Eastport Critical Metals advances uranium, rare earths and copper-nickel projects in Botswana

So probably early sometime in the first quarter, we're drilling up there on targets. Uh, be very similar. Target on the four anomalies based on the results, drill.

All right, welcome back inside our Proactive Newsroom and joining me now is Daniel Major. He is the CEO of E-sport Critical Metals. And Daniel, it's good to see you. How are you?

I'm doing great. It's been a while, Steve, since we had a chat.

Yeah, excited to talk about this new company and what you're doing and it's a it's an exciting company and you've had some exciting news out. We'll talk about that in just a second. But for those maybe not familiar, talk to me a little bit about it.

Yeah, Esports's an an interesting company in a very positive way. Um we are Botswana focused. um one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world. uh and certainly from my point of view, turning up in Botswana for the first time since the late '80s, incredible uh environment to work in. a great infrastructure, roads, power, water, all of those things that you're looking for. government that's focused on getting mining development up and going. Um and then I come to the position of the portfolio that we've got sitting out there as well. We have six different projects over five different commodities, bit different from most explorers, but I treat it like a a share portfolio. You don't put all of your eggs, all your money into one share and hope. You know, the one thing that they do all do though is they all relate to the electrification of the world and that growth in the electrification that's going forward. Um so if I take you through them briefly, we've got the Matsitama project up in the north. uh that is a massive area scale exploration play with two uranium mines uh adjacent to it. uh our own resource within it, but an area that's really under explored while it has been historical, the whole area to the north of what we call Copper Snake, which has got big faults, big folds, big, you know, soil anomaly, that's our target. That area is 300, almost 300 square km target, which is in its own right, you know, a large target area. Um the next biggest project would be our Semarula project down near Gaborone, uh rare earth project. Um bigte plug uh sitting there. We've stuck a number of holes into it. We've had a whole five already, came with a really long intersection over 330 m at 0.21% rare earth with the top of it at about 0.64%, but very 28% in the magnetics where you want them. Uh waiting for other holes to come through, but it's a really big scale project. Um very exciting and obviously rare Earths have their position at the moment very strategic uh given the export bands. And then on top of that, we've then got our uh nickel copper play uh right next to the Selebi mines. ours is called Selebi East, 7K's away where we've been doing soil anomaly work, got a good correlation between um the nickel copper soils versus the amphibolites. That's the way the Selebi mine was found back in the '60s, at '50s and '60s. Um that project owned by Next metals has just been upgraded its um mineral resource by over 70%, only half of it upgraded. We're going to be looking at drilling on onto that project after some EM work. We've got the Foli uranium project next to Lekhane, uh an interesting diamond play near the Jwaneng Diamond mine, uh and then a smaller um nickel PGM play at a place called Kang. So, interesting portfolio all ready to be leveraged.

Yeah. And so I'm wondering are you looking at, it sounds like you're doing a little bit of work on everything right now, at least some of the the first ones that you mentioned. So, is that the plan to continue doing a little work on everything or are you or do you consider one kind of the flagship?

Um Matama and Semarula tend to get the majority of the budget. Uh that's they're the bigger projects. They've got the bigger scale um that go with them. Um we we do a little bit on on all of them though and not because, you know, that's what, they're at that stage as well. I don't need for example, Selebi East, it doesn't not need a lot of work at the moment. We've done the soil, we need to do some electric magnetics, which takes time. Uh and once you've got those targets, drill them. If for example, we've drilled it and we hit a target, then obviously it changes its position um in the potentially relative to how the others have done. And I think the other part of our strategy Steve is always, you know, if a project is doing well, does it stay inside of E-sport as well? Is that the right place for it? Um do we sell it? Do we join venture it? Do we put it into a different vehicle? Like, you know, if we suddenly found that Matama and uh Semarula are both incredibly big projects, they can't be together. They they'd starve each other of of capital. Um so at that point it's okay, well you've got to go and and be your own person, your own project and get on with it whichever one of those we separate out.

So what's the work plan then for the rest of this year and into 2027? What kind of things can we should we be expecting from them?

Uh yeah, I mean if we quickly just zip through the Matsitama, we're doing gravity at the moment. We're doing some more geophysics following that on its results, some electric mag. We're doing a bit of drone mag as well. Um that will hit target we're looking for targeting. such a big area, we need to target. based on target finding with that and all the other data we've got, start drilling. So probably early sometime in the first quarter we're drilling up there on targets. Uh Selebi being very similar, target on the four anomalies based on the results, drill. Um Foley we're going to do some drilling towards into next year uh on the Paleo challenge. Um you know, just got to analyze the results we've got now uh and then, you know, probably then go into some RC drilling as we try and get a better handle of of its scale and the direction that we need to go with.

So, a lot a lot to talk about in the next 12 months.

That's what it sounds like.

And just lastly, you mentioned uh critical minerals and and what people are talking about. Do you feel the pressure of that of people uh, you know, where's your project at? What are you looking at? Are you getting a lot of inbound calls like that, Daniel?

Yeah, I mean we do. I mean on all the time and we we are, you know, what I find quite funny now is I think the the US's 2025 list, 65 elements are in the critical mineral list. I think there's 117 elements in the whole periodic table. So it's like everything's in the critical mineral. But yeah, I mean, look, a lot of companies are are looking for rare earth projects. Governments are looking for rare earth projects. A lot of companies are looking for copper projects. I mean, the copper industry needs new projects of scale. Um so there is a lot of interest particularly on those two. Um obviously with the uranium, I mean uranium's a bit of a dudrum at the moment equity wise, but I I see that lifting up and I think that will become more interesting as we go forward. So, yeah, um, you know, we have a long way to go, uh, but I came into this company because I thought it was a a great team, um, you know, a great set of projects.

Yeah, good stuff. Daniel, thank you so much. Really great to catch up with you. It sounds like it's an exciting time uh and more to come in the future. So we'll talk soon, okay?

Absolutely. Thank you very much, Steve.

All right, there's Daniel Major, the CEO of E-sport Critical Metals.