 Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Marty Weems from American Rare Earths, an ASX listed company. Marty, how are you today? Hey, I'm doing great Tracy. Thank you for having me today. Now let's just hit the ground running. Latest news release starts with Outstanding, not minorly good or above average, Drill Assay results. That just seems super exciting based on the highlights I read. Let's start there please. Yeah, we're very excited about our project in Wyoming, the Hallett Creek Rare Earth project southeast Wyoming, Albany County, fantastic jurisdiction. This is a project we were introduced to maybe a little over a year ago and it was a tiny land package with a little bit of surface data and this is a maiden drilling. So we expanded the land package due to some exciting surface sampling over the past year. And then in March we were able to do this maiden drilling, XRF data in the field got us pretty excited to see these assay results come back and sure enough that was confirmed and just mineralization is consistent surface to depth and we had mineralization at depth. So we're really excited about what we see in both size and grade opportunity in Wyoming. High value magnet rare earth oxides comprise 26%. That sounds good. In fact, that sounds shockingly good. Yeah, we're really motivated by that. As you know and many of your listeners and readers will know, the magnet rare earths are the economics that really drive rare earths in the current market and we think well over the next decade. So that is the core focus or the magnet rare earths and having a resource where the distribution within the rare earths is greater than 20%. By our estimation that puts it in a fairly world-class distribution. So we're quite excited to see that number being as high as it is that gives us plenty to work with. Well I think your subheading says it very clearly. This will make this project to be one of the largest rare earth deposits in North America. So I'm going to back you up a little bit because not everybody knows about American rare earths, understands American rare earths or appreciates that you're a contender. In fact I've been fighting with Jack Lipton about this. So let's start there. Who are you please? So American rare earths limited is an Australian mineral exploration company and we are focused on U.S. deposits of rare earths and we've taken a bit of a counter approach. Typically mining is exploration, it's size and it's grade, it's king and size. Well we believe that, we won't dispute that. So we certainly think size is of great importance, you know chasing little veins of high grade stuff doesn't really accomplish a lot in my opinion. But there's also the thorium problem in the United States, you know Jack will be quick to tell you that the NRC is not issued a new permit for handling radioactive material in a Greenfield mine in more than a couple of decades and there's probably no one at the NRC that even knows where the form is. So we've chosen to go after projects that are extraordinarily low in thorium content. Now those projects may be a bit lower in grade than some of our competitors but you know we think we've got a smoother path to permitting if we can maintain under that piercing the veil of 500 parts per million and we're well under that. So our Arizona project La Paz, uranium thorium combined is about six parts per million. Our project in Wyoming runs about 65 parts per million. So by staying under that piercing that veil of needing an NRC permit which is our goal ultimately we think we have a different approach here that has a tenable permitting path. And we're working closely with U.S. national labs and a number of major universities to be able to operationalize that and extraction, separation and purification so we can onshore the supply chain. And of course we were just discussing before we started this interview how the media is looking at Australia with regards to Alina's most recent announcement about getting 120 million from the Department of Defense for their heavy wear with processing facility. So they're looking at Australians talk to me about this. Yeah so you know I'm encouraged by that news you know the you and Jack have been saying for quite a long time to solve this problem especially the U.S. is going to require substantial U.S. government involvement and we need and if you look at every announcement that certainly this administration has made there's always that tag of you know we will use all of these resources and allies. Well those allies include Canada and Australia and they're looking not only for you know resource but also expertise you know and we've leaned on Canadian expertise we've leaned on Australian expertise at Niagara Labs you know this is an allied effort and it will take more than one or two companies to solve the problem. This industry you know depending on which calculus you use it has to double or more over the decades just to meet the electric vehicle demand that's projected so I'm excited to see substantive robust engagement by the U.S. government and putting budget dollars to support onshore in the supply chain and I think it bodes really well for us as well. And where we're playing in that space and really leaning in is with the U.S. National Laboratories we're a team member of the Critical Materials Institute relationships with major universities and just this morning and I suspect you haven't had the opportunity to see this because it literally broke as we came on today we have been we're a part of a consortium with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that was just awarded $13 million to research our feedstock with some new bio leaching bioengineering capabilities that are intended to go not only do extraction but also separation of rare earths that's a DARPA funded project the initial funding is $4 million of 13 it's partnering with the University of Kentucky with Penn State and we're really quite excited about that as well and that's that's brand new news out this morning. You're correct I'm like why didn't I start the interview with that so let's go there quick can you tell us about this news this is breaking congratulations Marty into your team I I warn people all the time be careful be careful of the stealth like players behind the scenes you may not know exist so tell me a little bit more about this announcement please. Yeah and I'm a little cautious to talk about it mainly because we don't want to detract from this really great news about our potential new resource in Wyoming we are really excited about the rocks in Wyoming that is a tremendous opportunity to establish a new maiden resource in Wyoming we think as we look to drill again later this year and we have more data coming off the our spring campaign from drilling in March we still don't have all the data from that so they'll there'll be some more news is that those assays come in so there's still plenty to talk about in Wyoming but yes you know to your actual question here very exciting in this work it's a project using a plant protein microbe called land modulin that was discovered by Penn professor Joey Catruvo at Penn State really remarkable we're amazed by the simplicity of it so as you know you've you know you've been at this a long time you've heard all all kinds of new technologies are gonna change the game and you know and then you know three years later you've heard nothing about it but from a you know from an engineering and scale background I see opportunity with this particular technology because of its simplicity and simplicity gives you the opportunity to scale when when you're dealing with engineering processes and that's a great thing we see and they're showing published success now with not only extraction from a pregnant leachate but also separation and if that continues progress and you're you're talking about the idea of skipping a billion-dollar mixer settler plant to get from source to high purity individual rare earth element oxide that that's literally game-changing opportunity effect if we can get this commercialized with DARPA well I'll tell you that's such big news that I will be speed dialing jack when I get off this phone and I'll be using something I never use in these processes which is simple the threat of simple I'll tell you Marty thank you so much for joining us today that's Marty weems from American rare earth and ASX listed company thank you thank you Tracy