Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Leading Edge Materials (TSX-V: LEM) CEO Blair Way on Multiple Catalysts - Bergby Lithium Assay Results, Strategic Financing, High Purity Battery Graphite Qualification

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.

Blair Way: Hi, Gerardo. It's great to be here. Good to be speaking to you here from sunny Stockholm. It's a nice spring day here in Sweden.

Gerardo Del Real: It's a beautiful spring day here in Austin as well. I appreciate the time. It's been a busy couple of weeks for you. You had some news on the 25th of April from your Bergby lithium project in Sweden. Great, great numbers. You hit 10.5 meters of 1.62% lithium oxide, and we still have assays pending. Can we talk a bit about that?

Blair Way: Absolutely. We're really happy with the results that we've seen and as you've mentioned, there's some good numbers coming out of there with some pretty, very healthy percentages on our lithium oxide. This is keeping in mind, this is just the first drill program. We've done 18 holes. This is the first five holes. We'll continue to press release the results as they come through from assay labs but we're very happy with what we're seeing to date. The remaining assays will help us define what the next steps are and what we'll do with the project moving forward. Certainly these first five holes have some great news for us.

Gerardo Del Real: I was impressed that most of these holes, they start from a very shallow depth. Can we speak to that a little bit, because that's obviously going to play an important part, just looking ahead a bit.

Blair Way: For sure. Obviously, finding something like this is, which at shallow depth just facilitates a more sensible mining program and obviously there's still tons of work before you'd be evaluating to that level of detail, but when we find anything of value at that shallow depth it's, again, just another feather in the cap, shall we say, to enable us to demonstrate something that has quite a decent value. Still tons of work, but having as I mentioned, some of them are showing up right at surface. Which is what we expected, because there's an outcrop at surface, where we found some interesting results. The drill program is just confirming that. We seemed to have identified a pretty decent body that is starting at surface and we now will drill to better understand how it's configured underneath the surface.

Gerardo Del Real: Perhaps not so much coincidentally, you announced the $2 million non-brokered private placement a few days later with some pretty important strategic European investors. Can we speak to that a bit, Blair?

Blair Way: Yes. We've done the strategic financing and it's important to mention, I guess, the strategic nature of it. It was not something that we absolutely had to do, but part of the growth strategy for our company is engaging more here in Europe, because we are very much a European-centric story and these are strategic investors. Sweden-based, or certainly Sweden origin, and very supportive of the story, very supportive of all these sorts of projects, what we're deeming the green technology project here in Sweden. With the strong support from these investors, we see that it's being an excellent starting point for demonstrating our business and our story here in Scandinavia and Europe on the greater whole.

Gerardo Del Real: Can you speak a bit to the overall market? I know behind the scenes, there's a lot going on in Europe and specifically in Sweden. How does that tie in with the high purity battery graphite qualification process that you're going through right now?

Blair Way: On that process, we had some results which I think I mentioned last time we spoke. In the press release, we were building some 18650 cells and those 18650 cell results are just pending now. I've got them to digest over the next few days and work with our consultants to be able to clearly articulate the results. We're progressing through that qualification process that we've discussed over a number of these talks that we've had. Certainly here in Europe, there are a number of battery cell manufacturers indicating that they want to establish gigaplants here in Europe. It's in the order of almost 10 that are identified. Not all 10 will come into play, but certainly one of them is here in Sweden and there's some opportunity with that. There's others elsewhere in Germany and Poland and other European, eastern and western European, countries.

Again, we are very bullish on the fact that we have this ability to produce the battery grade graphite for these potential producers. That's really what I'm spending a great deal of my time here in Europe is working and discussing with these start up battery cell manufacturing companies and determining what we need to do in order to demonstrate to them that we have the material to meet their specs. Also identifying their specs so we can confirm the compliance of our battery grade materials to their requirements.

Gerardo Del Real: Woxna and the graphite is obviously the flagship, but having early success at the Bergby lithium project obviously is exciting for you. What do the next several months look like? What can we expect news flow wise, Blair?

Blair Way: There's quite a bit going on, so as I've mentioned, we have these pending results on our 18650 battery cell testing. That's the next step, we've tested about eight battery cells. Those results will be out relatively soon. We've mentioned this financing. There will be the closing of the financing. There will be further Bergby lithium assay results coming through and a few other interesting developments, we think, as we progress through into summer, which will put forth as those results come through in regards to talking to some of these cell manufacturers and the like.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Blair, as always, I want to thank you for your time and of course I hope to have you back as that news starts being disseminated.

Blair Way: Absolutely, we look forward to telling our story more and certainly talking more about Bergby and also our graphite qualification processes. These 18650 cells really are a differentiator for us now, to build those cells. Those are the same cells that are used in the Tesla and that's something to benchmark our battery material against. That really is a significant step for being able to talk with these cell manufacturers and demonstrate, with the science behind us, that we have a material that's suitable for their needs. I look forward to keeping you informed as we progress through this stuff.

Gerardo Del Real: It's a big market, and it's growing rapidly and obviously Leading Edge, I feel, has a seat at the table. I think that's going to become clearer here over the summer months. Again, hopefully we can have you on, Blair, over the summer time to explain the developments. I think it's going to be an exciting 2017 for Leading Edge shareholders.

Blair Way: Great to chat.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you, Blair.