This is Gerardo Del Rial with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today for a long overdue catch up is the quarterback and CEO at Patriot Battery Metals, Mr. Ken Brinsden. Ken, it is so good to have you on, sir. How are you today?
Fantastic to be with you, Gerardo. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Listen, as a long-term supportive shareholder, it puts a smile on my face that despite your incredible success in the past and the incredible success that you're having now with Patriot, that you're boxed up in the back, you're sticking and moving, you're jet-lagged from the many, many trips. CEO working hard. We appreciate that. Let's get right into it. Look, we have a situation in the lithium space that is changing as far as landscape goes. And it's been a frustrating year and a half or two for anyone that has been in the space for more than four years for the simple fact that we had a phenomenal couple of years where all of us thought investing in lithium stocks and miners is really easy, right? You just put your money in and you just wait and then you wake up one day and you have more money. And so what we've seen the last year and a half or two is a pretty expected but more severe consolidation than a lot of people thought. Expected in the sense that we imagined it was going to pull back. We knew it wasn't sustainable at that point. I don't think, at least myself, let me speak for myself, I didn't think that China could do what China did for as long as they have. And so I look at the landscape and I look at you and I look at your background and I go, 'Okay, deep severe consolidation.' In the meantime, Ken and the team have added phenomenal value. You now have not just one world-class discovery, but potentially several world-class discoveries on one project. And oh, by the way, you've brought in people that to me as a shareholder scream, 'We'll take this to production if we absolutely have to. Zero problems. We've done it before.' You've obviously done it before. I want to get your take on all of those things. Let's start with where you see this changing landscape because I'm starting to see a lot of green shoots in the lithium space and the demand part of the picture is absolutely doing exactly what I thought it would do.
Ah, Gerardo, you're spot on. You're right. It's moved from being a supply-side debate in the last couple of years, the influence of China on the market. And I honestly believe we're now through the trough and basically heading out the other side with a view that demand is going to outstrip people's expectations. But it's the same old story, Gerardo. It's all about so far what China's up to and they really are changing the game. So lower cost sales translates to a heap more EVs actually globally now because China is a key player in lots of export markets, and it's those low-cost cells making their way into newer applications where the technology can be readily deployed economically. And of course, one of the standouts there is the stationary energy storage sector, right? Which really is a phenomenon, Gerardo, that one is being probably grossly underestimated by most as to how quickly that market's growing. To put you in the picture there, this year growth in stationary energy storage is up plus 50%. So almost double the effect of EVs, which is sort of in the range of kind of 27 to 28%. And yeah, the stationary energy storage, that's going to be a big one playing out in the coming years and a really important driver of demand growth that, as I said, I think is probably being largely underestimated. So yeah, there is plenty of reason to get optimistic about lithium raw material demand.
Let's get specific with Patriot, right? You have an emerging, and again deja vu for you, right? World-class discovery, this one, and I think importantly is going to be significant for all of North America, not just for Canada, not just for Patriot, but I think that the premium that should be given to North American deposits of significance, of global significance like the ones you have, are going to command a substantial premium in the coming years. You have not one, not two, but potentially three and maybe four different metals that are going to be and are in very high demand. I want to start with the flagship, which is the lithium, because I know that the cesium has garnered, and rightfully so, a lot of attention recently, right? And we'll definitely get to that. But let's get to the lithium. The lithium is initially why Volkswagen decided to partner with you. It's why Albemarle decided to come in at a significant premium and write a check. And oh, by the way, having $100 million in the treasury Canadian and adding the kind of value you have during the consolidation has been brilliant execution despite the share price performance, right? But let's talk about lithium. Let's talk about where you are. And let's talk about what comes next with that feasibility study that I think is going to highlight a lot of the key factors and give us a real clear look through the window of potential economics moving forward.
Yeah, it's a phenomenal piece of geology, Gerardo. When you're in the hard rock world, you're looking for these classic kind of LCT resources. Lithium, cesium, tantalum. That's what the geos will refer to. But it's very rare that you get the confluence of all three and some additive minerals in the one piece of geology. But that's exactly what we have at James Bay. World-class lithium scale and grade, cesium now proven with scale and grade in the maiden resource, and a tantalum resource that many would be jealous of if you were just focused on tantalum. So yeah, it's really an incredible piece of geology and it's for all those reasons that we're excited about the potential in the project. On to the feasibility study. Spot on, mate, that is close. So we're only a month or two away from presenting the updated economics around a lithium-only CV5 development. So if I take you back to sort of ground zero, we got the CV5 resource, lots of lithium there, more lithium and cesium and tantalum at CV13. But the feasibility study, just to be clear, it's lithium-only at CV5. That's what we're delivering and that's what ultimately gets us through the next phase of mine authorization, the presentation of the feasibility study and the environmental approvals documentation.
The value add that we expect to come from the other co-products, but in particular the cesium and the tantalum, that'll be played through the detailed engineering phase that'll happen while we're going through that first round of mine authorization. So just to be clear, lithium-only on CV5, still a fantastic project, but the economic interest out of the cesium and the tantalum that comes with the next step beyond the feasibility study, and we're looking forward to demonstrating what's possible there because those co-products are also really material to the project overall.
For the generalists out there, and let's be clear, I consider myself a generalist, right? I'm not a geologist. When we look at the cesium and we look at the tantalum and we look at the lithium, I know you have to be having discussions with chemical companies, auto companies. Are you having separate conversations about each one or are there conversations as well discussing the potential for maybe figuring something out with all three? Because there's applications for all three where hypothetically anyhow it could, you know, you could send 25, 50% of all three of those metals to one client in exchange for an offtake, right? Or are those just completely separate discussions at this point? I see the, I don't know if you're going to answer it.
No, no, no. I reckon you raised a really interesting point there because actually what it highlights is the concentration. Actually, the way industry thinks about this stuff, they worry about the concentration risk going downstream through China. And I think if you were to say, would you or could you send them all in one direction, it would actually be in the direction of China. But of course, most people in industry, especially those focused on North America and Europe, are thinking about diversification of their supply chains and getting away from that concentration risk that exists in China. What that's flushed out, and yeah, I'm really pleased to report that as we've made these discoveries, we do genuinely get inbound interest from counterparties who are motivated to talk about the potential in the resource. Cesium is of course the most recent example where we had made the announcement about the discovery even before the resource was announced and we're getting inbound inquiry about what could be done with that product and in particular further diversification of supply chains beyond just China. Cesium is an interesting one because it is, like a lot of the critical minerals, it is almost universally controlled by China. So people are interested in what the alternatives can be and for those reasons we're happy to engage with them. It doesn't mean you don't ultimately have an opportunity to sell to China. It's just that there are people that are interested in the alternatives and again we're happy to have those conversations with them.
Excellent. On the cesium front, I understand maiden resource estimate in Q3 of this year. Is that accurate? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got that one out. Tell me about it.
We did. We did. And it's really exciting because it's really unprecedented in its scale and the grade in certain subsets of the resource is kind of off the charts. So yeah, we're really happy with the outcome there, Gerardo. It's a fantastic resource. In total, about 2.3 million tons. You know, I know that sounds incredible in the cesium world because the next biggest resource is, we believe, the Tanco mine and that's about 150,000 tons. So yeah, it's got incredible scale, got amazing grade, and we're really keen to demonstrate what's possible with that resource over the coming months and years ahead.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Jody Doucette, who I know you're familiar with, a few weeks back, and you know, him and I was just kind of shooting behind back of the blanket, back of the napkin notes there. And I mean, we were sitting there speculating, we look at it and we go, there could be a couple of billion dollars just in cesium here and the resource estimate didn't do anything to disappoint that hypothesis, right? Thoughts on the potential value there? Do you want to get into that at all?
Yeah. Well, the products that come out of the pollucite concentrate. So the pollucite, the mineral pollucite is kind of the same as spodumene is to lithium in the case of cesium. It's pollucite concentrate that delivers the cesium. And what you're doing is you're following a similar path to the lithium world. It's just typically going to be dealt in smaller scale. But the main idea is that that pollucite concentrate gets dealt with chemically and creates really high-value mineral species that make their way into chemical, you know, in certain circumstances incredibly high-value chemical initiatives. Things like medical imaging, deep, deep sort of oil and gas drilling, opto-electrical uses is really where the cesium comes in and now the application of newer technology, new developments that improve the efficiency of solar panels. So that's where we see, you know, the migration of, or let's say the next wave of technology developments that further improves the efficiency of solar panels. They're probably going to rely on cesium inputs of cesium, right? But the industry has not been, they've been a bit fearful, I guess is probably the way to say it, about the ability to make that become a real, you know, a real growth opportunity because they worry about where the cesium is going to come from. So a discovery like ours, significant scale, creates some more abundance of cesium and therefore all these opportunities start to emerge, the market grows. That's really what we're focused on, Gerardo. The idea that there is going to be new technology paths that grow the market for cesium and if you've got, you know, what's clearly the world's biggest resource in cesium then you're going to be a target for further discussion about how you can make that real.
Yeah. North America again, world's largest resource. Champagne problems on that front, right?
