned for when the market recovers right looking forward to hearing more about that thanks again Ian for uh joining me today thank you and thanks

everyone for watching join us again next time for another edition of c insights [Music]