welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn the Guzman with investing News Network I'm speaking with niik kakos president and CEO of Argentina lithium and energy hi niik Hi Marilyn good to meet you likewise yeah so um let's start a conversation I guess this is the beginning of 201 24 yes and you've previously said that you expect 2024 to be a transformative year for Argentina lithium could you talk a bit more about this what do you mean by this well there's so much going on and so much in


the store for 2024 number one uh as we continue drilling with our one of our Flagship we have two Flagship projects so our first Flagship project rank on we have drill programs that are continuing but I think the the real uh critical point will be by middle of 2024 well we will have our first resource calculation I think that will set the company sort of on stage for you know solidifying uh our our Discovery and sharing with the investment world the magnitude of what we have the second uh point is that um


we have a on our second Flagship project our Anto fire project it's still going through the permitting process we expect the permits to be granted sometime in the second quarter as soon as that starts geophysics and drilling will begin there too so we are going to have a very active program for the ballot of the year and we're very excited about our onto fire project because uh two reasons number one is twice the size of our first project the ring con so the potential is much bigger and second uh it's uh it neighbors what


of the largest lithium deposit in Argentina which is now owned by Albero which is the world's second largest lithium producer so there's a lot of potential there and there's a lot of potential I think here with Argentina lithium to make a lot of noise in 2024 that's great yeah so one of the um I guess Milestones from 2023 was the investment deal with stellantis well yeah so it's been three months since that happened what has um happened since then how has that influence served the


trajectory of your project well first and foremost it it's changed our overall strategy how we approach our exporation progam because uh we don't have to pay attention to the short-term you know machinations of of the stock market we can maintain a longer term view with the keeping our strategic goal in place to defining a resource defining an engineering study and then going into production so those are the kind of the big three Milestones that we're look at and the second thing it allows us to do


is well to accelerate our expiration program we can be active at a time when the the rest of the lithium industry is pulling back and trying to conserve the capital that they have but as a junior we're in a very privileged situation here where we're actually speeding up and accelerating things uh we've retooled all our expiration budgets um permitting is the is the one thing that has to come into place and that's going to come in place over the coming months here and then we'll have two and three


drill rigs turning at the same time and being able to advance our projects uh to that pre-feasibility study stage much much quicker than we originally anticipated so talking about 2024 uh could you sort of give us an overview of what the plans for 2024 I'm sure you know I know you've already given us a little bit of a a preview of it but uh if you want to go into details well sure on a ringcon project it's well just over just about 5200 uh hectares of property and it there's three different it's broken up


into three different areas throughout this Salt Lake or salars as they're know in Argentina we've been focusing on one area we're going to we're drilling on it right now in fact we had some good drill results that we announced today on that um and then we have a few more holes to go there and then we're going to move to the other area and then to the other so we're going to have a drill program going throughout the whole year our first uh as I said earlier First Resource calculation will come out by


mid 2024 but then as we continue to move and and drill out the rest there'll be more resource calculations that coming down the pipeline and then of course we've got our second Flagship project the Ania with the permits coming in over the next few months I think an aggressive drill program will we anticipate to have at least two drill rigs on that I think uh as we get results from that it'll highlight what the potential of that salar is and I think it has the potential to really add


some significant value to Argentina lithium as a company are you looking at more outtake agreements down the road and and I asked this because um you know one webinar I've um I've watched in the past they mention you know all the incentives that are coming from the government um in terms of the critical minerals um strategy a lot of it is going Downstream in the uh supply chain down Tre to car manufacturers and like what are your thoughts on that and and what's the strategy towards uh you know more off


agreements well this is what what happened to us we're seeing one of the largest car makers in the world's stantis making a a really sizable investment in a junior exploration company you know 90 million us equivalent we paid for in pesos but in a company that had a market capap at that time of 20 million they bought 19.9% of our company what was their incentive they're not stock Pickers they're they're they're you know they they picked good companies that's why they


picked us I like the thing um but ultimately what they're after is they want the lithium it's an option on the price of lithium they have as I understand it very detailed plans of what their electric vehicle production lines will look like what their battery and their lithium requirements are going to look like and they foresee shortages and they trying to cover for these shortages by going to some of the uh best areas in the world to B lithium discoveries and that'ss in with in Argentina and they chose us because


we're part of a well-known the gr group extremely well-known in Argentina one of the more successful exploration groups there so we were able to they like the quality of the projects we had the investment from them and yes we have an off tap deal but what does that mean it means that when we go into production uh we promise to sell them up to 15,000 tons per of lithium carbonate per year for seven years and we can expand that and uh extend that as we feel warranted but they're going to pay for that so


it's from my point of you having a customer at the end of the day while we're still building up lithium resources it doesn't get better the best deal so we're in VC in Vancouver right now what's a key message you'd like attendees here to know about Argentina lithium well I I like them to know that we're not like other argen like other lithium companies uh whether in Argentina and elsewhere I think we're unique number one uh who we are we have an exceptional reputation in Argentina


and an exceptional reputation to be successful so Argentina lithium is run you know by the right management team we have the right partner here with stellantis has given us a Financial Freedom so to speak and to to pursue our exploration dreams and I think with the Quantum of the work that we have planned out for this year I think uh our shareholders are going to be pleased by the end of the year that's my my goal great thanks Nico for joining me and speaking with me today my pleasure and thanks everyone for watching join us


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