welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn de Gman with Inn I'm speaking with Killian Charles president and CEO of Brunswick exploration hi Killian hi thank you for having me yes it's good to have you um I guess I think we can start our conversation with just a high level I wanted to get your insights on sort of the impact of the US inflation reduction act since it's been instituted and you know the Canadian critical minerals uh strategy how has that impacted um incentives and Investments how they


impacted the mining sector yeah actually that's a great question um you know when I look at the inflation reduction act it is something that is redesigning uh the global economy to a certain extent you know we need to be focused on critical elements such as lithium obviously but other things like copper and what it that act sort of does is reshore a lot of manufacturing capacity into the US and when you're reshoring a lot of the manufacturing capacity it also has a huge impact on bringing that raw


commodity back into that market specifically as it relates to to lithium you know lithium is a little bit of an industrial mineral right Australia developed first in terms of lithium production because it was closest to the number one lithium manufacturer or user I should say which was China and so you know Transportation costs play a huge impact in that and when I look at the US and when I look at significant amount of investment by corporations into the US to build that sort of Battery Technology


battery capacity in America they're going to need what would like to say a local source of Commodities and so it's caused a huge impact that's why you see a number of significant company American companies looking to two candidate to supply themselves I always like to to joke and say you know for from an American's perspective the lithium triangle has nothing to do with South America and everything to do with the eastern half of the US you know Quebec and Ontario and so from that perspective


it's causing a lot of focus on parts of Canada and companies like Bruns expiration which are focused on specifically lithium expiration in kada St to benefit quite greatly from that I would imagine yes so just specifically I was that was going to be my next question was you know with all these Investments um and incentives uh how has it specifically benefited your company from these programs because I I remember uh there was a webinar that I I attended um they were talking about some of these


incentives that a lot of it most of it are going you know mostly to the downstream absolutely in the supply chain so could you talk about sort of how has that benefited your company specifically look it's still almost exclusively in the on the downstream side and that's a CR a slow moving crisis I guess you could say a a forecasted train crash um Because unless we have more investment on the Upstream unless we make more discoveries of Commodities like lithium which I have right here um we're going to enter a


crisis and so you know I would say from the benefit of bringing attention to the situation from the benefit of bringing investor visibility on it it's been beneficial and in terms of direct investments from let's say corporations they're still very much focused on the downstream types type of things but I think that's going to change it's going to have to change to be quite Frank um you simply cannot say that you are going to invest so much Downstream into manufacturing capacity without actually investing in


the Commodities that's necessary and so you know look I'm from Quebec and we see significant Investments um from both the federal and provincial governments into battery plans uh into manufacturing capacity and Quebec has significant amount of lithium potential but you simply don't see the same level in investment you know we're you talking about billions of dollars of investment and when you think about it on the the Upstream side where you know it's pennies relative to that right so


how do you um see that changing so obviously you know lithium is one of those um materials that are that the analysts are predicting you know we're going to have a short supply you ask demand increases how do you see that changing and you know with with the more Investments be enough to change sort of the dynamic for the supply side you know it's it's tough um lithium is a relatively small market and it's a market that moves quite significantly I think even if you take a step back and


look at the lithium price over 36 last 36 months you'll be like well that's a hell of a roller coaster ride um and that's that's indicative of an industry that is still growing and that it's still somewhat in it it's in its infancy but irrespective of that roller coaster right Investments are still happening on the downstream side and those investments will have direct impa impacts on supply and demand Dynamics so you know my view has always been one of those things where when I look on a


medium and God for bid a long-term basis uh there's a lot of pressure there's a lot of pressure out there and there's a lot of question in terms of well it's it's great that we set all these beautiful objective and it's great that we make as collectively as a society to say we're going to do decarbonization and it's fantastic that we make these you know job Investments and say we're going to have all these high-paying jobs but without access to those raw Commodities it's going to be really


tough to actually execute them and so you know in my mind when I look at Supply Dynamics you know Minds take a long time to build I would even say that it's frankly almost too late for some of these things if if things don't drastically change and so a company like Brunswick exploration definitely stands to benefit from it but in an atypical we right it's it's definitely brings a lot of investor attention attention but at the same time you know it causes or it stands to cause you know price spikes


which you know we we stand to benefit and consolidation in the space you know you saw significant amount of consolidation m&a uh in Western Australia over the last 10 years the space is going to be doing the exact same thing in North America there's there's frankly no difference as to why you wouldn't see that same amount of m&a activity and companies that have you know good assets and strong jurisdictions which is I might be biased but that's what I think Brunswick exploration has um we will stand to gain


from that benefit right and and this might be a good time to talk about your projects your Flagship Mirage project what the status of that project is in sort of your plans for 2024 yeah so we we it's it's been a project that's moved quite quickly um people forget there's been Forest fir significant forest fires in in Quebec last year so we actually only managed to get there in August and within a month of Landing we were drilling 5,000 meters uh we just recently put out our last set of assets


around then and you know what we're discovering up there is something quite significant you know very highgrade uh tick intercepts across multiple uh spot jamine bearing dikes it's exactly what you want to be finding and so you know when I look to the plan this year you know the the simple answer is more of the same but truly that's what expiration is about right people forget that you know Junior miners are in there or Junior explorers are are meant to find mins and so that's what we want to


demonstrate this year is that we believe that Mirage is something that's economically significant it has a chance of being a mine so that means lots of drilling lots of prospecting there's so many things that we have haven't even approached yet at Mirage undrilled targets uh there's a lot more you know basic prospecting that needs to happen uh it's going to be it's going to be a busy year lots and lots to do on the docket right well thanks again for uh joining us kilan and uh good luck on


your 2024 exploration plans thank you thanks and thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another engaging conversation on Co 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