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Securing America's Critical Minerals

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Moomoo News Dec 24 12:09 · 1958 Views

Drew Horn, Founder & CEO of GreenMet, discusses investing in innovation across the critical minerals industry. He speaks with Alix Steel and Paul Sweeney on "Bloomberg Markets."

Disclaimer: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation or endorsement of any specific investment or investment strategy. Read more

Transcript

  • 00:00 So just
  • 00:00 basic stuff.
  • 00:01 What does Greenmet do?
  • 00:03 Well, what we try to do is provide the connective tissue to drive a lot of these solutions forward to commercialization.
  • 00:09 So
  • 00:10 obviously I I worked on this issue as one of the leads for President Trump during his last administration.
  • 00:15 In the
  • 00:16 interim, in the time since, we've been working on the private side to connect private equity policy goals,
  • 00:23 public funding.
  • 00:24 There's a lot that just needs to be brought together.
  • 00:26 And what I saw
  • 00:28 from my view in the White House was a real gap in some of that connective tissue.
  • 00:31 Greenmet really tries to bring all of it together
  • 00:34 for business growth
  • 00:35 that supports a lot of the national security needs of the United States right now.
  • 00:40 Where are some of these critical minerals that are part of some of these newer technologies, whether it's lithium and batteries or just the stuff I don't even know about?
  • 00:47 Are they here in the continental US?
  • 00:49 Are they other parts of the world that maybe aren't so friendly?
  • 00:53 Explain that to us.
  • 00:54 Well, I will
  • 00:55 try not to
  • 00:56 quote my geologist too much who loves to talk about how we have all of these resources inside the
  • 01:02 United States.
  • 01:03 We we do
  • 01:04 depending on, you know, what levels of demand you're looking at.
  • 01:06 I mean, we can more than meet our own demand and actually
  • 01:09 export a lot of these materials if we were to deregulate and look to open up
  • 01:14 a lot of the
  • 01:15 processing and extraction.
  • 01:16 But they are located throughout the world as well too.
  • 01:19 So we've looked
  • 01:21 across the planet,
  • 01:23 you know, I've been to places such as Greenland, all throughout South America,
  • 01:27 obviously Africa, Central Asia.
  • 01:30 And no doubt everyone knows that there's a lot in China and under China's
  • 01:34 control across the planet as well too,
  • 01:36 which
  • 01:37 I think is something that we shouldn't necessarily see as
  • 01:40 a threat as so much
  • 01:42 a
  • 01:42 reminder that we need to have more of a leadership role
  • 01:46 from AUS perspective in this space.
  • 01:47 OK, so where are the biggest funding gaps?
  • 01:49 Because there's three buckets I can put this in.
  • 01:51 One is actually finding the asset and developing it, and 1 is going to be refining that asset and then the other is going to be transportation.
  • 01:58 So where do you play and where do you think the biggest gaps are?
  • 02:02 So the biggest gap from AUS perspective is really on the processing metallurgy kind of midstream, if you will.
  • 02:08 There's been a lot of movement to kind of develop things on the exploration and extraction side
  • 02:13 and on the OEM manufacturing side.
  • 02:15 There needs to be done more
  • 02:16 across
  • 02:17 the entire chain,
  • 02:19 but it's really the midstream where the gap is.
  • 02:20 And what we've been focusing on the last four years is partnering with the best
  • 02:24 US and North American primarily processing and metallurgy companies that have really just started
  • 02:30 reaching commercialization and demonstrating that they can actually out cost compete
  • 02:34 Chinese more,
  • 02:36 let's just say
  • 02:38 environmentally damaging tactics.
  • 02:40 Currently,
  • 02:41 I would assume that under a Trump administration that some of the permitting associated with mining some of these materials
  • 02:48 will be easier.
  • 02:49 Is that is that the expectation in the marketplace?
  • 02:51 I think so.
  • 02:52 I think that's, you know, the goal and, you know, those of us in the private sector that are having some of these conversations and making recommendations on what would actually allow us
  • 03:00 to really scale and be successful or advocating for that.
  • 03:03 We're not advocating for anything that doesn't make sense.
  • 03:05 I would say you need common sense permitting reform.
  • 03:09 You need integration of materials from abroad into
  • 03:12 our, you know, technologically developing and advanced I would say processing and metallurgy
  • 03:18 facilities.
  • 03:19 You know, we've got,
  • 03:20 I'll give you an example, right.
  • 03:21 We've got a facility that we're looking to help finance and build in Texas
  • 03:25 that takes a combination of rare earths from AUS asset that we're working with
  • 03:30 and
  • 03:31 battery materials and metals from Canada and elsewhere, friendly parts that we're looking to actually build into the supply chain.
  • 03:37 And so you need deregulation to support projects like that.
  • 03:40 You also need, I would say, funding to serve as a catalyst to really bring in
  • 03:45 the private markets, which I think are on the verge of jumping in and starting to jump in a major ways right now.
  • 03:50 So that's where you play.
  • 03:51 Yes, obviously
  • 03:52 where do you get your funding?
  • 03:54 Like
  • 03:54 what's your process like?
  • 03:56 So we work with some of the I would say forward thinking institutions,
  • 04:00 funds and entities
  • 04:02 across the US marketplace.
  • 04:04 So we do have partnerships and deals with some of the large
  • 04:07 OEMs from oil and gas
  • 04:09 to defense and automotive.
  • 04:11 We've worked a lot of the funds that are looking to
  • 04:14 I think be bullish in this area.
  • 04:16 We, we did early on a rare earth deal that
  • 04:19 we partnered up a Cerberus Capital right up the street with
  • 04:22 firms such as theirs.
  • 04:23 I think are really looking forward at
  • 04:26 finding ways to actually move the ball in the space.
  • 04:28 And so
  • 04:29 we get our funding from those partners
  • 04:31 and from
  • 04:33 strategic
  • 04:34 commercial
  • 04:35 manufacturers that we work with as well.
  • 04:38 What's the national security aspect to
  • 04:41 minerals, rare earths, mining,
  • 04:44 refining?
  • 04:44 What's national security?
  • 04:46 Well,
  • 04:47 you know,
  • 04:48 interestingly enough,
  • 04:49 a lot of people when they talk about this, they focus on it from an automated perspective.
  • 04:53 I like to say it's
  • 04:55 holistic, you know, industrial and technological in terms of what's needed,
  • 04:59 the defense component.
  • 05:00 On it is perhaps probably the least understood and most
  • 05:03 critical in terms of gaps
  • 05:05 when it comes to this story.
  • 05:07 You know, everything, whether it's our our fighter aircraft,
  • 05:10 our, our missiles, missile protection satellites, everything needed for Space Force and
  • 05:16 everything you can imagine, highly dependent on all these materials, right?
  • 05:20 Permanent magnets,
  • 05:22 which are are absolutely necessary
  • 05:24 not just for automotives, but for a lot of defense and national security applications.
  • 05:28 Highly dependent on large amounts of heavy rare earths,
  • 05:31 highly dependent on large amounts of critical materials and metals.
  • 05:35 We unfortunately have been importing the majority of them
  • 05:39 from China and
  • 05:40 Russia and other entities out there that we really don't
  • 05:43 want to rely on when it comes to
  • 05:45 protecting our own national security interests.
  • 05:47 We have the ability to provide our own solutions and and you know I'm here to say that I think we can actually do it
  • 05:52 with a good business case and in a more cost efficient manner.
  • 05:56 3 seconds.
  • 05:57 Are we going to buy Greenland and should we?
  • 05:59 We will invest in Greenland and support all the development there
  • 06:03 that we want.
  • 06:04 I was one of the people working on that and so I am excited to see that move forward to a good place.