 Hi, this is Jack Lipton speaking and this is the Critical Minerals Corner and we're going to today speak with Mel Sanderson who had congratulations Mel. She's just become the president of American Rare Earths. Mel, can you tell us, give us a description of what American Rare Earths is up to, what they're doing? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much, Jack, for being here with me this morning and to investor intel and to Critical Minerals Institute for giving me these opportunities to familiarize the market with American Rare Earths. This Australian-owned company is holding three concessions in the United States, one in Arizona where I happen to be sitting comfortably in Phoenix enjoying our cool winter weather, one in Wyoming and the third in Nevada. Taking those one by one, the first two are what I would call our operational endeavors at the moment being, as we are after all, a junior. We are holding the Nevada property in abeyance for the moment. Why did we select Arizona and Wyoming? Not because they happen to be my states of residence because I'm also a resident of Casper, Wyoming, but because we have discovered that we have two exceptionally large deposits in terms of tonnage that are remarkably similar, in fact, nearly identical in terms of composition. What I mean by this is, they are alphanite-hosted deposits and the La Paz deposit, while lower in grade, is still significant in size. We haven't yet finished all of the drill program there. We will be resuming, in what we call the Southwest quadrant of the La Paz deposit, this October when the cooler temperatures return to Arizona. But what we do know right now is that we have approximately 500 million tons in the ground of relatively low-grade but scandium-rich deposit in La Paz, Arizona. What we have in Halley Creek, Wyoming is by far more exciting. Also, as I said, alphanite-hosted, but much higher grades. We have finished out our most recent drill session and the assay results that are coming in are exceptional. Grades running around two to three percent. We have, in Halley Creek deposit, neodymium, paraciodymium, and these magnet metals are returning at about 27% at the moment in terms of total presence in the assay to drill holes. In Wyoming, we have slightly over 1 billion tons in the ground. We're very excited by the size of the two. Obviously, we're exceptionally excited by the grades we're seeing at Halley Creek. And the friendly nature of the two deposits is going to give us the opportunity to up-blend La Paz and bring greater value to that particular asset. And the other thing that I would say is worth noting is that both of those are also exceptionally low in uranium and thorium. In fact, so low that we already know that we will just be able to process those normally through the tailings facilities and we will not require a permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Agency to go into operations. And that's a significant cost-and-time advantage for American rare earths. The final thing I would say that's of interest about our company, Jack, is that due to that low uranium, thorium presence, we were identified by the US government, specifically both the Departments of Defense and Energy, to take part in research streams that the US government is funding to develop cleaner, greener processing and separation technologies for rare earths. So we are working with institutions such as the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, Universities of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Arizona State, Columbia University, there's a few others as well. There's two strands of research that are underway, one of which involves genetically engineered bacteria and the other of which involves enzymes. The purpose of both of these strands of research is to develop the capability to isolate elements within the rich solution and draw those out separately. So for instance, to be able to engineer a bacteria that would find and bind to neodymium in that rich solution and drop out the neodymium into its own separate container and do the same with presiodymium, etc. As a result of this cooperation, American rare earths has also been invited to join and we are a member of the Critical Materials Institute as distinct from our Critical Minerals Institute. The other CMI, Critical Materials, is the US Government Funded Institution and I'm proud to say that American Rare is one of only two mining companies that have been invited to join that organization, the other one being a much larger Australian company by the name of Rio Tinto. So that's us in brief. Your relative proportion of NDPR is very high and I've only seen that proportion occur in monazite and the fact is that there is a form of monazite called neodymium rich monazite spread, which is low in thorium and uranium and high in neodymium, presiodymium. Now, where are you seeing these high grades of the magnet materials, the high proportion? That's in our Wyoming deposit at Hallett Creek and the part specifically that this refers to is Red Mountain. There are two sites in Hallett Creek of principal interest, Red Mountain and Overton Mountain. So what I'm telling you about right now is at Red Mountain. Okay, that's a very interesting area of the United States in which several companies that I know of Muslim private are looking at deposits which are unusual. So it doesn't really surprise me that you that you found this deposit because I know others not in Wyoming but in adjacent states who have found the same thing. So you talked about the, I believe it's the Irva project of DOE, is it not? That's their... It's the Ember project and the other project is called DARPA. I knew who you meant. Okay, that's good. And so those projects with using microbiomes are normally for low-grade recovery from low-grade deposits and involved heap leaching, for example. So you don't have to do any real mining. You have to do some tunneling. And I don't know of any other American company or a company operating in the United States that's doing this right now. So is this... In Wyoming you're going to use traditional methods, I understand that. Okay, but in Arizona you're going to use... You're trying to develop this microbiological approach. It's called bio-mining. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay, so do you have any timelines for us, Mel? Well, let me just add for an additional point of interest so I know you and many of our listeners will appreciate Jack. We've been having both metallurgical and mineralogical work done by laboratories in Australia on samples from both sites. And again, we have some really nice news that was a little surprising to us, given that it is an alanite deposit. But what the mineralogy is discovering is that the particle definition is fairly loose, which means that we're going to have to do a lot less of the traditional crush and grind in order to be able to get into solution. So we're actually thinking that because of this particular discovery, we will be able to rather quickly move Halle Creek into that same bioprocessing stream with only one additional step versus the processing stream for La Paz. And I think that this is another reason that we are turning out to be the only company that is indeed at the moment in the United States working on this sort of bio mining. Mel, so again, I think you are the first company to be focused on bio mining of rare earths in, as far as I know, North America, maybe the Americas, okay? So this is going to be a challenging road to hoe, obviously, okay? And do you have a timeline for us? How long will it be before you have some bio mining results in Arizona? Well, what I can tell you is that our laboratory partners are saying that in 18 months or so, they're going to have demonstrable bench results that they're going to be presenting in scientific fora around the country. So to me, what that says for American Rare is we need to more or less start thinking now about looking at setting up a pilot processing plant so that once they reach that demonstrable benchmark, we will be ready to help them demonstrate commercial viability at least at the pilot plant level. So given the timelines for, and you know these even much better than I do, for constructing a plant, assuming that we were to start that work next year, we probably could be ready in two to two and a half years with the pilot plant, which I think would dovetail pretty nicely. Have you got the financial resources to carry out such a long-term plan? Absolutely. We're actually very well funded. We have roughly $15 million in the bank right now and on our drill programming for this year because I forgot to mention and shame on me that we're aiming for our JORC resource for Halle Creek at the end of the first quarter this year. So end March, first week of April. We're going to from that stride straight into our scoping study with the objective of trying to get out the PEA either at the end of this year or very early in next year. So those activities we're looking at less than $2 million burn rate. So yeah, we figure that we would be able to support the cost of the pilot plant internally. Okay. Well again, your pioneering technology, which is my belief is that people have to develop technologies for accessing lower grade deposits. These are the great hidden wealth of the world, but in the United States we have quite a few of them. Okay. So the issue, as you know traditionally, miners always look for the highest grade and the biggest concentration because it makes life a lot easier. Okay. But we can't do that now. And so I'm looking forward to following what you're doing because you're literally pioneering something. And although institutional investors don't like to hear about things that aren't legacy, it's time that America takes a hard look at this kind of deposit. So again congratulations and please keep us informed on what's happening because you're literally pioneering a technology. Thanks so much, Jack. And believe you me with the greatest of pleasure, I'm anticipating a whole stream of good news coming out on this front this year. Okay. Well, we hope to see you at the CMI Summit in Toronto to bring us up to date at that point in June. I will 100% be there. I'll be the one with a big smile on her face waving my good press announcements. Okay. Thank you.