FPX Nickel: Baptiste Gains Strategic Importance for Canada

Trevor Hall (0:17)

Moving right along here, let's head back up to British Columbia and talk some Nickel exploration and development with an old friend of ours, Mr. Martin Turenne from FPX Nickel. They do trade on the Venture Exchange with FPX and on the OTCQX with FPOCF. Martin, I always love when you're coming here, talking a little Nickel at a precious metals conference. So how are you? How you been?

Martin Turenne (0:42)

Yeah, things are good. Thanks. Good to see you, Trevor. And yeah, Nickel's not on the top of everyone's mind these days, but countercyclical opportunities are where a lot of money can be made in the sector, right?

Trevor Hall (0:55)

Yeah, no, absolutely. Give us kind of maybe a glimpse of where we're sitting here at this Nickel market. It had a little bit of a glimmer of hope here earlier this year.

Martin Turenne (1:03)

Yeah, I think the direction of travel is actually quite positive after many years of negativity. In short, the Indonesian supply build out just flooded the market with Nickel units for several years. What's very obvious right now is the Indonesian government wants to turn the taps down there on supply growth. And so as you look out, looking ahead, Nickel demand is going to continue to be 5-6% per year, year over year for the next many years. And we see that Nickel supply could end up being probably closer to flat from here on out. And so we expect that 2027, they'll actually be the first deficit in the Nickel market for the first time in many years. And those deficits should continue and expand in 2020, 2028 and beyond. And so the policy wins in Indonesia are all pointing towards, they need to hire Nickel price. As the dominant supplier, they're in a pretty good position to make that happen. And at the end of the day, I think what's interesting, one of the things that I always think about is the ratio of the Nickel to the Copper price.

Traditionally, if you look back 20, 30, 40 years, that's been about two and a half times to one. So, Nickel price being about two and a half times the Copper price, we're getting close to almost parity right now between the Nickel and Copper price. So, how does that resolve going forward?

Does it mean the Copper price goes down, or does it mean the Nickel price goes up? I would put my money on the ladder.

Trevor Hall (2:32)

Very interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that ratio was so important to be keeping tabs on. Let's do talk about Baptiste. He actually made a little bit of headlines last week, I think it was. Baptiste was included in Canada's Investment Summit Prospectus.

What does that actually mean beyond the headline here, Martin? What do you know?

Martin Turenne (2:52)

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, listen, it's part of a broader move by the Canadian government, and to some extent by the BC government to want to attract capital to Canadian projects.

So, being in that prospectus means it's relatively short list of mine projects in BC that were included, so that's great. Yeah, and it really follows on the announcement by the BC government in the spring that Baptiste is viewed as a major priority project by the province. We're the only junior company with a critical minerals project that has achieved that kind of recognition or status. And, you know, that follows on being included in the province's critical minerals office. So these are all, you know, coordinated activities that the provincial and the federal government are doing to ensure that environmental assessment processes, mine permit authorizations, and the funding landscape are all getting aligned to be able to draw that private capital that needs to be put to bear to bring these projects to fruition.

Trevor Hall (3:50)

Is it tangible at this point? Tangible pathways? I mean, they're not putting money in your pocket, or, you know, is it more than just a headline right now?

Martin Turenne (4:01)

So on the money side, what we have seen is, in our can, you know, between money that's been provided to us under grant programs and money provided to First Nations involved in our project, almost $10 million from the federal government has flowed to our project to support its advancement through the EA process. So that's not insignificant. That is money on the table that's been put out.

From a BC standpoint, our inclusion in the Critical Minerals Office and our designation as a major priority project means that we meet with the province on a weekly basis to discuss the status of the currently ongoing EA process, to work to resolve issues, to ensure that our applications never kind of sit gathering dust on the side of someone's desk. And so this prioritization of activities by the bureaucrats helps to ensure that the process advances through the various stagegates which as to date, which we continue to expect to see.