 Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Jack Lipton. How are you today Jack? I'm fine Tracy. Thank you very much Well, Jack you're looking good and of course everyone's looking at rare earth. So I guess everybody's looking at you That's true. I've become very busy in the last couple of months exceptionally so and So why don't we just start right there? There's a lot of attention for instance on investor Intel's website with regards to Linus So can we just start there? What's happening with Linus that everybody is so interested in Linus presently? Well line Linus is is trying to balance its operations to satisfy both the Malaysian government and the Australian government and The decision seems to be that Linus will build an ore processing plant in Australia The ore processing part of is the problem in Malaysia. That's where The Malaysians are concerned with the buildup of a thorium in the residues from the ore processing Not from the rare earth separation Linus does both in Australia very large operation the ore is brought from Australia to Malaysia where it's Roasted cracked leached and separated the roasting cracking in and perhaps leaching is going to be moved to Australia this is very expensive undertaking but Linus says it will fund this out of out of an ongoing operation revenue So it could be done. It's about 500 million Australian dollar project. Secondly Linus has indicated that it would like to put a separation plant for its heavy wearer of fraction in with its Or of its current distributors, which is blue line chemicals of Texas now whether or not this will happen I wouldn't know what I what I've been commenting on lately is the The processing of the wearers the separation of the wearers that would have to happen in Texas I did a workshop two months ago and The blue line people were there as as were the people from the US Department of Defense. So This was all discussed now. I have no opinion on whether or not this can be done in Texas Of course, it could be done Texas but the economics are the issue the economics of the real issue and I know that Amanda LeCase the CEO of Linus has repeatedly said recently that The world needs to understand she said she has a memorandum of understanding With with the company in Texas That doesn't mean that there's there's a definite funded plan to build to build a system in Texas And for all of you out there who are watching the news, of course the US China trade war How is this impacting rare earths in general and the overall markets jack a lot of my friends are calling this rare earth part due or version 2.0, but but in fact This is the first real Awareness of the of the Washington gang that there is a problem And that they need to find a solution so how it's impacting the Space is that a lot of investors are now looking again at the Rare earth projects that are still extant that are closest to production Remember in this non-Chinese world, we have perhaps half a dozen right now Producing rare earth companies, but all of the processing of Heavy wearers, for example is done in China today and of the light where the processing far and away the largest company The largest Solving the correction system dedicated to rare earth separation on this planet is in Malaysia And it's owned and operated by Linus. In fact Linus has gotten approval to increase The capacity of that system to 25,000 tons a year that that is huge And keep in mind that Linus operates this system. They've designed the system. They built it it's producing separated materials and revenue unlike one of our American companies which fantasize they were going to make a 40,000 ton system in California, which is now a Scrappy All right So let's just step step back there for a second because we had investor intel would be very interested if there was a rare Earth's part as you just said as you just commented on but the bottom line is we're not seeing it translate to Market price on any of the publicly listed market Companies at this time. Is anyone speculating on when we actually will see this translate? I Don't know of anybody's speculating on that, but I can tell you that This is a real Push in Washington, for example and in Europe certainly in fact Europe in many ways as farther ahead Then the North America in this at the last time There was a lot of babble about all the military needs this they can't do without it's critical No, nobody and and prices, you know skyrocketed and dropped in the Chinese withheld and Increased all that was going on and it was as Shakespeare said, you know Signified all all of the the chaos signified nothing because government actually at that time was not interested in And whether or not the supply was secure they they were Interested in in the battle so between the Chinese and Japanese. This is completely changed They actually in Washington and in Brussels are very concerned about security of supply So I think investors are making a mistake if they just walk away from this. This is not a short-term Situation this is rare. It's are now on the radar in Washington and in Brussels and Things are being done. I'm telling you that it's not a race between them because they're not they're not cooperating but The fact is the Europeans are way ahead of Americans on this but Americans are are catching up and so This is a long-term investment and look for the the only interest anybody has in this space is Producing companies or companies with a clear path to production I see many many many startups saying hey, we found rarems in our bathtub in you know, wherever Forget that the ones that have a path to production That can be done in two or three years are the ones of interest to everybody and the ones that are producing are Really hot and the producers are Linus northern minerals rainbow and Well, let's say MP the successor and interest of molly corp is producing It's the largest producer in the non-Chinese world of Second largest after Linus of or but that or is being shipped to China a hundred percent So even though they're mining out there, it's it's actually for the Chinese market for a particular Chinese customer So they're not being taken into consideration at this point as a supplier Until that's we don't know if they could supply because perhaps the Chinese have an exclusive nobody knows but Linus northern minerals and rainbow are definitely in production and at the present time Everyone is looking very closely at them when it's everyone Brussels and Washington my shorthand for the two capitals They're looking at these companies Intently in fact MP the successor and interest of molly corp is is very much on the radar in the United States But there's a lot of confusion because of its of its ownership and because of its customer base Okay, so let's just jump right in there Obviously extraction processes are right at the top of the food chain And I do believe you have excluded a couple of producers they're on your list Jack, but hey, you know, it's Jack's list That's what I always tell people you know let Jack be Jack So with regards to your the discussion on processing, you know alkane resources put out some pretty tremendous news I thought it was very disruptive about their technology for extracting rare earths that would decrease At the time and of course the expenses this is a very expensive process Which is I think part of the reason why it's so complex and so few people can actually follow this market That will decrease prices by 50% have you had a chance to explore that extraction process and do you have any comments on that one? No, I don't know much about what el kane is doing all I can tell you is that the Australian government is Is it has el kane on their list of companies that it is? promoting in it to and to the u.s. Government as as potential suppliers of material el kane Hastings Arafura and quite frankly Obviously, of course Linus and now quite strongly northern minerals, but they're not the only Australian companies being Promoted by the Australian government and when I say promoted this means it's there's a potential that the Australian government will put money into these companies to bring them forward and The Australian government has a plan to develop Processing downstream processing in Australia. They certainly have the technology no question about it It's about money and this I don't know what happened because you know I'm not privy to this but yesterday the Prime Minister of Australia the president United States had a meeting and I know for a fact that They discussed the rare earth situation what they came up with I'm not aware of but it was certainly a topic for discussion. No question about it Well, Jack, thank you so much for joining us today and providing us really with a great update on the Australian rare earth market. Thank you