 As the first holes from their phase one drill program have begun being announced for the rare earth deemed as critical minerals by the US and Canadian governments, I'm joined with Appia Rare Earths and Uranium Corp CEO Tom Drives to speak about the exciting results his team is finding at their Ionic Clay project in Brazil. Tom, welcome. Thank you Ben. And thank you for being here. Well, why don't we first begin with the exciting results from the first 17 of 147 holes at your PCH Ionic Clay project in Brazil. What are you finding early on in this phase one drill program? We're very excited with his results from the 17 first drill holes of 100 out of RC reverse circulation holes out of 147 drill holes. What we see is we knew there was mineralization there, but we just found out that the mineralization is very consistent, very good grades. And the other we knew because there were some auger holes done before drill holes that they had indicated mineralization over seven, eight meters. Now with this with the reverse circulation drilling, we found out that we have doubled the width or the depth of the mineralization. So the average is about 13 meters. And the grades are over 1500 parts per million rare earths, which is excellent grades over the average grade of average width of the 13 meters. And within that, there is a very good section, which is double the grades of that. So very, very excited to see that. And it's also very excited to see over the 17 first holes, which is the grades being very consistent and the mineralization is widespread. So quite excited. Yeah, very. And it's even more exciting that it's just the first 17. There's obviously many more still to come. So we're going to find out more about that in the near future. But rare earth elements, if we can just take a moment here, are garnering quite a bit of attention in the media recently, I would argue much more than in recent past. For those who may be new to your story, can you give a quick overview of this project and how it compares to other well known international deposits as you allude to in your news release? We're excited because this is a rare earths in ionic clay, which is basically easier to process, very environmental friendly, very low radioactivity. But more importantly is the grades are equal or better, the first from the 17 holes that we've seen equal or better to other known deposits. For example, in the same area in the same province, there's a deposit that is actually going to end up going development right now. Their average grade is 1,200 parts per million. Our average grade so far is over 1,500 parts per million. And as I said, there's high grade within that. There's another deposit in ionic clay deposit that is being developed in Africa right now. And their average grade is 550 parts per million. So it's very exciting to see this kind of results and over the entire 17 holes. Yeah, that's fantastic to hear. And for those who may be newer to rare earths, you do need that higher parts per million to make these deposits economical. And right now, that's exactly what you guys are seeking to do. Now you also have several properties in the Athabasca basin in Saskatchewan that you have ongoing exploration with as well. How do these projects differ from your ionic clays in Brazil? And can you provide an update on your work there as well? We've got another project in Saskatchewan, Northern Saskatchewan, the Alsace Lake project is high grade rare earths in Monozyme. This is a heart rock project. It has both light rare earths, magnet rare earths, and some heavies. Also in Saskatchewan, we have four other uranium projects. But in terms of the PCH project, the project in Brazil, the ionic clay, we're quite excited because it's very easy to, the rare earths occur within the top 10, 20 meters is within clay, so they're leachable. It's the most environmentally friendly type of deposit that you can have in rare earths, because other deposits like the ones we have in Saskatchewan, they have a thorium and uranium, it's more radioactive. We're down there, the very little radioactivity. It's in the right area within 30 kilometers from a mining town. There's roads, there's power, there's electricity, and it contains more importantly, contains both heavies and light rare earths. That's very important because the heavies are not, they're not very hard to find heavies, the deposits with heavy rare earths. Like for example, China doesn't have a lot of heavy rare earths. And this is all this magnet rich rare earths or magnetic rare earths, which is neodymium, price of neodymium usually that I use for electric vehicle for building electric vehicle motors, basically the permanent magnets. But also you need the heavies because you've got to make those neodymium, price of neodymium work within the magnets. So it's very exciting because apia, we have both, we have a high grade project in Saskatchewan that is rich in magnet rare earths and magnetic rare earths. And also in critical rare earths basically. And also we have this project in Brazil where it has both heavies and light rare earths that are needed for the electrification, the electric vehicles, and all the high tech industries using basically rare earths as well as the aerospace or the defense industry. Yeah, and I'd like to focus on that for a second here as well because I do find it interesting that you may be one of the only exploration companies that currently has the whole package of light and heavy rare earths that are needed to create the permanent magnets used in all EVs, just like you were speaking there. The DoD just dropped 94 million dollars to build a magnet processing facility, which will be the first of its kind in the U.S., which showcases their seriousness to build out critical mineral supply chains at home. How is your company able to leverage this potential, this to potentially garner interest for government bodies and from financial institutions as well? The China basically supplies 80 or 90 percent of the rare earths to the world. So the Western world, the U.S., Europe, and the rest of the world is looking for some secure supplies of rare earths. And as you mentioned, they are actively doing things. They're trying to help companies to advance their projects. We think that, and we know that any project that is basically in North America or South America outside of China, it will have the support of the DoD or other government. To give you an example in Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan government has funded the Saskatchewan Research Council and they're building the first processing plan in North America, which is very exciting because on our Alsace project in Saskatchewan, we don't have to build the processing plan. They will be processing monazite and we can supply them or process the monazite in there. So there's a lot of interest and there's a lot of help from DoD and the Canadian government, I believe the Australian government, the Europeans, to see the critical materials, rare earths and other critical materials being developed. So we think we're going to get a lot of help. And that's fantastic to hear as well. Well, lastly, it's right in your name that your company is also focused on uranium, a very important and widely talked about critical mineral. What is the current state of your uranium exploration at your various properties in Saskatchewan and Ontario? I started up as an uranium company. Our first property was in Elio Lake, Ontario. It's a large property. We have a large uranium and rare earth resource there. We've got in between Infer and Indicated, we've got about 55 million pounds of uranium and about 180 million pounds of rare earths. This is in Elio Lake where all the infrastructure is in place. Seven, eight mines have produced over 350 million pounds of uranium. The grades are a bit on the lower end, but with the uranium price growing up, and this is, it's a valuable asset to have. We have a 43 on one resource there. In addition to that, we've got four uranium properties in northern Saskatchewan around the Ada Basque Basin. We have done some work and we're actually, we're going to start, continue with the exploration there. What we're looking for there is we're looking for high grade uranium near infrastructure and near surface. So that's our model basically for the project in Saskatchewan. Now I have to say that we, in the last few years, we've been concentrating more on the rare earth, and the market doesn't give us any credit on this uranium properties, but I think, especially with this uranium being in demand. We're excited because MPI is involved in uranium and rare earths, which are both critical and both in high demand as late last few years, and we think that's going to continue. Yeah, I do believe so as well. Our governments are being very, very specific and purposeful on wanting to push these critical minerals. Well, Tom, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it very much. For anybody who wants to find out some more information about your company, you can see the website down there below. Thank you once again. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Brendan, thank you so much. And I would like to tell your audience that we've got a lot more results coming from the drilling. We've done both in Saskatchewan and in Brazil, so stay tuned.