Lomiko Metals Corp. is positioning itself as a powerhouse in North America’s critical minerals race, armed with $16 million Canadian and backing from both Canada and the US, the largest undeveloped graphite deposit on the continent, and the capability to produce battery-grade purity that the EV and defense sectors are desperate for.
We recently caught up with CEO, Gordana Slipeciv. Gordana to break it all down and talk about what’s next.
The following is a transcription of the above video, and The Market Online has edited it for clarity.
Gordana: I’m happy to be here today and am looking forward to providing some updates on the grants and the work that we have been doing recently. So, this 16 million a really huge help to a junior miner like Lomiko. And for sure, we’re using these monies to leverage and do as much work as possible. So, this 8.35 million is meant to help out with pre-feasibility study. And the great achievement there is Department of Defense and the Title III Research Investment Agreement is providing 100% coverage in the cost for pre-feasibility study. And you can even imagine how huge of a boost that could be for a junior miner.
That market cap about six and a half to seven million, getting five million to finish pre-feasibility. So, great on that front. And then also they’re providing 50% for ore baseline work. And Lomiko have decided to take a little bit more of the funding on the metallurgical testing as some of that work is eligible. And for the junior miners, of course, this is something that’s a bit easier to raise than hard dollars.
The other grant that we have received from federal government, it goes towards producing materials that actually feed into the batteries, energy storage and consumer electronics like our cellphones and laptops and that kind of stuff. So, really, this is a huge boost for us. And all these grants are non-repayable, meaning minimal dilution to the shareholders.
Lyndsay: Let’s actually talk about one of your projects in, in general, La Loutre. I mean, if we zoom out a for a second here, tell me, why is North American graphite such a big deal right now? And what’s making it such a critical moment right now?
Gordana: There are many applications for graphite, industrial. And one of the oldest ones are the lubricants. Then electric motors, brushes, nuclear, graphene, you know, all these industrial applications that grow at a certain rate. So, let’s say 5% to 7% per year. But as we all know, electrification is really is taking a hold. And we’re seeing more and more EVs and hybrid vehicles on the roads every day. Of course, China’s leading that and Europe. So, North America still has some work to do there.
But, you know, these numbers still look like really excellent with about 24, 25% growth rate year over year. And with that being said, there are other implications that are just coming. And I’m talking about energy storage and AI, because we’re going to need so much energy to develop all these applications. And we see AI is not thing anymore when we’re going to apply it, but rather, how fast can we apply it.
That all depends on the energy and energy storage. And the graphite is playing a big part there as you know and many may know, there are so many installations in the solar power in the US and Canada to harvest that energy.
You have to store it somewhere, because we know some of these, renewable energy sources, they don’t run 24/7, including solar and wind. So, you need these applications to store the energy. And the energy then being used for AI and really making our lives better every day in developing and using these technologies to help us out. So yeah, a lot of applications here.
I believe it makes sense that the graphite that’s produced in North America is used in North America from also an environmental standpoint.
Why would you ship something to China, get it refined there and ship back products here? So, we have to develop further that manufacturing component and use our own critical minerals here in North America.
The other thing is with these unfair prices being done in China they can easily eliminate competition. That’s why now there is 160% tariff on imported graphite, just to level that playing field. And I think this kind of measures are really there to support domestic production in Canada.
Lyndsay: You know, you made some very valid points there about AI. It’s not when, it’s how you’re going to shift to use that. And graphite’s going to be a big player in that field, for sure. I want to actually shift gears here a little bit more and talk about your lab results. I mean, those are impressive. And you’ve also got Yellow Fox in Newfoundland on the radar. Gordana, can you break down what those results actually really mean and what the next steps look like for both your projects?
Gordana: Yes, for sure, were talking about Ruisseau-… an expansion in the graphite portfolio. We have several other earlier stage properties and some are more prospective than others. And really on top of these came when Ruisseau, which we did a lot of work last year with the grades about 27%-28% carbon content. What that means is when you take that rock, third of it is carbon. So we did the more work this spring and outlined that project quite a bit more. Now, the two most western zones are really sizable, a kilometer and a half and 3.85, almost, four kilometers long.
We’re looking somewhere that is a long distance and has really wide zones. So these zones are 20 to 40 meters wide. Naturally we had looked into the next steps there, which would be planning for the drilling. Of course, all this depends on raising the capital and being able to kind of get there to that point. But we’re fairly confident that we will. You know, there is a lot of interest into graphite.
At this point, it’s the same with antimony, which is also one of the critical minerals. The plan is for Ruisseau to drill 38 holes about 2,500 meters and the plan is to start that work later in the fall and the winter.
And with Yellow Fox, which we acquired from, Metals Creek in January this year, we have done quite a bit of the work since the snow’s been off the ground. We did collect 550 samples on that project that’s been processed and that’s the press release we just recently announced. With these 550 samples we identified many anomalies, because some of these metals, of course, would show in the soil.
So many anomalies in gold, lead, zinc, silver and gold, but most importantly in antimony, that’s what we’re looking for.
Yellow Fox is really interesting it’s about 25 kilometers northeast from the past-producing antimony mine, Beaverbrook. And some of the rock samples that Metals Creek collected and that actually drew our attention, we’ve seen the gold almost 60 grams per ton, silver 73 grams per ton, 11% antimony, 7% zinc and five and a half lead.
Of course, that was the reason to actually start doing more work. And aside from the 550 samples in our published results, we collected about 280 more. And all these samples are now in the lab and being processed. We’re hoping to be having more updates related to soil sampling program.
And the next step, of course, would also include some of the geophysical surveys to better target these anomalies that we discovered with soil sampling. That’s some work that may happen in September or October. And then of course, following on these geophysical surveys, interpretation, we might be able to do some trenching this year, but that all depends on the winter, on the snow, and how fast we can process this.
What’s really important is that we also expanded that land package. It came in, uh, about 750 hectares and we actually expanded that to about 1,500 hectares. We added up another claim on the west side of the existing lot. Very excited about further work and results from Yellow Fox, which as I said, they really showed good results in antimony. That’s what was our focus, but having good results in gold and silver or other base metals…doesn’t hurt. Actually helps out the project.
Lyndsay: Let’s look ahead here just a little bit then. Uh, you’re sprinting towards that pre-feasibility study by Q1 2026. What can investors actually expect as you push La Loutre closer to that big milestone?
Gordana: Of course are looking to generate value for the shareholders by derisking these projects and doing more work. And, we have engaged DRA Americas in late April to actually lead this study. And the other major contributors are Knight-Piesold, geomechanical, geotechnical, and hydrogeology and also Norda Stelo, which is doing the mine plan and looking into early closure plans as well and some other consultants, including, SLR, Petri, Little Rock Resources, that are actually helping these programs come to fruition.
But the big thing for us is to declare reserves and have updated the both cost and the selling prices for the product. As we know, some of these prices did come down in the last few years, so some of these things would actually require some of the updates. Even though I have to say PA was very conservative in using the selling prices.
Something else that I really want to say here is aside from finishing the PFS engineering for La Loutre for the flotation plant, we also are looking to do the downstream preliminary economic assessment and produce the plan for really getting that flotation concentrate into the anode material.
Lomiko Metals is trading on the Venture under the ticker V.LMR and you can learn more about them on their website at lomiko.com
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