Kozak's #2 pick for Top Five Rare Earths for 2021 is

Kozak’s #2 pick for Top Five
Rare Earths for 2021 is …
Australian Strategic Materials Ltd. (ASM:ASX) is an emerging
“mine to manufacturer” of critical metals. The company’s
cornerstone Dubbo Project (100% owned) is a proven long-term
resource of rare earths, zirconium, niobium and hafnium
located in central-western NSW, Australia. While this
description might not excite you, it should. Read on….

The company is our # 2 pick for Top Five Rare Earths for 2021.
Created by a corporate demerger completed in July 2020, ASM
came out of Alkane Resources as the company’s directors sought
to unlock shareholder value in the then-combined gold/rare
earths company. The value creation has been very successful,
with ASM’s share price up by 400+% at year-end 2020, although
there has been a general retrenchment in most rare earths
company share prices since that time.

If you are not familiar with ASM, here are the key points:

     100% owned Dubbo Project – discovered more than two
     decades ago, this mining project is ready for
     construction, subject to financing. It has all major
     state and federal approvals in place and process systems
     design is complete
     Metals Business – the company has successfully deployed
     a “mine to manufacturer” business model, first working
     with and then acquiring the majority interest in a
     Korean metals joint venture partner.

The Dubbo Project

This is a polymetallic deposit that is rich in critical
metals. Dubbo is currently undergoing an optimization
feasibility study (to be completed end of Q1-2021) as well as
mining costs updates and optimization/simplification of

processing circuits for zirconia, hafnium as well as the rare
earths. In 2021, the company is planning to continue with the
FEED/Basic Engineering work. Later in 2021, it is expected
that the Board will meet to review and (likely) approve the
Dubbo Project with a Financial Investment Decision. From the
approval, after tendering the project development will
continue through to late 2023/early 2024 when the project is
expected to ramp up. Funding is a significant issue, but in
early 2020, Australian Government-owned Export Finance
Australia has confirmed interest in financing the Dubbo rare
earths project.

Critical Metals

As exciting as a mining project can be, the company’s “mine to
manufacturer” strategy is working well. ASM has a patented
metallization which process produces high-purity metals from
oxides using up to 70% less energy than conventional methods.
Developed in Korea, ASM entered a joint venture with the South
Korea’s Zirconium Technology Corporation (Ziron Tech) in 2019
and acquired a 95% interest in Zircon Tech in late 2020.

Through late 2020, the metals business had significant success
including:

     production of high-purity dysprosium metal (99.5%
     purity), confirming the metallization of all key rare
     earth magnet metals produced by the Dubbo Project
     production of high-purity zirconium metal powder at 98%
     Zr and 1.5% Hf
     production of titanium copper alloy (99.5% purity)
     ferro-neodymium alloy (FeNd – Nd 80%, Fe 20%), a key
     constituent of strip cast permanent magnet alloys
     a neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) alloy which was produced
     at the Korean Institute of Rare Metals (KIRAM) facility;
     KIRAM certified the NdFeB alloy, derived from ASM’s FeNd
     alloy, is suitable for rare earth permanent magnet
     production

With these results, ASM is moving forward with plans for a 250
kg/d metallization plant (scoping study to be completed in
Q1-2021). With the confirmation of the commercial scalability
of ASM’s innovative metallization process, ASM will now
progress detailed engineering of a 5,200t per year metals
plant that will initially produce titanium metal, nickel-
titanium alloy, copper titanium alloy, titanium powders,
neodymium metal, dysprosium metal; and NdFeB strip metal alloy
for permanent magnet production.

The Full Package – mine to manufacturer

The significant successes in the metals business as well as
the status of the Dubbo Project are both milestones for this
~$600 million market capitalization company. At December 31,
2020, the company reported cash of AUS$12.4 million, down from
AUS$16.5 million at the end of the previous quarter. No
forecasts are available, but the company is funded (at the
previous quarter’s spending rate) through most of 2021

A seemingly very good mining project and terrific success in a
complimentary metals business make this company attractive for
investors. Delivery on the business plan and no unanticipated
process upsets are likely to be rewarded in the future. Watch
this space!

Peter Clausi with Dr Richard
Smith on GameStop, Robinhood
and who really wins
In a recent InvestorIntel interview, Peter Clausi speaks with
Dr. Richard Smith, Chairman of the Board and CEO of

Foundation for the Study of Cycles about how “the rise in
GameStop’s stock price is a middle finger to our traditional
financial institutions.”

In this interview, Peter gets down to the brass tacks on how
“this power play birthed by the groupthink of individual
investors on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets has cost hedge
fund short-sellers billions of dollars and counting over the
past two weeks….”

This interview may also be viewed on YouTube (click here to
subscribe to the InvestorIntel channel) and you may access the
full interview here

To watch the full interview, click here

About Foundation for the Study of Cycles

Foundation for the Study of Cycles (FSC) is dedicated to the
study of recurring patterns in the economy, natural and social
sciences, and the arts. Hailing from a wide variety of
professions,   they  are  scholars,  scientists,   and
nonprofessional investigators, who share a passion for better
understanding cycles and how they can be used for the
betterment of all mankind.

FSC curates one of the world’s most extensive collections of
research and statistical data, which is accessible to all
members in our online library. In addition to being part of a
supportive community of like-minded cycles enthusiasts,
members have access to the Foundation’s first, cloud-based
cycles discovery and prediction service.

To learn more about Foundation for the Study of Cycles, click
here

Moovly Media stock is up
1,125% over the past year and
it is potentially only just
getting started
I first wrote on Moovly Media Inc. (TSXV: MVY | OTC: MVVYF)
(‘Moovly’) for InvestorIntel back on November 4, 2019 when the
stock was trading at around C$0.05. Since then a lot has
happened right for Moovly, including a 1,125% stock price gain
over the past year, rising from C$0.04 to C$0.49. That is a
12.25x gain in just 1 year. Wow!

We did give readers some warning when, in May 2020, I wrote:
Moovly Media ‘wows’ with massive user growth during the
COVID-19 lockdown. I quoted at the time: “One company that is
benefiting from the online video boom is Moovly Media Inc..”

Today I look back on the past year for Moovly and what
investors can look forward to in the year ahead.

Source

Moovly Media’s past year

Moovly had a great past year for so many reasons, here’s some:

     COVID-19 encouraged work from home and boosted online
     video creation. This has been a great tailwind for
     Moovly. We saw this with Alphabet Google’s latest Q4
     results yesterday where profits rose 43% to $15.2
     billion, on the back of booming revenue from YouTube.
     On Feb. 2, 2021 Moovly announced that due to demand from
     an increasingly international client base they had
     expanded their AI-enabled Text-to-Speech Feature, now
     available in 100+ languages.
     On Nov. 19, 2020 Moovly announced integration of Amazon
     Transcribe and Google Translation’s AI systems into
     Moovly’s video creation platform. This means Moovly
     users can with a simple mouse click, convert voice
     content to subtitle text and can automatically translate
     their videos into 109 languages. Now that’s impressive
     tech!
     On Oct. 22, 2020 Moovly announced that their users could
     now, very easily, convert powerpoint slides into a new
     video creation. Moovly stated: “The wizard-based process
     imports all elements from their slide deck and lets the
     user choose presets such as music and animations. Once
     imported, users can further fine tune and enhance their
     content, add voice and animations, and save it as an
     attractive video or an online video presentation.”

The above is just a brief summary of some of the great
innovations and improvements that Moovly has been making. All
of this has resulted in Moovly now having over 3.6 million
users in hundreds of countries. This includes more than 300 of
the Fortune 500 companies, as well as many government
agencies.

Looking ahead to 2021 for Moovly

Moovly intends to add more client driven features to their
video creation platform. This also helps expand Moovly’s
market place as was the case with translation opening up the
global market and PowerPoint to video opening up the education
sector, just to name a few.

Moovly also expect to bring on more clients from the business
enterprise and education segments during 2021. This will
potentially help boost revenues as these are typically
lucrative sectors.

With work from home not going away anytime soon the boom in
video content creation should continue for the foreseeable
future. The demand for video content and hence creation is
huge. This means that in the case of Moovly Media 3.6 million
users is potentially just the start.

Video is the future, the future is now

Oberlo marketing statistics state: “It’s estimated that by
2022, 82 percent of the global internet traffic will come from
video streaming and downloads (Cisco, 2019)…. 54% of consumers
want to see more video content from a brand or business they
support….87% of marketing professionals use video as a
marketing tool (Wyzowl, 2019).”

Source: Moovly Media website

Closing remarks

Moovly has had a great past year due to a great macro tailwind
from increased video content creation in the wake of COVID-19
and because Moovly has continued to improve their video
creation platform, now used by over 3.6 million users in
hundreds of countries.

Moovly has a market cap of C$68.5M (~US$53M), which still
pales in significance when comparing to companies like Zoom
Communications on a market cap of US$111B.

Looking ahead to 2021 it looks highly likely that Moovly will
continue to become better known and more widely used, thereby
increasing both their user base and over time their revenues.
Watch this stock closely in 2021.

Further reading

     Moovly’s Brendon Grunewald on the video media revolution
     in the home office

Brendon Grunewald of Moovly Media talks about why video
     content creation is king during Covid and beyond

Making a case for Appia’s
monazite hosted rare earths
Appia Energy Corp. (CSE: API | OTCQB: APAAF) released news on
January 25 that many investors were waiting for. The drilling
results from the 18 hole, 2,500 meter, mid-2020 core program
confirm the visual assessments of the core announced in
October 2020 and provided valuable mineralization information.

Of the 18 holes drilled, 15 holes intersected the rare earths
mineral system which is characterized by over 875 meter strike
length, as deep as 340 meters from surface, open in all
directions (3D space) and is in two sub-parallel trends.

Of importance to the deposit, the drilling confirmed that
high-grade mineralization with grades consistently over 8 wt%
total rare earth oxides (TREO) have been intersected over 145
meter strike length along the WRCB zone (Wilson, Richard,
Charles and Bell zones combined). The WRCB zone outcrops at
surface and starts as shallow as 10 meters beneath the
surface, representing an easily accessible high-grade monazite
asset.

Source

The Richard zone drill holes (RI-20-004 and RI-20-005) were of
particular significance in confirming the mineralization.
Total rare earth oxides ranged from 6.546 wt% to 11.035 wt% in
RI-20-004 and 5.268 wt% to 10.322 wt%. A third significant
hole at HN-20-001 intersected three separate uranium
occurrences; (a) 0.046 wt% U3O8 over 0.1 m at 265.5 m drill
hole depth, (b) 0.046 wt% U3O8 over 0.1 m at 265.5 m drill
hole depth, and (c) 0.046 wt% U3O8 over 0.1 m at 265.5 m drill
hole depth. These results will require further exploration for
continuation of both the rare earths system and these new
uranium occurrences, according to Vice President of
Exploration & Development, James Sykes.

“Saskatchewan is a very mineral-rich province. But in terms of
rare earths, we were surprised to find world-class grades,”
Tom Drivas, President and CEO said in August 2020 when

interviewed by local Saskatchewan media. It is rare to find
these elements in large quantities, but the company is finding
a lot of them at the Alces Lake property in northern
Saskatchewan, especially key electronics rare earths neodymium
and praseodymium. When you see some of the pictures that have
been posted by the company, it is quite a deposit with large
monazite intrusions at surface.

The Alces Lake property has been called a world-class rare
earths deposit. Between 2017 and 2020, the company has:

     Discovered 74 rare earth and uranium-bearing surface
     zones and occurrences;
     Completed a total of 64 short diamond drill holes (end
     of hole average 25 to 50 m depth) for a total of 2,276.2
     meters;
     Completed a total of 14 long diamond drill holes (end of
     hole >50 m depth) for a total of 2,615.5 meters; and
     Has over 95% drill hole success rate intersecting rare
     earths-bearing pegmatite system

Of note, the high-grade WRCB zone exposed at surface continues
to within 10 m of surface, presenting an easy mining scenario.
It is especially relevant that to date, less than 1% of the
property has been explored with diamond drilling, giving Appia
significant future exploration prospectivity.

The Genesis of a North American Rare Earths Supply Chain?

Most readers are familiar with the “seismic shift” in the rare
earths in the past year, as scarcity and security of supply
have come to the fore. At the end of September 2020, President
Trump signed an executive order regarding critical materials,
declaring a national emergency as related to rare earths.
Follow this with a December 1, 2020, China implementation of
its Export Control Law, which is going to have impact on the
export of rare earths from the country. The market is (and
always has been) getting messy as the free market goes up

against global dominator, China.

The Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC), announced in August
2020 plans to have an operational rare earths processing
facility completed in late 2022. This probably took a lot of
people by surprise, but the SRC has world renowned rare earths
experts who have over 30 years experience in the sector.

The President and CEO of the SRC, Mike Crabtree, was recently
quoted as saying that the SRC believes the demand is going to
increase 20-fold because of people’s increasing reliance on
renewable energy and electric vehicles. To their far-sighted
credit, the SRC has now created the opportunity to build what
will be the first of a kind processing plant, not just in
Saskatchewan or Canada, but in North America as a whole.

The SRC has executed a number of Memorandums of Understanding
with Canadian mining companies and will become a near-term go-
to processor of rare earths in North America. Appia Energy is
in their backyard.

The potential for Alces Lake development is compelling. The
rare earths on the property are 100% hosted within monazite,
which has proven simple extraction methods dating back to the
1950s. But more importantly, the monazite at Alces Lake occurs
as isolated grains, 1 – 3 cm thin lenses and as isolated
clusters with further metres thick massive clusters which have
been found to be outcropping at surface. The monazite ore has
critical rare earths neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr),
dysprosium (Dy), and terbium (Tb) which are necessary for the
permanent magnet industry and represent approximately 85% of
the potential value at Alces Lake.

There is much work yet to do on the Alces Lake property, but
Appia is moving ahead with an active 2021 program. Notably,
bench-scale testing on rock samples to produce a mixed rare
earth carbonate with future potential neodymium and
praseodymium oxides.

Step by step, the company is well on its way to being a leader
in the global race to develop new rare earths supply sources
outside of China. Watch this space!

Lifton on Biden and the
security of supply of rare
earths
The Washington bureaucracy has injected politics into the
issue of obtaining a secure supply of critical materials. The
first shots were fired immediately after the inauguration of
the new American president. To ensure that the monetary awards
would not be seen to be supporting the policies of former
President Trump, the permanent civil servants in the Pentagon
and the Department of Energy announced within 24 hours of the
new president’s inauguration that $30 million of Defense
Department money would be granted to Australia’s Lynas Rare
Earths. The company also agreed to match those funds to
construct a 5,000 ton per annum light rare earth separation
plant at a site in Hondo, Texas, operated by its American
partner, Blue Line Chemical.

It should be noted that a separate grant of $500,000 had
already been awarded to the Lynas/Blue Line joint venture to
design a heavy rare earth separation facility with a further
grant of $500,000 awarded to MP Materials also to design a
heavy rare earth separation plant.

These second grants were part of a U.S. Army (Department of
Defense) initiative called “The Cornerstone Project.”
Cornerstone awards were Phase I, which in bureaucracy speak,
means that the big money will be in Phase 2 and that only one

of the recipients of the Phase I money will get Phase II money
supposedly to build a heavy rare earth separation facility.

There is little cooperation between the Departments of Defense
and Energy with regard to the security of supply of rare
earths.

At the same time as the awards by the Department of Defense
were made the Department of Energy also announced an award of
$22 million to Rare Element Resources (RER) to be matched by
the same amount from RER’s largest shareholder, General
Atomics (GA), a prime military contractor. The purpose of this
award was to determine if there are alternative downstream (of
mining) processing regimes as compared to the traditional
ones, so that a globally competitive American rare earth
industry can be achieved.

In the case of RER it may be that a full scale solvent
extraction plant will ultimately be constructed using the R&D
work done by RER, before GA bought into it. A pilot plant was
built in Germany by a GA subsidiary to prove out the efficacy
of the solvent extraction system using RER ore (bastnaesite)
from its Bear Lodge deposit in Wyoming. The development of a
mine at Bear Lodge, however, is estimated to require at least
$350 million more.

Lynas faces the hurdle of mining the monazite feedstock for
the Texas plant in Australia and then, also in Australia,
removing the uranium and thorium from the ore before a
concentrate is shipped from Australia to Texas. The ore would
be mined at Lynas’ Mt Weld property, which now supplies an ore
processing plant in Malaysia – Lynas has agreed to restrict to
radioactinide-free feedstocks by 2023. A significant cost will
be incurred by Lynas in duplicating the ore processing plant
now in Malaysia, estimated at some $500 million, according to
the company. In addition, the freight cost from Australia to
the USA (a Texas Gulf Port) will be significant. The Lynas ore
processing/solvent extraction plant in Australia cost more

than (U.S.) $800 million with capacity of 22,000 tpa of TREO.
To construct a 5,000 tpa plant in Texas for $60 million will
be a challenge to Lynas, especially as it has also proposed to
the U.S. DoD that it will build additionally a heavy rare
earth separation facility at the same location.

The commercial production of actinide free mixed rare earth
carbonates will begin at the White Mesa Mill operations of
Utah’s Energy Fuels in March. It is expected that 200 tons per
month of the concentrate will be offered into the market
beginning in Q2 of this year. I hope that the Defense
Department might consider buying this material, since
comparable material is not expected to be available from
either MP Materials or Lynas for several years! White Mesa
will be processing monazite derived from the heavy mineral
sands operations in Georgia of American owned and operated
Chemours, which processes the mineral sands to extract zircon
and the titanium mineral, ilmenite.

CopperBank’s Gianni Kovacevic
on how 2021 is ‘the year’ for
copper
In a recent InvestorIntel interview, Tracy Weslosky speaks
with Gianni Kovacevic, CEO of CopperBank Resources Corp. (CSE:
CBK), about the rising interest from the market in the copper
public markets and the competitive advantages of CopperBank
Resources.

In this InvestorIntel interview, which may also be viewed on
YouTube (click here to subscribe to the InvestorIntel
Channel), Gianni started, “This is the year of copper.” He

continued, “In the next few years copper is going to be the
king of this drive towards electrification…The greener and
cleaner we create and utilize energy, the more that is
demanded of copper.”

To watch the complete interview, click here

About CopperBank Resources Corp.

CopperBank is a Canadian exploration mining company focused on
energy related metal exploration in The United States of
America.

To know more about CopperBank Resources Corp., click here

The Environmental Assessment
of “one of the purest lithium
deposits globally” is on its
way to being completed
 “The economy of tomorrow will be driven by strategic sectors,
 like the electric vehicles and batteries sectors. This vision
 aligns perfectly with our vision to become a large
 responsible supplier of lithium to the flourishing electric
 vehicle and energy storage systems industries.” Jean-
 Sébastien Lavallée, CEO, Critical Elements Lithium Corp. —
 excerpt from January 20, 2021 News Release

Critical Elements Lithium Corp. (TSXV: CRE | OTCQX: CRECF) is

a junior mining company in the advanced exploration stage with
their flagship project, the Rose Lithium-Tantalum project,
located in James Bay, Northern Quebec, Canada. The Company
also has several other projects with exploration potential for
copper, nickel, zinc, lead, gold, silver, rare earths, and
platinum group metals.

The company is continuing to make progress in 2021 with the
100%-owned Rose Lithium-Tantalum project which, according to
the company is one of the highest purity undeveloped lithium
projects in the world. The company’s near-term focus is on
securing final permits and project financing with first
production targeted for 2022 and expects that the Rose project
is on track to be fully permitted in2021.

Early in January, the company announced that it had engaged
Cantor Fitzgerald Canada Corporation to pursue, engage and
evaluate global strategic partners and investors to advance
the Rose Project to production. The company announced on
January 18, 2021 that it was informed that the public hearings
for the Rose Project would be held in February, 2021 via
webcast meetings. This is a significant step towards obtaining
the governmental authorizations for the go ahead of the Rose
project.

Continuing with a busy month, on January 20, 2021, the company
also announced that the environmental assessment of the Rose
project is on its way to being completed. The Joint Assessment
Committee established by the Impact Assessment Agency of
Canada and the Cree Nation Government confirmed on January 14,
2021, have received all information required to allow the
completion of the environmental assessment of the Rose
Lithium-Tantalum project and prepare the draft environmental
assessment report.

According to the company, this is a significant step in the
federal process of obtaining the authorization for the
project, which runs parallel to the provincial process updated

in the news release of January 18, 2021.

Recall that the Rose Lithium-Tantalum project in northern
Quebec, Canada is a highly prospective discovery. The NI
43-101 report issued in 2017 provided mineral resource
estimates and a mineral reserve estimate that were used in a
Phase 1 Feasibility Study that estimated an after-tax internal
rate of return of 34.9% and a net present value of $CAD 726
million at 8%, a payback of 2.8 years and a mine life of
approximately 17 years.

These are very robust economics. Recall that the deposit is
highlighted by excellent ore characteristics and the deposit
is a hard rock resource that hosts high purity lithium
material with low iron and low mica content. This is important
as new sources of high quality grade lithium material are
urgently needed as the demand for lithium hydroxide is growing
and current inventories are reaching their production limits.

The fact that the Rose project hosts high purity material
which is required by the electric vehicle industry translates
to a very attractive project in terms of mining costs,
profitability and desirability by end-users. The company
intends to become a major player in the future world of
lithium supply.

Equally important is that the Rose Project, located in Quebec,
is in an excellent jurisdiction for mining. The company has
great access to infrastructure, including roads, low-cost
power and skilled labour. The company has been very diligent
in their interactions with the local communities and
notwithstanding the upcoming public hearings, notes their
strong relations with First Nations communities and local and
provincial governments.

The flurry of news early in 2021 has not gone unnoticed by the
capital markets. The company has seen a near-doubling in its
share price in 2021 as they are now approaching a CAD$ 225

million market capitalization.

While mining projects always take time, the team is well-
experienced and has a very well defined plan and timeline for
execution. The company also has a guaranteed maximum price for
the engineering, procurement and construction of the Rose
Lithium-Tantalum project on a lump sum turnkey basis that is
in line with the Project’s feasibility study from 2017.

Expect further news flow in 2021, as it a pivotal year towards
planned commercial production from the Rose project in 2022.