[Music] well hello everyone my name is Keith Baron I am the president and CEO and chairman of a company called irania resources limited based out of Canada and um we've been uh exploring our Flagship project is in Ecuador uh in South America been working down there for a lot of years um this project since 2016 um maybe for those who don't know me or know my background uh my previous expiration company uh was called aurelan resources and that is a company that made a fantastic Discovery back in 2006 in Ecuador called frud Del Norte it's
arguably the second uh second highest grade gold deposit in the whole world right now unfortunately I don't own it anymore but I'm looking for another one uh just to let you know our share price went through from 43 cents or or from 30 cents actually to $43 uh 9000% increase uh made a lot of people a lot of money uh including myself I was the largest shareholder and we sold out to kenross uh for 1.2 uh billion Canadian so that's who we are uh the uh the the the uh the um orania is listed on
the tsxv our symbol is a ru we're also listed in Frankfurt and the over-the-counter Market in America so go ahead Matthew okay keth get to meet you uh I know you've a reputation I we've not met or spoken before um and you've given us a little introduction to you know recent success um but what's the plan now what are you trying to do in Ecuador well essentially uh reinvent the wheel uh and and even on a much larger basis so uh the the previous company had a land position very very large land package of 93,00
hectares this one has got a land package of 208,000 so that's roughly half a million Acres uh we've been exploring it diligently since 2016 we spent over $60 million us on the project uh the only previous people who had been on this project exploring before had been the uh the Spanish conquistadors back in the 1560s and I actually did a lot of research in the Vatican and other places and and and knew that uh there had been gold found in the vicinity and that's what actually uh led me back to this area but it's in
the same mineral belt as the previous discovery that I had for the Del Norte uh it's 100 kilm to the north uh and it's an area it's been an a it's in an area where there's been a lot of um well not specifically on our property but in the belt a lot of uh expiration success so besides Fadel Norte there's a copper mine I'll call Mirador copper gold Sil uh silver which has been in production since 2019 and then a number of advanced projects uh notably uh one called warena which is right on our southern
boundary and that is uh owned by Solaris a Canadian company and uh they're spending a lot of money there right now uh we have a basically uh a cornicopia of targets um uh not that we expected to find all this stuff when we started out we started out looking for gold and we found a lot of copper copper and sediments similar to the sort of thing that uh that ivanho has been mining in in the DRC uh so in flat Ling sediments shells and sandstones uh the first sort that's uh first discovery for Ecuador um
conventional pori copper uh on the project and then we've got uh number of areas with uh highgrade uh lead zinc silver very very silver rich in limestones and uh to round it all off EP epithermal gold uh with characteristics that look very very much uh like uh like frud Del nte right so there's a lot there's a lot going on there as to say it's very big land package um how how do you go about uh funding exploration on a uh on a land package like that and how do you prioritize that spent well as
I said said um we really had to start from first principles on this cuz the only people have been on the ground before had been the Conquistadors so we had a a a program of of stream sediments we flew the area spent a million dollars uh flying an Airborne survey at the first thing and then uh it's been D diligently following up the uh the various anomalies uh both the stream sediment and the Magnetic anomalies on the project and uh and that's what's consumed $ million to to dates so really the heavy lifting on this
has been done uh we're looking for partners uh really we're at a stage now where uh it needs a lot of drilling um we have just recently completed a a small a smallish IP survey in induced polarization we spent $200,000 doing that on uh one of the gold targets uh and I'm waiting for the report uh to come back on that um but uh essentially it's at a stage now where we have a lot of first class targets we've spoken to a number of Majors uh we're in uh we're we're talking to people right now
um so really uh that's that's the status of of uh where we're going with that today right and the the idea there would be to provide those potential JB Partners those Majors with enough data to allow them to make that decision how far along the line are you um not just with the conversations but with the ability to provide enough data for them to be able to make a decision oh I think we're there um we've certainly spent a lot more money than than a typical major will spend on a project um I think a
lot of them are sitting on the fence right now because there's a national election next month um the current president is a care caretaker president Daniel naboa he's a youngest chop he's under the age of 40 uh he comes from a family of uh believe it or not banana billionaires and um he's very Pro business he's uh right of Center and um he's been very supportive of what we've been doing but of course he's been in a caretaker government for only a year and a half uh that's expiring very very soon and it looks like
he will get uh the time to continue his mandate for another four years uh as of uh of mid-February so um I'm waiting to see so are the majors we know that there's a number of them here um we talked to them all the time and uh and and really waiting to see what the political situation is and you know I think people have been to a certain extent waiting to see what uh what Trump does um you know uh and the reason being uh Daniel nabau is really the only uh right-wing governments in the
whole of South America right now and yet we have a a ton not just on our project but a myriad of different uh copper mainly copper projects in uh the Republic of Ecuador that are ready to get going and all they need is financing and I know because I've spoken in the past to the uh the state department uh the US state department at the embassy here uh that uh they are very interested and very watching very very closely uh what happen in this country because they certainly do not want the Commodities to go to
China and uh and so you know there's um where is where is America going to get its Copper from if they're going to have an EV Revolution or you know where's the West uh ivanho has got this huge deposit in the DRC Kamal kakula which is producing but all the copper is going to China I don't think people really appreciate that that's the second largest deposit in the whole world that's being mined today so um for a myriad of reasons uh I think uh you know any company that uh us-based companies uh or companies that
have uh a large presence in the US well we're certainly talking with them um but um you know some of it comes down to politics it goes beyond uh what's uh what's in the ground um now all that being said maybe CU I know time is short here for you um I'd like to talk about some other projects we have in France if I may yeah I I had I just very quickly just finish off on the politics of Ecuador is um obviously you you said that people are kind of waiting to see the results
of the elections does that suggest that the if if he doesn't get back in of I know stand in as a but if he doesn't get back in the other side are like not PR mining is there a downside if he doesn't get in who who the heck really knows uh the opposition is socialist uh in the Pro in the past we've had socialist governments in Ecuador during the time that I've been working here um and uh and some of them uh have worked with industry but uh occasionally they've done things that have been really
quite stupid uh there was the Korea Government back in the 2000s that brought in a windfall profits tax uh they were going to tax at 75% um when the gold price would go over $2,000 and of course they uh they removed any incentive for uh for a company to uh uh to come in and build a mine uh they were on their way out and Lucas lundine uh came in uh with the lundine group and managed to uh negotiate a very very good deal uh for his company which is uh lundine uh London mining and
uh and now they're producing about half a million ounces of gold a year and sending the gold abroad um so it's a it's a real win-win uh situation and you know none of that would have happened had I not entered the country back in 2001 and decided to privately uh fund uh expiration out of my hip pocket I did that for three years until I came I got the company public now as a result of it I was the largest shareholder on the takeouts and just to let you know in this present Venture irania I
own 44% of the company and I don't take a salary so this is very very unlike all the other Junior stories out there and I am very very committed to this and I am perfectly aligned with the shareholders for once I believe the CEO when he says that that's that's interesting because I can count of one hand slightly less actually the amount of cosos that don't take a salary uh and who put their own money into a a project something I wish more people would do that's that that's true entrepreneurialism um okay well look again
say so time is short we just want to kind of get get a sense of the man and sense of the project so why don't we kind of skip down to um corica France um and take a look at what you're doing there okay well this is kind of an odd thing and but it you know I'm an ecademic geology geologist I I I have a PhD I've been in the business for 42 years and um when I see value potential value for the shareholder I I go and pounce on it so this is a
situation where a colleague of mine came across a uh a reference to uh a nickel Min mineral called a warte which is a nickel iron alloy it's a natural occurring alloy it's got uh basically the composition of stainless steel and it occurred in Northern Corsica I had a look at uh the area actually on Google Earth anybody could have done this uh and I saw on on a beach in a place called nonza there are a lot of black stripes and I I conferred with my colleague he uh he basically jumped into his Jeep drove
down to Marseilles took the ferry across next day he was on the beach and sending me photographs with his iPhone and uh indeed it was what we call a black sand pler an aluvial accumulation of heavy minerals in this case it was aoit and magnetite and when you took uh a sample from the beach any random sample from this black material it came back 6% nickel Which is higher than any uh Hard Rock mining in in the world um so I looked at the possibilities of this and I thought uh actually he brought back a
5 gallon pale the material which I panned out in the front yard of my house in Switzerland where I live uh with a gold pan and I got a concentrate and I sent that concentrate into a commercial lab and it came back at 50.1% nickel with measurable Platinum Palladium and gold in it as well as Cobalts uh and I got very very excited at that point and I said well we have to go and see if we can secure this for a Radia because this is uh this is lwh hanging fruit if ever there was
um I understand U aluvial very very well and in fact uh one of the things that I did with the money that I I earned from aelan uh I have a a private uh uh Safar Mining Company in Montana in the US which is actually now uh the world's largest uh Safar mine and uh and so I I understand how to mine alial and um you know we got a scoping study done by um a Dutch company uh we sent them all the particulars on for the beach and they came back to me and they
said you know uh you could mine this with a floating dredge a vacuum suction dredge uh and uh the cost would be uh about uh 10 million EUR to buy The Dredge €3 million EUR to buy the additional equipment1 13 million EUR you're in the game uh sustaining capital for one year capex or or your Opex would be another another 10 million EUR and that is certainly doable uh by a little company like us so um Our intention is to put it in production we've seen projects like this um around the world um so understand
the process but um obviously this is sort of middle of the Mediterranean and um how how does one go about getting permissions to to do this it's sitting there say easy cheap mining uh we're so some exceptional Gres but set setting something like that this up is probably the the long pole in the tent as it were so how do you think move this forward yeah one would think so but in reality this beach is not natural it's only been there since the 1960s um and it's made up of waste from an asbest mine uh
which is 6 kilm away they dump the waste in into the ocean or into the Mediterranean and over time it's migrated its way down the coast and filled in a couple of ports and these are now beaches uh mostly composed of of sand uh with some Pebbles of rounded material that uh you know that was just waste from the M the asbestos is all gone uh it's been checked uh as as far as we're aware at least twice by the the the French government the authorities uh because uh occasionally people walk their dogs on the
beach and there is no asbest Hazard uh we've had a bunch of stuff in the media by irresponsible uh people saying that we're going to uh produce asbest and that's uh that's exactly uh the opposite of what Our intention is in fact uh there is no life on this beach it is completely sterile because the material contains nickel Cobalt and chromium which are all Heavy Metal poisons and so there are no Barnacles there are no snails there are no crbs there's nothing nothing nothing it's devoid of life and we're going to be cleaning it up
in a way by taking all the fraction that's smaller than 1 millimeter the sand and leaving the rest of it behind so people can continue to walk their dogs to do whatever they whatever they want to now uh as far as permissions go there was a vote in the corsac parliament uh in November which has 40 members and unanimously they approved the project they said we have to do a full-blown environmental study you have to do that in France anyway it's already underway um so we're doing that right now and um you know I I
am hoping that we can get this thing rolling and potentially put it in production uction in in 2026 well okay so that's pretty that's pretty quick um it's simple we know the CarX will be low and and the grades see from what you say you quite high so this is on a per ton basis there's there's a lot of contained metal in here and valuable metal as well um 20 kind shocked me there I thought that that's quite interesting what's the scale of this because we we you got you talk about a couple of beach
loads of this stuff I what what are we talking about 10 years 10 years worth of production and then it's done and uh at at the the request of the local people um and we do have anou already signed by um the the mayors of both local communities uh they would like us to leave off um for the summer months uh so we would be doing the extraction uh it's not mining it's extraction uh and we would be doing that uh in uh for the the remaining uh eight or nine months of the year and
I might add there are uh other um things like this within uh France along the coast uh where they're extracting uh Aggregates uh for uh cement and and for uh for building materials sand and gravel so this is not a crazy thing and it will be going be permitted under sand and gravel um as a as a sand and gravel per permit okay and with regards to um the I mean what what how much downtime are we talking about the summer months being what four months five months so there's a there's a part operation yeah
we be back in business by mid-september right okay okay and when do you kind of actually start putting some numbers together on this trying to understand the the opportunity financially yeah well uh we we haven't done that yet um and uh it that's intentional now you know I looked at the thing and as I said I I've got a lot of aluvial experience and it's obviously going to be a mine uh it's just a question of you know when's it going to be extracted by whom and hopefully it's going to be us um so what
we're doing as part of the environmental survey uh we will be drill the beach and uh and and getting a a profile uh from top to bottom and sending that material to the lab and then on the basis of that uh with uh kind of a grid uh based uh drilling program uh we'll be able to put a resource together you know anything else at this stage is arm waving from me uh it may be smaller it might be larger but uh you know I look at this thing already and uh and I can obviously
see uh that it's going to make money right so in terms of prioritizing Ecuador versus this I mean do they run parallel or in terms of managing your money what do you focus on yeah they do run in parallel um we would like to do uh a drill program in uh in Ecuador on on the gold targets coming from the IP survey uh later on this year of course uh you know we don't have all the money in the world uh so we're we're we're focusing on various things what of the things that we've done
in Corsica um just in the last uh well after New Year um we've got samples at SGS Labs which is one of the large well is the largest uh laboratory in the world for this kind of business and they've been able to synthesize nickel sulfate battery grade for from the material that we provided them from the beach from the raw sand and there's lots of reasons to do this um there is a a um uh they're they're building a gigafactory in Normandy in France uh to produce EV batteries um there's already sabani Still Water have
a a Refinery uh in dunker and there's a second one being built by another company a private company in bordo uh and uh you know we have a lot of magnetite which is iron basically iron oxide suitable stuff uh to make steel with and there are seven companies making stainless steel in France all of them who would be very very interested in uh in taking our material so we did this not that we're going to make batteries but we wanted to show proof of concept so I can go out and do what some of the
other companies have done in the nickel business and and go out and see if I can get uh some um off-take agreements uh some agreements with industry uh one of our uh another Canadian company's done this uh fairly recently with oo and with so sumomo uh and this this can be done we know that Elon mus needs a lot of nickel for his his uh his cars and uh and we can provide it and provide it fairly quickly and it's clean nickel that's the thing right it's not like it's coming from Indonesia where we're cutting
down a ra rainforest yeah we we we do a weekly nickels show uh we for the last four years sort of aware of some of the issues but also maybe whereare some of the opportunities like you're based on switzland it's a big uh ecosystem for for Ev and and and green Metals in Europe is that something that you'll be kind of feeding into and taking advantage of I'm based in in Europe um I know a lot of people in the in the uh in the metal space of course glenor is based in in Switzerland now
um you know at the end of the day I don't know where this goes to uh maybe somebody would want to come in and buy us out um who knows um if it's if it's large enough um but um you know I know uh for the French governments the French governments or the French industry has mostly been getting uh their uh their nickel from French Polynesia uh it's been very very contentious glenor uh has their mining operation down there they've had to close it uh from time to time because of unrest and um you know
we we provide a source of of of uh of nickel here and you know the the fren French government has signed on the green initiatives they signed a compact with with Italy and Germany last year to find critical medals within Europe so um we know that there's one project that's being financed right now uh in um in the uh in northeastern France for lithium and uh potentially we would be number two but these are things that uh that the French government uh is willing to put money into um through grants and also uh low interest
or no interest loans uh and so there there's that opportunity from the French government and opportunity from the EU government yeah and imagine what one or two Automotive companies in Germany too um well okay interesting stuff uh actually you so I guess you're you're hearing all the buzzwords out for sure and and banging on open doors in both the North American market and the European market for what what you um potentially be able to get out of the ground or extract in this case um I'm Keith I appreciate the call and and really interesting actually
I wasn't Curr expecting to um you know get this level of deta and I I'm glad I did glad I did uh for for sure really really interesting L do you stay in touch with us and let us know how you get on with these projects as they move through the phases and good luck obviously with the elections in Ecuador um that could that could be um super news if if the status quo remains appreciate your time today thank you great thanks for the opportunity
