Guardian Metal Resources CEO on Bringing Tungsten Mining to the U.S.

0:00Welcome back to Market on Cortes, I'm Tim Vardas, so alongside Alex Coffee over in Chicago, it's time now to bring in our next gift to discuss an exciting US IPO today. Let's welcome in Oliver Friesen, who's the CEO and executive director at Guardian Metal Resources. Congratulations Oliver, how does it feel? I heard you're ringing the bell. It was at 10.30. Yeah, right on the dot, yeah. Yeah, so you've had a very busy day. Yeah, it's been good. Busy week, and I'm tired, but looking forward to closing the market today as well. Obviously, you know, obviously a tough day to IPO, given, of course, what we're dealing with in these markets today. You open at 13.50, flat on the day. Yeah, let's just talk through the nature of your business, so just give us an overview. Yeah, we're looking to build two new tongues and minds in the US. So we have two fantastic projects, both in Nevada, which is consistently ranked one of the top mind jurisdictions in the world, and pushing those projects forward right now. We've received an award directly from the Department of War in the US, and using those funds to push forward the projects. And ultimately, our goal is to deliver two new tongues and minds within the next three years.

1:00Okay, so up and running operationally in three years. Yes. Okay, and what are you looking to address here? Obviously, this has been really part of the big US policy push to be self-sufficient in the face of, you know, Chinese, hegemony, et cetera. Just walk us through what you're looking to do here and achieve. It's part of the agenda right now for the administration, which is we need to be mining on US soil again. Yeah. You know, tungsten is incredibly critical metal. About 90% of total global mine supply comes from China, Russia, and North Korea, and the US hasn't mined any tungsten for over 10 years now. So we have two fantastic assets, both, which have produced on US soil before. And with the tailwinds we have now with the administration and the desire to mine again in the US, you know, we think we have the tailwinds to make that happen and deliver two new minds, which is super exciting for the business. What has that process been like for you? And has there been an acceleration in wanting to speed that up just because of the pressing nature of something like that?

2:00Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a critical shortage of tungsten right now in the US. You know, it's a metal needed for defense, automotive aerospace across the board. And ultimately, without it, you can't build a lot of things you need to build in the US. So since the new administration came in, the executive orders that came up quite quickly after have really been there to support companies like Guardian who are trying to mine medical critical metals actually on home soil. So on the on the permitting side we're seeing support on the funding side with the award that we have from the Department of War across the board. There's some fantastic tailwinds. If we're looking to tap into those as we deliver our mission of two new minds. And you will supply then to the military? No, not necessarily. What we do is we look to build the minds and there's discussions ongoing with various potential off-takers in the US. But ultimately this metal should stay on US soil once we're in production. And be used to support the industrial and defense base. How are you thinking about the situation right now? I mean, just as far as what is happening geopolitically,

3:00what we're seeing as far as energy prices. Because obviously that is going to come down to the cost of how you do business, how people are thinking also just generally around the flow of goods around the world and materials and energy prices. Yeah, I mean, tungsten is a really good sort of case to look at because China actually completely banned all exports of tungsten to the US about a year ago. So I think that's really a good example as to why we need to have minds on home soil. Because since that ban, which was February 4th of last year, we've seen the price of the metal go up several times. And there's a critical shortage right now. And it's very hard to get your hands on the metal within the US. So I think it really just points to the need for the US to have safe domestic mind sources of all the different critical metals. And our job at Guardian is to deliver that for tungsten. You said China banned it last year. I know that there had been a number of threats previously. I'm just wondering what is happening in the interim. If this is not going to be up and running for several years still,

4:00where is the US actually getting the supply of this stuff right now? Well, it's running critically low right now. So there still is some material available in the US. Right. It is recycled. So there's some recycling going on to feed into the industrial base right now. But ultimately, I think we're going to get to the point in the not-too-distant future where manufacturing will have to shut down because of the lack of material. So we're moving as quickly as we can at Guardian. We have some unique opportunities at one of our assets called Tempa Yut, which has some tailings at surface as well as ore stockpiles. So trying to find ways to move that into the market, a lot sooner to try to fill that short-term supply need. Interesting. Just give us a sense for those who are unaware of exactly what sort of end-use cases tungsten goes into as far as products are concerned. So tungsten is a very unique metal, very unique physical property. So it's actually one of the most dense metals on the planet. It has the highest melting point. So it's used in a lot of different kind of unique use cases. And it's very irreplaceable in most technologies. So the big one right now is in defense. So it's used in the production of munitions, things like personal armors, tank armors.

5:01But also just across the board, it's used in aerospace. So counterweights in bowing civilian jets. Things like drilling bits for oil and gas and mining. Automotive chip technology, solar, wind, cross the board, we need tungsten for so many things that we manufacture here in the US. So defense is really driving the narrative right now, giving geopolitical tensions. But we're looking to deliver two new mine sources that can help support industrial and defense based in the US. I'm just wondering, I mean, I know you said that the importance of the timeline has been very much accelerated by some of these self-sufficiency type of needs in this market. Is there any way that this could be sped up given, of course, what we're seeing over in the Middle East right now? And as you say, that critical shortage? Yes, there are ways. I mean, there's still permitting requirements in the US. You still need to engineer and build these mines. But we're seeing support. We're seeing the government really say, hey, let's move this forward as quickly as we can. It's not going to happen overnight.

6:01It's not like an oil and gas while we're used to turn the tax on. The benefit that Guardian has is we started on this journey five years ago. So we took a contrarian view and said, hey, tungsten is a metal. We're probably going to want to mine in the US in the future. So we started on this journey quite early, did a lot of the baseline environmental permitting, a lot of the engineering, a lot of the drilling, which means we're now the closest to production in the US. And one thing we're looking at, as I mentioned, is the stockpile, or we have on site at one of our projects, which could potentially fill the gap a lot sooner than when we would be in commercial production. So looking at ways to help fill the short-term need through our projects in Nevada. It feels like the hard part, the challenging process, is in the review mirror for you now. And today seems quite symbolic for your company then. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of hard work ahead, but that we've done a lot of good work together here. And now we're going to move as quickly as we can to get to the ultimate goal. Excellent. Oliver, thanks so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Thanks for stopping by. Please come back and do it again. Oliver, freeze in there. Guardian, metal resources.