Defense Metals Corp. CEO Craig Taylor on the potential of the Rare Earth project

We have been advancing developing and de-risking the Wicheeda deposit for the past 6 years. To date we have done about 15,000 meters of drilling and have updated the resource 3 times. We have 34.3 million tones in the measured and indicated categories that SRK and Hatch will use to complete our pre-feasibility study due out in H2 of this year.

The deposit is very substantial, and we will produce 25,0000 tones of REO annually with an approximate mine life of 20 years.

Currently our estimated output will represent 10% of global production and we are hoping to be producing in about five years from today. This will help with the global supply problem but there is more needed. To put it in perspective we need to double global NdPr production in the next decade just to meet EV demand not including wind turbines, military components etc. That is the equivalent of bringing one MP Materials mine online every year for the next ten years. This is a far bigger problem than the lithium shortage that has affected lithium prices in the past years.

That property has changed hands two or three times now since we started 6 years ago and our geological team had taken took a look and passed. We know where the Wicheeda deposit begins and ends now with the drilling done and given the size and significance we have put all our efforts into advancing this globally significant proven deposit.

Yes, there is a bit of a panic to secure rare earth deposits globally, obviously the Chinese have been very aggressive but now the Western governments have woken up to the crisis at hand. We currently have government funding applications in with the Canadian government, the Department of Defense in the US and have three Defense contractors looking at helping us advance this strategic deposit.

We will continue to work on our pre-feasibility as previously noted and will have a very important First Nations collaboration that we are working on and will announce shortly. Additionally, we are speaking to every major processor globally. Our 2023 piloting generated enough product that we were able to ship to processors in Europe, Asia, North America and Australia. We will continue the discussing the possible collaboration with them through 2024 as they all have the need for feed.