Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Infinity Stone Ventures (CSE: GEMS)(OTC: GEMSF) CEO Zayn Kalyan on Exploring for Lithium in James Bay

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Infinity Stone, Mr. Zayn Kalyan. Zayn, great to have you back on, important time in the company's history. How are you today?

Zayn Kalyan: Things are going very well, Gerardo, how are you?

Gerardo Del Real: I am well. It's a busy time, obviously. I mentioned it being an important time for Infinity Stone's trajectory here. And look, the bottom line is this, Patriot Battery Metals and its Corvette Lithium District is turning out to be one of the most important lithium discoveries in recent time. Obviously, Infinity Stone has property that's proximal to it. All of that is always fine and dandy, but there's nothing like actually getting in the field and starting to prove up what's really there. And you had a release here recently that's going to really get to doing that here soon. And so I wanted to have you on the phone and then I wanted to talk to you a bit about the release covering Rockstone and the network with the graphite there, because that's another commodity that I think gets a lot of headlines. But look, let's be clear. This one here is the one everybody wants to talk about with the lithium program, right?

Zayn Kalyan: Exactly. Yeah, no, we fully understand that the markets really wanted us to continue to work on Rockstone and we get the frustration with not a lot of progress over the past six months, but we're going into summer exploration season here and we're pretty excited to get back on the project and get some results and continue to build value adjacent to where Patriot's seen so much success on Corvette.

Gerardo Del Real: Tell me about that program and what it will entail now that you'll actually be able to get on the ground and really start doing some of the work. Up until now again, we've talked about the success of Corvette, we've talked about the success of Patriot. Everybody congratulates Patriot every time they put out a release, but this is really where the rubber meets the road, and we're going to find out who has what. And look, I listened to an interview here with a couple of gentlemen from Patriot and had a conversation with them a few weeks back, and they believe there's the potential in James Bay for multiple very significant deposits. And so I frankly can't wait for spring and summer because it's really going to start proving up or proving down some of the theories. What will the work program entail?

Zayn Kalyan: So basically we'll start by doing a ground prospecting program effectively. So at the end of last year when we first optioned projects and we were able to get on them, we only had a limited space of about 12 days to get some work done, cover the 32 pegmatites map, historical pegmatites that are on the project, but beyond that, there's also potential for other pegmatites that are unmapped. So it took us some time to be able to cover that initial ground. And because we had such a limited window, we couldn't really cover it in an extensive way. Some of these Pegmatites are kilometer squared, so having only two prospectors or two geologists working the land was not very effective and we weren't able to get a lot of things done.

But what we did get done was we have a better understanding of where we should be focused. So when we get back up there in May we're going to have a much smaller area of interest that we want to focus on. We'll start by just doing some chip sampling, some channel sampling. We're going to have a backpack drill, a shaw drill, doing some short hole drilling. And once we complete all that in conjunction with flying geophysics and radiometrics, we'll be in a much better spot to be able to understand and we'll be able to define some solid drill targets, and that'll be the initial basis of the program.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's pivot a bit and talk Rockstone. You mentioned the planned spin out or the release, the most recent release mentioned the planned spin out here earlier in the month. It also obviously touched on the met work that was done, but a lot of the focus there was on the spinout. Why the spinout and how do you think that benefits shareholders? And then talk to me about the focus here moving forward as far as the flagship goes.

Zayn Kalyan: So I think with the spinout, there's some options. At the end of the day, James Bay is where investors see the most potential value, but we really want to emphasize to our shareholder base that the Rockstone graphite project really has a significant opportunity. There's really a lot of potential there, and we just have to figure out how we can really build value and help the market understand that there's a lot of potential blue sky here and we can build a lot of value, but to make that all happen, for that to all happen, we do realize that it probably does make sense to do it in its own vehicle, but what the mechanism and what the structure of the spinout looks like, I think we're just exploring all of the options right now. So I don't want to say anything definitively in terms of what that spinout will be, but everything's on the table at this point.

We've looked at maybe even a butterfly structure where we split the company in two. So every shareholder, their shares will be split in half and you'll get half of your shares in Infinity Stone, half your shares in Rockstone, in the James Bay asset, so on the Infinity Stone side. But we're just trying to figure out all of those pieces and we're not quite there yet, but once we have a clear idea of what the opportunity looks like, we'll be able to make some decisions. But what I do want to indicate is that the metallurgy that we got back from SGS on Rockstone is very promising. We're doubling down on the potential value that we see there. We will be doing some more drilling. We have a pretty robust exploration plan for the next six months.

We just got to figure out what the best structure is for that. Beyond that, on Rockstone, we have actually come to the realization that there may be the potential to be able to actually put this thing into some pilot production very, very quickly. And because all the graphite’s at surface, we can get permitting for a gravel pit very quickly. And that would put us in a position where we could actually start processing the ore. And we've been in talks with some partners, potential partners who have some novel technology for processing the graphite. And we could actually be in a position where we could be selling concentrate potentially in the next 12 months.

Gerardo Del Real: Lots of options on the table. I've always liked the commodity mix in the portfolio. I've been waiting for what I think we're going to start getting in the next couple of months, more clarity on direction and again, boots on the ground to see what's actually there in regards to James Bay. Zayn, I appreciate the time. I'm looking forward to having you back on. It sounds like, again, it's an important time in the company's history and I'm really, really looking forward to getting more clarity on which direction and which path you take. And it should be a fun spring slash summer, right?

Zayn Kalyan: It should be. Yeah. No, we're looking forward to it. And as always, appreciate the time and we'll be sure to keep you up to date as things progress.

Gerardo Del Real: Appreciate it. Chat soon. Thank you.

Zayn Kalyan: Thanks.