Eastport Critical Metals (TSXV:EVI) - Four Critical Metal Projects, One Botswana Portfolio

Daniel Major (0:00)

Hi, Daniel Major, the CEO of Eastport Critical Metals, and we are a company focused on exploration in Botswana. We have six exploration projects, Matsitama in Copper, Selebi in Nickel, Foley in Uranium, Semarule in Rare Earth, so being the primary projects.

SPEAKER_2 (0:20)

Okay, a lot going on there. I want to dig into the business plan, try to understand how you move all of that forward, or the order of play at least. First of all, let's start with my people, your background, and maybe talk about some of the members of the team also might be known to the market.

Daniel Major (0:35)

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, my background, I'm now, unfortunately to say, over 40 years in this industry. Yeah, it's been a long time.

SPEAKER_2 (0:44)

I'm not laughing.

Daniel Major (0:46)

Actually getting long in the tooth there.

SPEAKER_2 (0:48)

I don't believe you, Daniel, but anyway, carry on.

Daniel Major (0:50)

I'm just being so slim.

Yeah, 40 years across the industry, worked in multiple commodities, multiple jurisdictions, spent time as an equity analyst as well, HSBC and JP Morgan.

Joining a strong team, backed primarily by a guy called Burns Singh. He started his own merchant bank at the age of 19, and has been in the metal business since then doing multiple transactions. Ricky Bonner, a guy well behind Forces and the Valencia Project. David Newman, used to actually live, came from Ramsgate, around the corner from where I lived down here in Kent. Ended up in Africa, ended up as a high court judge in Botswana, and they asked him to become their representative ambassador for the US of A and high commissioner for Canada. So, you know, a really strong team of people from a political point of view, a financial point of view, and a geological point of view. Right, okay.

SPEAKER_2 (1:53)

Well, let's turn to some of what you're trying to do, because you've mentioned, you know, copper, rare earths, uranium, nickel, and I think there's even diamonds in there somewhere. And so, small company, you can't do everything all at once.

So, talk through what you've got and what the plan is to move these to boards.

Daniel Major (2:08)

Yeah, I think the overriding point I would make is, if you look at all of our projects, they all relate to one thing, which is electricity, and the generation of electricity. We're all targeting towards the same growth cycle.

And they're all early stage. So there's that ability to adjust as we go along. We're not spending, we don't have to spend a lot of money on any project at the moment, but we're at that early stage to figure out which our priority projects are, and then take them forward. The other thing for us is that, you know, we're not worried that if a project does well, it may get moved into a different vehicle, and to operate in it, we don't have to hold on to all of our projects in one company.

So this is, you know, you've got these choices, figure out which choices work, which ones don't work, and then figure out the strategy that gets the best return, the best focus for those projects going forward. So for example, you know, we've got Matsitama, Copper and Selebi-Nickel. Well, if suddenly Semarule turns out to be a really good rare earth project, then we're likely just to move that off into a different vehicle as a rare earth vehicle, and we'll focus on the Botswana and the base metal projects inside of Eastport, and partly because they're completely different investment portfolios, so we're very flexible from that point of view. But where we are now, let's see which ones add the value and then decide what to do with them. Okay.

SPEAKER_2 (3:29)

And what work has been done so far? And how much money has been spent on this thing? Relatively new company, isn't it?

Daniel Major (3:33)

Yeah, well, it's well over $20 million spent already putting this license together. The company, the founders really didn't take anything out of it. They put money into it instead directly, didn't even take salaries putting it all together. So you could go through them. Matsitama has is almost 2000 square kilometers of exploration just outside of Francistown. Has had a lot of work over time, but that work has all been on the southern side of our licenses.

Looking for shallow, the 50 meter drill holes, etc. There is a old mine, Takadu in the middle of it. There's a mine at the far end of it, Nakalakwana, and we have a resource in the middle of it as well called Takadu. So we know there's copper there. There's a lot of structure, etc.