Critical Metals CEO Tony Sage Talks Rare Earth Minerals, Greenland
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. But in terms of cooperation with our resources, we know we have huge potential. And we have said from the beginning, let's have respectful conversations and talk about how we can strengthen the partnership also in terms of our mineral resources.
That was Greenland's prime minister on partnering with the U.S. Denmark's prime minister is now flying to meet with him today to discuss the territory's future, which the U.S. has a large interest in mining there. Joining us now, Tony Sage, CEO and executive chairman of Critical Metals, the company just greenlit the start of construction for a storage and pilot facility in Greenland for its rare earth and critical minerals project. Tony, thank you so much for joining. What a week it's been for everybody, but I think it's fair to say that especially you have been attuned
What potential do rare earth minerals hold for Greenland?
to the news, just the back and forth in Greenland, whether the US would take it by force now, more of an agreement with military bases and a keen interest in minerals. Does this change anything for critical metals?
Oh, not really. On the ground, we're going 100 miles an hour doing what we can control. We can't control the politics of the situation, but it certainly does affect us. I mean, local people are very, very concerned, and I've never – we've been operating in Greenland for 22 years. I've never seen a protest before. So they are very, very concerned. It does affect our staff in Greenland. It does affect the mentality – For the uncertainty for them. But for us as a company, we're going, like I said, 100 miles an hour. We're building pre-construction. We're doing our pilot plant, our office and obviously the labs, which is going to be very crucial. in analyzing all the materials.
Can you tell us what kind of agreements you've struck for the rights to do this mining? I mean, for how long have you got the rights? How do you split it up in terms of what you get out of the ground with the local economy? How does that look, Tony?
Yeah, look, at the moment, we've got a 30-year, 500,000 tonne per annum licence to exploit the natural rare earths. The rare earths that we're going to concentrate on is not the lights, for example, MP materials. We're going to go for the heavies. And we've got 4.7 billion tonne ore body, which in effect would last 1,000 years. But we're only going to do a fraction of that, obviously, at the beginning. So we're going to concentrate on the heavies, which are the terbiums, the hathemiums, the galliums. and the spurs in the tantalum. So those are the ones that the U.S. government can particularly interested in because it obviously fuels national defense. You cannot build an F-35 fighter. You can't build a destroyer, nuclear power plants, et cetera, et cetera.
So they're the ones that we're going to particularly concentrate on in Greenland.
Tony, this has been an American government that's increasingly getting involved in corporate America, in corporations, especially when it comes to metals and taking stakes. For your more recent projects, have you had conversations with this government about doing just that? Any financial commitments that they're hoping to achieve?
Yeah, look, we've had a very, very good discussion with Ex-Im Bank. We've signed an LOI with the Ex-Im Bank. It's a fantastic deal for us. It's $120 million over 14 years and only 1.9%. Really, if you take into account inflation, it's a negative interest rate. So that's been fantastic for us. We've applied for it under the old DPA funding. So under the new terminology, it's CHIPS funding. We've applied for that. Hopefully we'll get a fair hearing on that. But we've done some very, very good financial manoeuvring. We've decided to do 50% of the product to the US and 50% to the EU. So 100% of our offtake is now being taken up. which completely de-risks the project. So it's fantastic for us, but fantastic for the EU.
How is Critical Metals navigating the political landscape in Greenland?
The Romanian government is heavily involved. 50% is going to go to them. And we've signed deals with UCOR in the States, re-alloys.
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