 Hi, this is Jack Lipton. This is Critical Metals Corner and today I'm very pleased to be speaking with Brian Mannell, who was the chairman and CEO of TechMet, which is a private company but has holdings in both, I believe, private and public companies involved in the technology metal space. And I note that his company has got very excellent coverage of the area I call BAM, battery and motor, electric motor materials for automotive. So, Brian, thank you for allowing us to interview you today. And can you give us a little background on TechMet, because I don't know of any other company like TechMet. Now, TechMet, I founded in late 2017 as an investment company, as a private company, which will remain to build projects across the middle portion of the value pipeline for what we call technology metals. So as you say, the key metals and metal chemicals going to renewable energy systems and the EV manufacturing pipeline. So as TechMet, we focus on lithium, cobalt, rare earth metals, tin, tungsten, vanadium and nickel, where we see the most extreme supply demand dislocation that we're in the beginning of as the energy transition and the electric vehicle industries accelerate. So we have, we're an Irish company, but funded privately by myself and by a number of family officers. And more recently in the last quarter of last year by the US government through the DFC as a US government funding agency who took a significant equity direct equity interest in TechMet. So that makes us, I think, the first and only in history metals and mining company with direct US government equity participation. And can you tell me please, sir, what DFC stands for, so our audience will know? It's the United States International Development Finance Corporation. So it's just a financing agency within the US government. So that makes us somewhat unique and obviously enhances our access to other sources of financing and changes our risk profile. And we've also got a few institutional funders and and Mercuria in Geneva is the global energy and commodity trading company with whom we've creating a partnership vehicle for marketing and supply chain management across these key metals and technologies to provide turnkey solutions to OEMs and others. So our projects range from we're building a nickel cobalt producer in Brazil. We've got a vanadium specialty chemicals business in Arkansas, which is the cheapest producer in the world of the electrolytes of vanadium redox flow batteries. We've got tin and tungsten mines in Rwanda with busy expanding and merging with the second biggest mining company in Rwanda with biggest mining company. And we've got some rare earth interests that we're busy looking at adding value to with processing capacity in the US and Europe. And we've been the biggest funder for the last most of the last two years has become the biggest lithium on battery manufacturer recycling company in North America lifecycle, which is now as of a few weeks ago listed on the New York stock exchange. So that's become a significant listed interest and we're still one of the two biggest non management shareholders but obviously that's now a passive minority interest in the listed company all of our other interests. We're the primary funder building controlling or dominant minority positions in these private companies in partnership with management teams who we are backing. So our core portfolio we're busy adding to over the next few months in lithium rare earths in other recycling technologies. So we are continuing to evolve our portfolio projects as we scale our funding and obviously scale our production processing at the project level. I noticed on your website that you have some interest in the rainbow company in Burundi. And I was myself doing some work with Teeson when that all occurred and it was my understanding until I read your website that Teeson was the exclusive distributor of those products. So what is your position in that company? We have a small equity interest in rainbow as a listed company. So we have some small exposure to their project that is producing in Burundi and their development project in South Africa. We did that with a view to working together with rainbow and with others to develop processing capacity to take non Chinese controlled sources of rare earth concentrate. We had out of Africa or elsewhere in the world and produce value added rare earth products in the US and Europe. So it was, you know, our interest in rainbow is small and it's a part of our emerging rare earth strategy. Okay. And, and I also noticed you have a, either you own or have a position in Lithium cycle in Canada, which I didn't know of tech meant participation but when I looked at Lithium cycle originally I thought, Well, this is really a good company and it makes a lot of sense in a space that's filled with people who perhaps shouldn't be in it. So I cycle, which is now listed in New York is at the forefront of what will become a very, very big and important industry. You know, in 10 years time the Lithium battery recycling industry needs to be a $20, $30 billion industry. At the moment it's in its infancy because it's a challenging thing to do commercially while you're waiting for large scale feedstock to come into recycling pipeline. But it's necessary to display some of the reliance on China for these materials and it's necessary from the environmental point of view and a value point of view. So life cycle has developed the foremost process in the world for taking all, you know, from cell phones to cars, Lithium batteries and recovering 95% of all the battery metal chemicals. And that's, you know, a program that's now being radically accelerated globally as a result of the listing and the cash that's now in the company post the, you know, post the listing, which came, you know, live a few weeks ago. So we're very, you know, we're still substantial shareholders, albeit now in a public company, and we're very enthusiastic and very committed to the large scale global potential that that company will realize. What I'm hearing you say about all of these projects is that you want to go downstream. You're not just going to be a mineral resource company. You plan, do you plan in fact to go downstream far enough to deliver customer specified products for actual manufacturing? Yes, I mean, we're not a mining company, we're a technology metals company. Right. So our strategy in our mandate is to build projects to pass in production, probably in value terms of third mining a third processing and third recycling. So many of our projects are producing specialty metal chemicals that go into, you know, cathode precursor manufacturers will go into other component manufacturing pipelines. We're certainly not focused on mining and selling concentrates to Chinese. We're focused on, you know, on remedying the very severe capacity constraints and bottlenecks across the pipeline for these key ingredients into the energy transition. Well, do you plan for TechMap to one day go public? We have a dual track strategy. We are not precluding a three to four year time horizon to a technology metals conglomerate IPO that has multiple projects as we do in our building across the key metals and key technologies, you know, in the ingredients of the energy transition. However, in parallel, we'll continue to look at opportunities to crystallize and extract value at the operating company level, and where appropriate, just, you know, realize value and in part redistribute through TechMap to shareholders and in part redeploy in further expanding our other projects and adding to our portfolio. So, you know, in a sense, we're a rolling private equity strategy in a private permanent capital vehicle that may or may not ever list. You take me back to my youth many a long time ago when I worked for IT&T and the divisions were actually in competition with each other. Yeah, and that sounds to me like, like that strategy, which was a good one, by the way. So it works for the space and we certainly will continue to raise and deploy equity to build dominant positions across an expanding portfolio in these key metals and metals, chemicals and recycling, obviously, which is an important part of what we have done and continue to continue to do. And to do it, you know, perhaps if I could add to do it in a highly wealth governed manner from an ESG point of view and a low carbon footprint perspective, which again is a crucial value driver and requirement of the end users, increasingly so. Have you had businesses invested in by the US government before? No, we have not. The DFC investment in TechMet at the holding company equity level was the first time that I personally have dealt with the US government funding agency. I'm very impressed because I have never heard of that happening in the space you're in before. So when one of your people told me that I thought I must misunderstand. But it's very impressive because everyone here talks about this, but no one really gets it gets it done. So thank you very much for the brief introduction to your company. And I, I'm sure it's one we're going to be hearing quite a bit about over the next few years because you're doing exactly the right thing. And those who know we know that I'm not, I don't feel compliments easily, but I'm very impressed by what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was great to have a chance to talk and we're certainly very lucky to be in the right place at the right time at a unique moment in history for our industry. Yes.