 Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Don from Avalon Advanced Materials, one of the world's leading experts on critical materials. How are you today, Don? Great to be back, Tracy. Don, I've noticed recently, you know, with the U.S.-China trade challenges presently, that we have one day rare earths are in the market, and then for instance, your stock is always a, what do you call it, one of the award-winning recipients of this geopolitical issue. Can you tell me what's happening in the rare earths market presently? Well, there's a lot of renewed concern about security of supply of rare earths in the global markets and for good reason. The supply chain that everybody realized was not well-established outside of China ten years ago, never really did get established in a meaningful way, except for Linus Corporation in Australia. And now with growing demand, both inside and outside China, there's real concern about security supply, and that concern is legitimate. There simply is not enough supply to meet the forecast demand for rare earth magnets for all the new applications in clean technology. And of course, having been a leader in this particular industry sector for several decades now, I think you've identified things that are working and things that aren't. Basically, the idea that some of these companies have are not working because they haven't moved to production. Can you tell us what you're doing differently with Avalon and say your recent collaborative venture with Cheetah? Well, it's not a simple, easy business to get into. The mining part of it is the easy part. It's what you do with that mine material afterwards to turn it into a product that can be actually used in the marketplace is where the challenges are. As you will recall, there's multiple stages in processing that material that comes out of the ground to get to the separated rarers that then have further processing required after that to turn them into the magnet materials. So I think the opportunity now is to try to get operations established at a small scale without large capital requirements, prove you can make a product that is acceptable in the market and has outlets for refining. Once you've done that, then look at how you can scale up the business. We're delighted to hear that Linus and Blue Line are talking about establishing a new rare earth refinery separation plant in North America because that I think will inspire companies like us to start getting to work again on finding the resources in the ground to bring that new supply to the market and create that new North American supply chain. And of course another problem that we're having in the market with this rising interest in these critical materials and of course their dependency on China. Are we currently dependent on the Chinese for 90% and they process 95% or what are the recent numbers for what we're actually relying on the Chinese for? At least 80% is the number you hear quoted out there most often. But I think one thing people don't realize is that China doesn't even have enough production internally to meet their own internal demand now and are looking for new supply sources outside China like they are for most new critical materials. So if the Chinese then are supplying 80%, where are we getting the rest of our rare earths? Because we're clearly not getting them out of the United States. Linus is still a producer, so there has been some supply from there. And then a few other small producers that are able to supply their refinery. But still China has most of the refining separation capacity. It's still the largest producer at Biobol. And many of you out there may be confused by all the different terms. We see technology metals, critical minerals, critical materials, rare earth elements. We explain what the most current term is. I believe it's critical materials. And can you tell us what that really means for an investor that wants to get involved? We like using critical materials to remind investors that these are things that are sourced out of the ground, but require a lot of processing to turn them into basically a refined product. That's a chemical product that they had better described as a material after it's undergone the processing to turn it into the form. That's actually used in new technology. Another thing that some companies say is they go, we're so much better than other rare earth companies. We have heavies, or we have only light rare earths, or that company only has light rare earths. Can you tell us what that actually means? Yeah, well, I guess ten years ago there was a lot of emphasis on the heavy rare earths at the time and the importance of having that balance in your resource. Right now, almost all of the emphasis is on the magnet rare earths, which is principally two light rare earths, neodymium and praziodymium. So the emphasis on heavy rare earths isn't quite as important right now as it is on resources that have enrichment in those two rare earths in particular. I noticed the last time we had a big media coverage on the issue of rare earths, your stock moved straight north that day, and the volume went right through the roof. Can you tell me why investors looked at Avalon when this topic is brought up? Well, as you recall, we were one of the leaders during the last go around non-rare earths interest ten, fifteen years ago. And we've maintained our interest in rare earths and people know the Avalon brand as being associated with rare earths. So we haven't lost that recognition in the marketplace. We hung on to our asset, knew there would be another day for rare earths, and sure enough it's arrived, and now we're in a position to move it forward. In the partnership we've established with cheetah resources from Australia and apply that small scale development model that I was describing earlier. But we're also on the lookout for some new rare earth opportunities. We're looking at some opportunities now elsewhere in North America to try to apply that same principle of getting something going quickly to bring some new supply into the market. Well, Don, as always, we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for providing us with an update on Avalon. My pleasure.