American Rare Earths unveils larger Cowboy state mine development plan in updated scoping study

There is a high chance that what we'll do because that work is very well advanced, is we may put out a PFS relatively soon and bring together some of that work.

Welcome back inside our Proactive News room and joining me now is Mark Wall. He is the CEO of American Rare Earths. So Mark, it's great to see you again. How are you?

Yeah, fantastic, Steve, you?

Yeah, I'm doing well, doing well. Excited to learn a bit more about your most recent news and it was significant because you've unveiled in essence a larger Cowboy state mind development plan. So a a new scoping study that really talks about where you are but really where you can get to and I think that's the key here.

That's right, Steve, and I think you've said something really key there. I mean, this is a continuum. This is uh we we all think about studies with a name in the front, whatever, a PFS, an FS, an IA. It's a continuum. We're we're about building a project here.

So we were doing really interesting and good work, progressing what we were calling a PFS, then of course, the Nasdaq uh process come along, that led us to go down the path of producing an SEC compliant study, which was called an IA, an initial assessment, and then that led us that work was really heavily informed by the PFS work, although there were some things we hadn't quite finished,

but you know, you're never in charge of the time. So, that led us to inform everyone and and produce a Jorc document. And it it's a this deposit as you know, Steve, we've just we've talked about this a lot of times. It's optionity is huge because of the size of the deposit. So, we've we've looked at that optionity, we've come up with a larger footprint, we understand uh everything more than we did previously,

and and this is a pretty exciting study. It really shows the optionity of this project.

So it gives you an an an estimate of four and a half million tons per year operation, a mine life of about 26 years. I mean it really significantly adds more to what you have. And obviously with that comes a an an added upfront cost as well, but you've sort of worked that into here and how you're going to deal with it.

Well, we have Steve and and again, you've raised a super good point. There's a couple of things we've done here though. One, we've in included a fair chunk of closure uh funds, which wasn't included in any of the thinking before. That's the reality of mining. And we've also been pretty conservative around the capital number. I mean, the contingency went from 75 million to 208 million.

So that that's really us looking through the lens of we're going to build this. Let's let's as we sharpen up the capital, as we sharpen up the design, we can bring down that contingency. It provides an opportunity, but we've we've beef that up a lot.

Yeah. Mark, you talked about a continuum and that's where this document sits now in today, but having more work that you're doing and more things that you need to do, you you change that document as it continues to develop along. So what's sort of the next stages here? Uh what will you be looking for now over the next, you know, six months to a year?

Right, great question, Steve. I mean we we parked what we were calling, excuse me, what we were calling the PFS and we dragged that forward into this SEC study and then the juke study. And but there's three streams of work for example, we're doing around recoveries. And in a in a perfect world, we would have let that work play out, but we didn't really have the opportunity to do that. So we'll continue that work.

There is a high chance what we'll do, because that work is very well advanced, is we may put out a PFS relatively soon and bring together some of that work that that is very much a work in progress. And we're really aiming though, all all of that doesn't really matter. What matters is a feasibility study that drives project financing, and we're aiming for that at the end of 27. And that's the very reason that we've already done the drilling associated with the reserve conversion

for the feasibility study is done. Now, I know you spoke with Andrew a short while ago regarding that drilling and some really interesting results. We're very pleased with how that drilling proved out, but what we've essentially done here is is we've completed the drilling for the feasibility study already. So I think Steve, everyone gets very hung up on the num the names and the acronyms and we're building a project.

In order to do that, we want to get the design right, we want to get the reserve conversion done, we want to get the metallurgy right and all that work's happening at full force. and unfortunately, it all comes out under different acronyms of names along the way.

Yeah. In the end, it's trying to get to a point and and there's has to be steps along the way. I think everyone kind of understands that part of it for sure Mark. So, um, congratulations on this. It's it's exciting and I know that there's lots more to come in the next little while. We'll look forward to having you back to discuss it all, okay?

Well, there's lots more to come, Steve. Don't you worry. We are uh we are moving at break neck speed.

All right, we look forward to the next conversation. That's Mark Wall. He's the CEO of American Rare Earths.