welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn De Guzman with Inn I'm speaking with Ken Armstrong president and CEO of North Arrow mineral hi Ken how are you I'm good thanks for having me good to see you again so I guess let's we can start our conversation with sort of the um milestones in 2023 for the company you've Acquired and advanced a handful of lithium projects in the Northwest territor so why Northwest Territories well was really it's um this area we know really well um within our group


we've uh a lot of experience in Exploration and and finding deposits of all different types and evaluating them and a lot of that work has been in Canada's North in the nwt and in nunut um in uh you know about a year ago we uh I've been focused on diamonds for quite a while uh and we we decided to make a pivot because we just saw what was happening in the lithium space there was companies coming to the territory picking up projects um sometimes paying a fair bit of money to acquire them and we knew of


opportunities that were available just for staking and so we we went out and did that to get ourselves to where we are now where we have four projects between the two territories but the three important ones are all in the nwt right so that's probably a good time to talk about those projects what the status of those projects are yeah um so the three that are kind of ready to go uh and ready to drill um are the staffy project which we announced the acquisition of a year ago and it's part


of the Yellow Knife pegmatite province which is um right in the Yellow Knife area as the name would suggest and it's a an area that we knew was available for staking it had been mined previously just after the second world war for tantalum and niobium lithium mineralization was noted but never evaluated so this year through 2023 we confirmed confirmed those pegmatites were there discovered a couple more and got uh the permits in place to be able to build a camp and do the exploration drilling um it's located right on great


Slave Lake so easy Transportation access south of the lake to Hay River where rail head is located um and then at the same time we said we were going to look at other opportunities and we were looking at an area not too far from the diamond mines um where the geology is really similar to the yell knife district and identified um me pegmatites on one of our existing Diamond properties which is now our ldg lithium project and then at mayay we confirmed there were some spoing pegmatites there it was open we staked it did the work to


confirm like I said those pegmatites are there the mineralization is very good grades are good so they're all kind of above that 1% li2o number that you want to see when you're talking about spine pegmatite um lithium deposits it's kind of a critical threshold um and the right at surface so again we did the work to confir confirm their locations um and uh get permitting in place so that we're ready to drill them so that's kind of where we start this year so this time last year we didn't have anything now


we've got three lithium projects that are uh that have good high-grade showings at surface that are ready to drill so can you give our audience a little bit more of an Insight on what's coming in 2024 in terms of your exploration plan yeah so the goal will be to see those projects drilled um and that uh the timing of that is something that we're working on in the in the near term we need to figure out uh funding of those of those uh projects but um there's not many Juniors that uh that


are in this position where they have entered the lithium space and have acquired three different projects that have drill ready spine Paya ties at surface that have never been drilled before and that's um that's the main reason that we think we should really be on people's watch list if they're if they're interested in the lithium space so um I'm going to ask you sort of uh you know an overview of what your thoughts are in in the lithy market but I think um maybe if you could talk about


you mentioned your focus on lithium but you have your diamond projects like what's the status of that and what do the investors know about that who's interested in that aspect of your yeah I mean it's we've spent about 10 years um looking at different Diamond opportunities in the territories we have um we have four or five different Diamond projects there basic basically sitting in inventory for us right now um tenure is fine we've done enough work on them there's no pressure to sort of


spend money in order to maintain the properties um and we're going to wait for a diamond Market to to turn around and come come back to us um it includes some pretty pretty significant um projects our nowat project which is a joint venture with burgundy diamond mines who operate the acad diamond mine in the Northwest Territories um is uh the the the now yet project is is a very significant inventory over 20 million carats in the ground there but we can be patient with those and instead for our


our investors right now we're we're really focusing on the lithium assets so with lithium now it's it's uh in terms of pricing it's gone you know through a significant um I guess uh you know changes in 2023 with the price decline um in looking into 2024 what do you see as you know but how does this price decline affect your plans for 2024 oh yeah I mean the prices come down a lot and and we're seeing that in in the sentiment in the market right now um that is uh you know perhaps


could be considered a a a an indication of a relatively new commodity it's trying to find its it's its footing and where it's going to be valued so it's going to be quite volatile and we're certainly seeing that we saw the volatility on the price upside and and then through the last part of of 2023 and into the the start of this year we're seeing the volatility on the on the downside but it doesn't change the thesis for why we need this material and it comes down down to to the requiring


lithium um to be used in battery manufacturing for electrification of the transportation industry um thinking about Supply chains and and trying to keep that product in North America so that we're using North American Source lithium for those batteries that all Remains the Same and and it Remains the Same that if we look out to 20 2030 and Beyond there is still a significant Supply deficit for all of the all the mining type projects that are on the drawing board right now if they were to all get into production and all meet


their timelines which rarely happens in our industry they're still looking at a 10 to 20% deficit for Supply deficit for what we need for the battery manufacturing capacity that's going to be in place at that time so for this year for us the impact is just sentiment and we need to finance like I mentioned and and figure out how we're going to um fund the drilling of these projects and so we'll need to be careful on how we do that um you know one obvious way for us we think is to look for Partnerships to


help us with that funding um um and we're also looking at other opportunities like selling some of our existing projects and seeing if we can monetize them that sort of thing so we're here at BR in Vancouver what's the key message you want the investor sending here to know about your company I think um if for investors who are kind of looking sideways maybe at the lithium space but they think all right if we're at a low now's Now's the Time maybe to make some Investments um really North


Arrow should be on on their watch list we like I mentioned we have three projects with high-grade spoing pegmatite showings at surface they've never been drilled and they are positioned with permits in place in the case of ldg and McKay Camp is already in place they're ready to drill and um like I said there's not many Juniors that can that can say that that they they they're at the the greenfields discovery stage and they've got everything lined up for Discovery this year and and we have that


well thanks again for joining me today well thanks for having me and thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another engaging conversation on C o insights if you like this video make sure you subscribe to our Channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss future updates and interviews see you next [Music] time that