 Well hello everyone thank you for being here this is Byron King with Investor Intel coming from Chile, Toronto at the PDAC conference the prospectors and developers Association of Canada the annual mining conference the world's largest mining conference I have with me today I have Mel Sanderson Mel is from Arizona Mel is the president of a company called American Rare Earths and we will talk about that in a moment but because Mel is too bashful I will tell you that Mel is a has quite a background she was a United States Foreign Service officer with the US State Department which is a serious job if you know anything about that she is faculty at the University of Arizona Thunderbird School of Management she is a former executive with a mining company you may have heard of called Freeport Macmaran and she is an acknowledged expert in the ESG arena the environmental sustainability and governance arena she has been a consultant to many different companies she has of course advised the United States government and Freeport now now that I've thoroughly embarrassed her hello Mel it is great to be with you thank you so much Byron I admit I am blushing very quickly tell the audience out there what is this American Rare Earths thing it sounds like it does rare earths but tell us about it by God a good guess yes we are actually working to develop two of what we believe are going to be the largest rare earth deposits in North America one of those just located in Arizona in La Paz County and you'll never guess we named it La Paz the other is in Wyoming not far from Laramie Wyoming and it's called Halleck Creek we started work on La Paz a couple of years ago and we did produce a York report on one portion of that deposit in which we have demonstrated a hundred and seventy five thousand tons of total rare earth and very good presence of Scandium this year in October we're going to do some more drilling in a part of La Paz we haven't even explored yet because we kind of sort of suspect that there's a lot more in the ground okay well I happen to have done a little bit of homework on this and the the mineral that you're looking for it's a it's a type of silicate called Alanite I happen to know a few things about that if you're I want to get all crystallographic and mineralogical on you but it tends to hold rare earth elements such as you know Presidium Neodymium the magnet stuff Scandium which you mentioned which is a an astonishing element that makes aluminum about five times stronger than than than otherwise so now you mentioned the word Jork that's an Australian version of a 43-101 okay and so tell us a little bit more what what have you what have you drilled up how deep have you gone and we do you have a drilling program for this coming season in the summer and what have you yeah I actually want to I actually want to talk about Hallett Creek in Wyoming because that is now our flagship project we have just completed an extensive drilling program we went down 175 meters on our deepest holes our initial assay results have gotten us very excited because what we're seeing is a consistent distribution to depth and we're seeing high initial percentage returns obviously we haven't finished the assay process so this is still speculative but exciting that are indicating that we could have over 25% presence concentration of neodymium and praise you demium that you just mentioned and so we will be coming out with the 43-101 probably the end of March or very early in April and we intend from there to launch straight into the scoping study and we're angling to get out our our preliminary economic assessment either in December or very early in the first quarter of next year so this is a transition year for ARR and we're really preparing ourselves for becoming what our strategic vision is which is to be the minest metals producer for North America look out MP materials watch out MP well now here in the United States in the past you know two years or so we've had several different acts of legislation by the US Congress you know the the inflation reduction act and the investment various investment acts and such but and it has to do with trying to create or trying to kickstart a clean green industrial system in the US you know producing things like rare earths as well as you know electrify things and and so you want to be in the sweet spot of that I take it we absolutely do but I have to say that the legislation many people would say that the legislation has been surprising coming as it has from a democratic administration but I think that there is strong bipartisan support both that growing these mines in all of these capacities is essential for the national defense as well as for developing the green economy and this is why we have seen a very forward-leaning posture by the American government which is historically not very prone to interacting closely with the private sector we have seen for instance that the government is providing funding to build three processing plants in America two of which will be built by Linus Corporation in Texas and MP materials is building their own we of course are working right now on a greener cleaner strand of research we're cooperating with both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy and working directly with Lawrence Livermore labs and the critical materials Institute and their nine University research partners on three research strands the first of which would involve engineered bacteria and that bacteria would be engineered in such a way as to bind with a specific element so let's just say the neodymium and be able to pull that neodymium out of the mix the second is an enzyme research does the same kind of thing the argument is the bacteria would have to be regenerated very quickly so not a big cost savings enzymes would last longer the third is also working on enzyme separation but with the addition of capturing carbon molecules leading to carbon net neutrality so we consider that we are hopefully leading the way to cleaner greener processing if you have other questions or want to learn more about American rare earths they have a website they have a presentation thank you thank you Mel thank you barn and thank you investor Intel for this opportunity