Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

CEO Interview: Leading Edge Materials (TSX-V: LEM) Discovers Lithium Mineralization in Outcrop at Bergby Project, Sweden

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is President and CEO of Leading Edge Materials (TSX-V: LEM)(OTC: LEMIF), Mr. Blair Way. Blair, thank you for joining me this evening.

Blair Way: Hi, Gerardo. How you doing?

Gerardo Del Real: I'm doing fantastic. I'm glad you came on. You had a bit of news there that I thought was important. The headline reads, "Leading Edge Materials Discovers Lithium Mineralization in Outcrop at Bergby Project, Sweden." I know we had spoken a few weeks back about the fact that you had expanded land holdings and you're looking to become a one-stop shop for critical members in Europe with the flagship, of course, being the Woxna graphite, but this is important and I wanted you to share the details with everybody about it.

Blair Way: For sure. Certainly the press release tells the story. We're just advancing our progress through the Bergby exploration work and we've identified outcrops beyond the boulder. That's a big indication that we're sitting on top of something rather than having to extrapolate possibly where the boulders came from. The theory always was that the boulders we were seeing were indicative of nearby basement material. Sure enough, we've got these three outcrops that we've been able to get samples from, and they're pulling the numbers from our assays as what we'd hoped to see. We're pretty excited about the results.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. I understand that you recently completed a ground magnetic survey. That led to you applying for permits and maybe a drill program here in the first quarter of 2017. Is that correct?

Blair Way: Absolutely. That's certainly our target. We're working with the regulatory authorities and just working with our team, our geological team, to make sure we understand exactly how to get the most bang for our drilling dollar, but certainly all things going to plan and also somewhat weather permitting, but it's actually an all-weather access, unless there's a huge dump of snow for Christmas or something, but certainly we expect in the first quarter of next year early to be able to advance, to make an announcement that we're going to commence a small drilling program to actually hit some of these targets that we're looking at through this magnetic survey and other ground works that we've been doing.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Obviously, exciting news on the lithium front. Switching back to the graphite, the flagship Woxna facility. How is that coming along? How's news there?

Blair Way: Certainly the flagship, our graphite, is moving along. We've had some excellent work that we've undertaken with cell manufacturers and discussions in Germany and there's also in the U.S., so we're advancing this process of qualification of our materials, our high value, high quality, high purity material for lithium ion batteries. It is, as I’ve mentioned many times before, it's a step-by-step process as we work these cell manufacturers to qualify our product, to make sure it meets their specific requirements, and they all have slightly different requirements, and we are basically working on a case by case stage with each of them to make sure that we have both the product that they want for the price that they want and the quantities that they want.

All these elements tie together. If one of them is not quite right, that will create either a pricing problem or they want too little or too much, and certainly with regards to our graphite, that is the steps we're going through. As I mentioned before, we got some samples in the U.S. that are being prepared now. We hope to have some news. I'd say it'll be in the new year where we can talk more about that.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Can I ask what kind of reception you're receiving as far as being able to potentially be a EU supplier of the graphite? I imagine that's got to be a big differentiator for you.

Blair Way: It certainly seems to be that. Obviously, at this early stage, talk is cheap, but certainly the talk is very indicative of being receptive of us as a source. Being technical organizations, they're not necessarily following the resource sector. Many of them or really all of them were quite surprised that there was a source of raw material available in Europe, and having that sustainable supply of a European source material was a big differentiator, and we actually believe we'll be able to demonstrate also both the cost competitive edge over the higher cost synthetic graphite, as well as technical advantages, as well. Certainly the reception of both North America and Europe with cell manufacturers has been strong, and we hope to continue to deliver on that.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Blair, it sounds like exciting news on the graphite front. Obviously, exciting news on the lithium front. Hopefully, we have you back on soon with more details.

Blair Way: For sure. We're definitely demonstrating our mission to become the one-stop shop, and the discussions we have with graphite serve us well for when we get to the point where we have something to tell them about in regards to Lithium because all these cell manufacturers are interested in alternative sources for these raw materials, which if they're certainly for European manufacturers that we can demonstrate a European supply. These are all great discussions. I hope over the coming months, I can articulate the outcomes of these discussions in the new year.

Gerardo Del Real: I look forward to it, Blair. Thank you again so much for your time, and we'll talk soon.

Blair Way: Thanks, Gerardo. It's great to chat.