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Scotia Metals Expands High-Grade Lithium Targets at Green Wolf | Rodrigo Roso · Kitco MINING

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Kitco Mining with me, Paul Harris.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Today is Monday, the 5th of October, and we are talking about lithium.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me is Rodrigo Rosa, CEO of Scotia Metals, which trades on the CSE under the ticker SMET.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Rodrigo, welcome to Kitco.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Paul.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for this opportunity to talk a little bit about Scotia and uh for you and your audience.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we don't often talk about lithium, so I'm looking forward to finding out a lot more about it.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um let's start um off our conversation by looking at the lithium market.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: The lithium market uh can experience extreme peaks and troughs in terms of pricing, supply, demand, that kind of thing.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um why is that, Rodrigo?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think there is a it's a it's in a way it's a new commodity, you know, and uh the market is still uh learning how to behave to it.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the matter of fact is that we have a constant uh growth on demand, you know.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I can tell you that for the past 15 years, we have a constant growth uh above two digits.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so from you when you see uh the offer and the demand, you know, you can see that the the lines are always you know shortening up.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh recently you have uh a bunch of news from SMM who follows this market that shows that the the inventories in China are pretty low, uh which means that in our view, we're pretty bullish about the future of lithium.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're at I would say starting a cycle, and uh which will we do believe that is a long cycle on on the spudge min price.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, in terms of the lithium price cycle, a few years ago it hit a very high high, and then it's the price crashed.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Where where would you say we are in the price cycle today?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we had uh that spike uh 2022, 2020 that were not, I would say, even healthy uh for the Lithuan market because all the margins were being in uh spodgamine producers, and we need to have a you know uh I would say a market that is healthy throughout the whole chain.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then uh we had a couple of uh movements in China that flooded the market, and uh this uh led to I would say that uh dump in the prices, where we see the prices going like$100 uh$800 for this podjum in SEC in uh 2025.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is the bottom of the market.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Since then, you know, we we see some movements in especially in China trying to hold the prices as much as they could.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact is that the demand the demand is growing and the lithium mines are not picking up you know at the speed of the demand.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that said, since the beginning of this year, the price is sustaining above$2,000 uh dollars for this podium in price and even peaking to$3,000, but still you know holding north of$2,000.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think that the market sits at a healthy uh price range for the future.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I do believe that these prices might increase in the future.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: There is a chance that this happens, but honestly, at this uh 2000 price point point is a very healthy market and very good for spodgamine producers, which we expect to become in the next uh in the near future.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Rodrigo.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: When you talk about spodgamine, you're talking about spodgamine concentrate, which is typically five or six percent uh lithium content, and that's uh one of the sort of benchmark uh commodities or pricing points.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so from from your comments, do I take it that you know it's early days for you guys at the moment, but uh um you'd be looking to be economic at that$2,000,$3,000 per ton?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, certainly.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh actually it's early days, of course, we still have to run um a proper economic assessment of the project.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: But uh as a matter of fact, at$2,000 it's already economical for every single producer uh in the Western world, even you know, with higher costs like Australia, US would be uh feasible and actually very lucrative producers at this price point.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you for that.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh we've got a good basis for the rest of our conversation now, Rodrigo.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're exploring for lithium, um spodjamin or pegmatites in in Nova Scotia in Canada.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Before we start talking more specifically about your project, how does Canada's critical minerals policy feed into your plans?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: How is Canada looking to develop its lithium resources and what is it doing to stimulate that?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh the the you know we choosing this uh jurisdiction is not uh um uh you know a coincidence.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually talks with uh a longer-term view that we see of you know this geopolitical game we're seeing right now, where you need to build uh a supply chain for the whole critical minerals industry and you know batteries and so on and so forth in North America.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I I we do believe that is a lot of investors, and we also think that is important from a market perspective, a lithium market perspective, uh, you know, seeking those jurisdictions where it is a safe jurisdiction, you know, in terms of uh permitting and uh but also to develop this uh in supply chain in North America.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: We do have uh many conversations, we're always talking with uh different uh suppliers around uh the North America space, and sorry, clients and and potential off takers around the North America space, and uh we see a lot of uh interest in us moving forward with the project and building a mine uh here uh at this side of the world.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Scotia Metals is a relatively new company, I understand.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: How was it formed and and who by?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So Scotia is a combination of two groups.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think in the one on one side, you have myself, Brian, who is uh Brian Talbot, who is our chairman, and Nick Rowley, who is uh also at the board, plus James Abson, who is our uh VP exploration.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh all four of us are would say part of the same group, and we are in the lithium space for many, many years.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh our our group has been developing mines across the world.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Brian was the head of operations of Galaxy.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Galaxy is a pioneer in the Lithian space, which then, you know, Brian and Nick were there since inception.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: They then moved progressed the company from uh you know a very small junior mining to a six billion Australian dollars merge, uh, where it then uh formed Alcane, which after that uh became Arcadian, and now is the group of assets that were acquired by Rio Tinto and formed the the Lithian uh assets of Rio Tinto.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one side of uh the group that started this company, and we have on the other side uh the group that is led by Darryl Cardi and uh Sean Kukoon uh in Vancouver, but also Darren Devine and Matt Roma.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: These guys are I would say our capital market backers, they have a long history of success uh in the mining space.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sean has brought recently Dolly Varton from 20 million dollars to a 600 million dollar uh market cap.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Daryl uh is behind uh K92 on the world and many other companies, you know, that he successfully exited throughout the years.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're also behind Gladiator, where uh Darren and Sean are uh are supporting uh Sean is part of the board too.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're combining a very unique group of people, uh a group that knows and has a lot of track record in building leathen mines and a strong capital market backers with this group of Vancouver.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that sort of detailed description there, Rodrigo.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: People may be familiar with exploring for spodgamine bearing pegmatites in Quebec, um, but you are in Nova Scotia, I think that's less well known, um, and you're the largest claim holder with your Arcadia lithium project.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Why why look in Nova Scotia rather than Quebec or or elsewhere?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are a couple of elements.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I would say the first uh element is the rocks.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what we see in Nova Scotia, we do have a known deposit in Nova Scotia, although Nova Scotia is still not, I would say, a very known uh Lithian uh district, but we do have a known deposit here, which is not owned by us, but it's a private company that owns this, it's a 10 million uh tons deposit and uh which is sitting right in the middle of our ground.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we have all the ground up north and down south of this deposit.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, and what we we can see from from this deposit, but also from findings in our ground, is that the type of pegmatites we can see here, they are very similar to what we can we could see in Brazil in the so-called Lithuan Valley.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what we call as this podamine-rich pegmatite, they really look like it and very coarse, and and we do have, of course, uh a lot of math tests to come, but uh we do expect those to behave similarly with what we saw in Brazil uh in the projects we were involved out there.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first element.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then second one, which I think plays uh even a bigger role uh in this particular uh case, is the infrastructure.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, every time we see a project uh like Quebec or US, we see projects that need to develop a massive infrastructure for you to get access to the project.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Here in Nova Scotia is a totally different animal.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: We have a port, deep sea port, uh birth with deep sea berths, sorry, uh one and a half hours from the project.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: We have paved roads all across the project, you know.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have uh power lines very close to the project as well, and we have water available uh everywhere.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think from an infrastructure perspective, it's uh amazing.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And look, it's close to the coast, it's near easy to connect with the US, uh, it's easy to connect uh through elsewhere and in Canada.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I think from a logistics perspective, I that's uh very unique project, and uh it's much well I would say much better seated uh when you compare to Quebec on other spaces or or other spaces in in US.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now you mentioned the nearby Brazil Lake Deposit where Lithium Springs has defined uh 10 million ounce, sorry, 10 million tons.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the size of the potential prize you're exploring for?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this is uh Brazil Lake is uh small ground, but we do believe that uh the this uh this resource of Brazil Lake is still open uh and still can grow.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: But our ground is much larger.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: We have 80 kilometers uh crossing the same trend, and uh we do expect to have a much uh larger resource within the region.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, still early days, still a lot of uh work to be done, but uh but we we with the ground we have with the first anomalies that we're seeing, uh we have some indications that uh there's still a lot to come in the region.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, looking at uh the information on your website, you've had some very, very high grade uh rock samples, more than grading more than sort of 3%, 5%, that kind of thing.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us a little bit about the work program you've got underway this year, and we'll go into next year to look to define and further refine the the exploration potential you have at the project.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we're doing right now is being smart about where we'll drill.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: That being said, what we're doing is a very systematic approach to the work.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there is some historical work that has been done before we start this project, but uh we don't see this as systematic as we want.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we have this area, this first target that's called Green Wolf, that is the area that is closest to the Brazil Lake Deposit.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this in this area we're finding a lot of uh big boulders, angular and uh with coarse spodamine and an ad unweathered spodumin on those uh boulders.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: We've just recently we the last uh news release uh we put it out, we showed in a in a cluster within Green Wolf uh from the historical work to now we grow we grew from 13 boulders to 38 boulders, uh they're all sampling uh up to uh 3%.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: The historical work you can see this going to 3.4 percent, which is pretty good for boulders.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And our program now is advancing.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've done some work across the whole uh ground we have 38 uh square kilometers, uh, just to have an overall map of the the whole ground.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing a detailed till sampling in Green Wolf and geophysics in Green Wolf.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're completing this work this year, and our expectation is to start drilling either the end of this year or beginning of next year, but we're just refining uh this all this work so that we have I would say the best uh drill targets we can have.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we're trying to, and we should be drilling between the end of this year, beginning of next.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Rodrigo.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: What would constitute a successful initial drill program for you?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think for us, so we we how we start this program is with uh 1500 meters, and uh this is a scalp drilling program where we'll we we want to find the you know the first pegmatites of this project.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: So for us, success is hitting those pegmatites, this first pegmatites, and start seeing that this is uh this is a project that we can grow resource on top of it.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Once we have this uh scout drilling completed, uh we'll we'll sit back and work reorganized a proper drilling program where we'll expect to drill more or less 7,500 more um meters uh this year.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, 27.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what's the key for exploration success when you're sort of drilling pegmatites?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is it to obviously hit the pegmatite and to create a geological model that then enables you to replicate that success by hitting, targeting and hitting other pegmatites?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what we usually see in uh in in in lithium pro in lithium uh exploration programs is that pegmatites are not uh are always coming swarms, or usually coming swarms.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: So our goal with this program is to start uh seeing some pegmatites, and you can see this in Brazil Lake as well.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have three pegmatites lining up, same trend, and uh that's that's what we we think this scout program, uh this this scout drilling will show us, you know, that this is more or less where it's trending, that's where we should follow, you know, this this this trail and and and find other pegmatites that are usually coming with.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's pretty much what we think from this program.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this will will show us, of course, uh start showing a geological model of this uh region and uh how we we expect to to progress with the drilling program afterwards.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: For um a spodamine pegnetite to be economic to mine, what what does it need to be?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: What does it need to look like in terms of grade, length, width, depth, things of that nature?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are a lot of factors that count in.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I would do a step back and uh on that question because this is one of the reasons why Nova Scotia.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when you go for places uh like Quebec, just uh keep that on that example, uh you need massive resources that can justify a massive capex to implement a project.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: So Scotia, as we are fortunate with uh unique infrastructure, we think that uh we we we actually don't need uh massive resource for that uh project to become economical.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: It it's a lot of it it plays a totally different you know price arrangement on OPEX and CapEx that changes a lot uh the the economical feasibility of uh of a of uh of uh project of a project.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: What with that said uh it's of course uh the shallower the better.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the grades uh at this market uh a grade above you know one percent uh in the pegmatite is already excellent.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so we would expect in in Brazil Lake we're seeing 1.2%, which is very good.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's their numbers, of course.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh we do expect from what we can see that we'll probably mimic these numbers around the region.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: That said, if we're talking about one to one point two percent, even higher, maybe, and this is uh an open pit uh sort of deposit, we could certainly be economical at 20 million tons, probably.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um so as a recap, you plan to start your initial drill program at the end of this year, early next year.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: So assays will start coming in from early 2027.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: So Q127, we do expect to have uh first results on the drilling program.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's our goal.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I wish you the best of luck with that.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Rodrigo Rosa, thank you very much for joining me today.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for your time and thank you for this invitation.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: And once again, Scotia Metals trade on the CSE under the ticker S M E T.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you like what you see, of course, don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Paul Harris, and this is Kitco Mining.