Categories: Base Metals
Topics: General Base Metals

Infinity Stone Ventures (CSE: GEMS)(OTC: GEMSF) CEO Zayn Kalyan on De-Risking & Advancing A Critical Metals Porfolio to Help Meet Surging Demand

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Infinity Stone, Mr. Zayn Kalyan, and Zane, great to have you back on. How are you?

Zayn Kalyan: I'm doing well. How about you?

Gerardo Del Real: I am well. Thank you for asking. When you and I spoke about helping tell the Infinity Stone Ventures story, we talked about whether or not you were going to be active enough to be able to get together on a consistent basis, and your response was perfect. You laughed a bit and said, "I promise you that there will be more than enough news flow to continue to have a dialogue with your audience." Sure enough, you've come out the gate with multiple news releases, the most recent of which is the expansion of the Galaxy Lithium project with New Zone. I wanted to talk about that a bit and some of the other portions of the portfolio that are attractive as well. I'll let you provide the context there.

Zayn Kalyan: Yeah. No, we've had lots going on, constantly active on all the properties, whether it be the initial exploration stage where we're confirming historical results, doing sampling, doing testing, general kind of trenching, blasting, et cetera, all the way from that to flying geophysics, which we're going to be doing on three of our properties over the next call it 30, 60 days. Then, even beyond that, we commenced our first drilling program on the Rockstone graphite project as of today. There's lots going on, very, very active. We like to keep the market informed as to everything that's happening and that just creates a lot of news flow that keeps the investors happy, but also gives a lot of catalysts for growth and continues to build value in the business.

Gerardo Del Real: You have a venture capital background. You've been very, very successful with that. You clearly understand the trend that's underway. You understand the runway there and so it doesn't surprise me that you are advancing a robust project of critical metals and battery metals projects. Clearly you are looking at this point to de-risk several of those projects. Can you talk with me a bit about that approach and what we can expect here moving forward?

Zayn Kalyan: Well, really at the end of the day, the critical mineral space is probably one of the only risk asset classes today that has any kind of traction in the marketplace. With that, it's not without warrant. I think you see every day that there's a new battery plant being built, a new EV manufacturing facility being rolled out somewhere in North America. The EV supply chain and battery supply chain in North America is a big focus for governments right now. It's a big focus for all of the stakeholders, including the private companies that build the batteries, the companies that do the mining of the lithium, the companies that build the cars, and the companies that also support renewable energy as well. You're seeing it almost on every level that there's investment, whether it be private or public in this sector. That's probably one of the only sectors that's seeing that kind of focus and investment on the macro stage today.

We're really in the right space at the right time. There's going to be a lot of critical minerals needed to fuel this revolution. While there's all these manufacturing facilities and all these plans being built out to support the creation and production of these EV cars and batteries for renewable energy, you still need the resources to support that. Right now, a lot of those resources come from China and with their original source to be in China and Africa. You're going to see that those supply chains are going to have to move to North America and move to Europe and we're really at the epicenter of that.

Gerardo Del Real: What comes next as far as the projects go? De-risking the projects is, and pardon the cheesy pun, it's critical, but I think investors and speculators that are excited about the Infinity Stone portfolio are excited to see the drill bit turning. When can we expect some of that to commence?

Zayn Kalyan: Yeah, so we have the drilling on the Rockstone graphite. That's commencing today. We'll probably run that for about eight to 10 days and then once that's complete, we'll obviously be sending the samples out for assay and we're hoping that we'll confirm the historical results, which are amazing results. Discovery grade 25% graphite over 24 meters is our target. That was the historical drilling that was done and I believe that we'll be able to get there, get that exact same result, if not better. Beyond that, what I would say is that we're going to be flying geophysics over the next 30 to 60 days across all of our projects, all of our lithium projects.

That's the Galaxy Lithium project and the Camaro Hellcat project, as well as flying geophysics on our Zen-Whoberi copper cobalt nickel project. Once we kind of have that complete, we'll be in a position to really determine where are our drill targets going to be on those projects? I think everyone's hoping that we'll be more active on the James Bay property, just given the success that Patriot Battery Metals has had in that region. Our intention is to be drilling there as soon as February.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. I have to ask, I know you're plenty busy. I know people are excited about the drilling. I love the commodity mix. I said that the last time you and I spoke publicly. I love the jurisdiction. How aggressive do you plan on being in 2023, and are you still on the M&A hunt? I know you're a deal maker, clearly. Is that something where you still have one foot in with the portfolio that exists now and then one foot out with potential M&A that can be accretive to the company?

Zayn Kalyan: I think we'd like to see… We're always looking for new assets and looking at how we can position those assets, whether it be with Infinity Stone or with other vehicles. What I would say with that is with Infinity Stone, we built a really strong portfolio very, very quickly. We're actively building it out, putting value in those projects. I think over the next, call it three to six months, we'll be in a position to determine what has the most merit, where should we focus the value? That'll also allow us to determine, okay, maybe this property should be spun out. Maybe this property we should do a JV with. Maybe this project should be our core property and we should invest heavily in it.

I think we're in a position right now where we have all of the pieces in place to gather all that information and be in a position that, call it mid Q1, end of Q1 next year, we'll be able to make some serious decisions as to how we move forward. With that, maybe we bend some assets out and we bring some new back, we acquire some new assets into the company. I think this project generator model is how we've always looked at GEMS, and I think that's how we're going to continue to build.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to seeing the advancement of all the projects. I love the graphite project. I'm really curious to see what the lithium projects turn up. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. Anything to add to that?

Zayn Kalyan: That's it.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Well, chat soon. Take care.

Zayn Kalyan: Thank you.