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Advantage Lithium (TSX-V: AAL)(OTC: AVLIF) Comes on the Scene with Lithium Projects in Nevada, Mexico, and Argentina
Gerardo Del Real: Well we're excited to have you on. Now I provided a brief introduction there, but for those that aren't familiar with your background. Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself, and how you became involved with Advantage Lithium?
David Sidoo: Sure. Not a problem at all. Actually, i'm a real firm believer on putting the right teams together. I've had that experience from smaller companies that I founded from inception. Putting a good board together, good technical team, and ability to raise capital and find the right assets. My entire career, when I finished the brokers business, I put five to six years in every single project that I've brought public. Put the teams together and it's not unlike what I'm doing right now with Advantage Lithium.
I brought in Dev Randhawa and Ross McElroy of Fission Uranium, who are real successful guys in the energy sector. I've had a lot of success in terms of raising capital and bringing the right relationships together.
Talking a little bit about myself. That was a nice introduction. I appreciate you talking about me like that. It's hard sometimes to hear some of the stuff you do, but it's better other people saying it than yourself.
I really want to focus on my good friend Dev. I've known him for over thirty years. Ross McElroy, you know through Fission Uranium and Dev. All our teams had a lot of success in the resource sector and won a bunch of awards for exploration development. I mean these fellas, Ross and Dev, as you know have won Dealmaker of the Year. The PDAC Bill Dennis award. Northern Miner - Mining Person of the Year.
I was fortunate enough to win the Order of BC. My colleagues here finance Monthly Dealmakers of the Year. Dev has just been short-listed again for CEO of the Year, as well with Fission Uranium. Really excited to be working with these guys. We've got some interesting opportunities. It made sense for us to come together based on our combined experience, and founding and building successful companies. We're all good friends. We're not stock promoters. We're company builders. I think that's an exciting thing for your readers and potential shareholders to understand who we are.
Gerardo Del Real: I agree David. I think that's the one thing that stood out, just initially. My first takeaway was, what an accomplished group, because you absolutely have a group that knows how to take a project. Take a company from inception and grow it and add value. Via the drill-bit, via acquisitions, you have a lot of experience in world class discoveries with the team there.
Now the case with lithium, switching gears a little bit. It's been made by many, and it's fairly straight forward. Demand already outstrips supply by sum 15% and it's growing rapidly. It's predicted to triple over the next ten years, and honestly most wannabe lithium juniors will not make it to production. They won't deliver meaningful shareholder value, but Advantage Lithium has made a ton of progress in a very short amount of time. I would like to talk about that. Within a matter of months, Advantage Lithium just raised 5 million dollars. You've acquired several projects. Including projects in Argentina and Mexico, and I understand that you'll be drilling soon in Nevada. Is that correct?
David Sidoo: That's correct. I believe in the next two to three weeks we'll be drilling in Nevada.
Gerardo Del Real: That's excellent. I'd love to start there. I want to start in Nevada because the joint venture that you negotiated with your partner Nevada Sunrise, has some real strategic importance. With the water rights and because you're drilling a stone's throw away from the only lithium producing mine in North America. Can you share the details of that agreement and talk a bit about the upcoming drill program.
David Sidoo: Sure. What I'd like to do is, I'd like to talk a little bit about the deal we did with Nevada Sunrise. Again a friendly project. A friendly group of guys that we've worked with before. Warren Stanyer, he was there in Nevada well before any of these other junior and startup companies were. Warren was staking some of these assets many many years before anybody else. We were able to do an option based deal with Warren and his company and it turned it up to a 50% based on an exploration expenditure. 1.5 million US initially.
Option number 2, we can increase that to 70% by spending a further exploration amount of 1.5 million. We've got a three hole drill program focusing on the area near the claim border with Albemarle. We're about within a hundred and ten meters of production wells there. This is lithium brine in a basement. We're pretty excited, as you can imagine.
I'd like Ross to take over just for a couple seconds just to give you his thoughts. Ross has been obviously the main catalyst behind finding that major discovery for Fission and he's leading our exploration team there. I guess Ross could just takeover and talk a few minutes about why we're drilling where we are. How many holes we're drilling and what we feel the potential is there.
Gerardo Del Real: That'd be fantastic. For those listening this is Ross McElroy. Ross thank you for coming on, again on short notice.
Ross McElroy: It's a pleasure Gerardo. Thanks.
Gerardo Del Real: Anytime we're involved with an exploration program and Ross McElroy's behind it. I get excited. Can you share with us a little bit about the strategy for the drilling program, and what we can expect?
Ross McElroy: I sure can. We're just about ready to go on the drill program down on our plate in Northeast project. Clayton Northeast, as you already mentioned, is a stone's throw away from production on the Albemarle property and Silver Peak property. Right there. We already have six holes permitted for that property. This drill program that we'll initiate towards the end of this month, early October, will be three holes and we'll see what we get. We expect being that close to a producing lithium mine, that we could have a very good chance of success on this project.
The key here is closeness to current operations, and you've already touched earlier on the strategic advantage having water rights in the area. But also you have infrastructure in the area, and Nevada is a very mining friendly district. It has everything going for it. We're pretty excited to get underway.
Gerardo Del Real: That's excellent. Now you mentioned the water rights. I want to dig a little deeper into that because I'm not a lithium expert. But I assume that water is important if you're going to be putting a lithium project into production. Is that correct?
Ross McElroy: It can be. This is certainly the way that Albemarle is getting their lithium out. They put in big evaporation ponds. It does require a fair amount of water in order to be able to extract the lithium. There's other methods as well out there that can extract lithium. We'll be looking at all options, but certainly having those water rights gives us a true advantage over what everybody else has in that area, other explorers. The only other group with water rights would be the producer Albemarle.
Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Now you mentioned the producer Albemarle. I haven't been to the property yet and for those that are listening or reading the interview. Could you give us an idea of just exactly how far away you're drilling from existing production, maybe in terms of meters or feet?
Ross McElroy: Sure. Well our property boarders up right up against theirs. Where we will be setting up our drill collars, we're within 110 meters of production wells. In other words, you're looking at pumping stations on the lithium brine production wells in the background. It's within 300 feet for you guys down in the US. It's very very close.
Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now switching gears a little bit. Now I mentioned that you had also recently acquired projects in Argentina and in Mexico. What's the strategy there? I know the focus right now is Nevada, but what's the strategy for those projects?
David Sidoo: I think what we wanted to do was focus on North America, being Nevada and Mexico. We were able to secure some assets by joint venture with Radius Gold, and that's a Simon Ridgway company. If you know anything about Simon, he's a real successful entrepreneur as well. He founded Fortuna Mining, listed on the New York Stock Exchange. He was able to secure some assets in Mexico and obviously focusing on gold. He reached out to us again through our relationships with him and said that geological work that his team had done and the government had done on these ... there's around 35 thousand hectares, was sort of analogous to Nevada's Clayton Valley, geologically speaking.
It's a large land package consisting of four properties. Some historic drilling show lithium exists within there around a 283 PPM lithium, and there's some good infrastructure. It's a good jurisdiction. Falls right into the sweet spot of our technical team. Particularly Ross's strengths. We think that's an opportunity for more of a grassroots project. You want to have that in your portfolio. Along with something that's going to be closer to development and production. Which is our Nevada asset.
Then we were able to also acquire just recently some assets in Argentina. That was strategic for us. We're adjacent to Orocobre's large shallow-depth resource there within the Argentinian lithium triangle. There's great infrastructure there. Road, rail and power. There's been some prior work done on that. Some sampling, mapping, geochemistry. We're excited about that. It's a great address. It's a decent footprint, with about just under 1500 hectors.
We're also looking at some other strategic stuff there as well, but our North America assets consist of something closer to obviously drill ready and production and development in Nevada. Grassroots in Mexico and then Argentina again close to producing, right on the boarder actually one of the only two producers in Argentina. We're excited about that opportunity for us as well.
Gerardo Del Real: That's fantastic. Definitely multiple shots at gold obviously. Now you also have a very solid share structure and I mentioned earlier that you just raised some capital. How's the cash position look right now?
David Sidoo: We've got 3.2 million in the bank which is going to take us through most of this year and next year with the projects we have right now underway. We've announced an additional 5 million dollar raise at 60 cents with a half a warrant for two years at 75 cents. We currently have fully diluted 55 million shares out on the company. Once we finish this next raise we'll have roughly just 60 million shares with about 8 and half million in the bank. Which should give us enough money for the next two years to develop what we want to.
Now if we're able to secure a larger asset in Argentina. Which we're potentially looking at now. Well do a follow up funding, between 15 to 20 million for one of those projects. Right now we're focused on Nevada. Developing our relationships in the asset in Argentina.
Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now I know Ross mentioned that the drilling would start late this month or very early October. How long do you anticipate before we start seeing results from that program?
David Sidoo: I think you'll start to see results fairly soon. When we drill a hole, they won't take that long to drill. We're probably about three days a hole. Three to four days a hole. We'll know right away whether we have a lithium brine. We'll be testing all the way down there. In fact we expect if it follows what's happening next door on the producing asset, you'll get multiple horizons of lithium brine. This is what we're looking for. We'll be testing every step along the way. It won't take very long to get initial results.
Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Well David, Ross. I want to thank both of you for your time. It's an important time for Advantage Lithium. Is there anything that either of you would like to add?
David Sidoo: No. I think that as an investor and as someone that's looking at a company in this space. I think you got to look at the three main key areas. The management team you have. The assets and the ability of that management team to bring those assets to a monetary value and shareholder value. I think this team, is probably one of the best ones you can look at, and that's base.
Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. David, I'm looking forward to results. We'll be keeping an eye on it and hopefully we can have you back on soon. Ross, you as well.
Ross McElroy: Very good. Thank you Gerardo.
David Sidoo: Thank you Gerardo. Take care.
Gerardo Del Real: Thank you.