EVERY SPOKEN WORD
60 min read · 11,750 words- 0:00 – 0:53
Introduction
- TCTurner Caldwell
Critical minerals fundamentally underpin everything that we do every day. It's in your phone, you have various in your AirPods, your screens, your laptops, everything that we use. How they're refined and how they're mined, that all happens in the background.
- ETErik Torenberg
This is the intersection of geopolitical urgency and tech.
- TCTurner Caldwell
We need a lot of aluminum. We need an insane amount of copper. We need more iron. We need more zinc.
- ETErik Torenberg
Now we have technology that can actually go and disrupt this. Hard tech companies working in sort of dirty spaces, willing to go out in the fields.
- SPSpeaker
There's not that many massive markets left that have been sort of like largely unpacked by technology, and mining sort of screams one of the largest markets in the world.
- ETErik Torenberg
So now is the time to build this company.
- ETErik Torenberg
[upbeat music] So Turner, uh, you're coming out of stealth with eighty-five million dollars raised. Um,
- 0:53 – 1:54
The Importance of Critical Minerals
- ETErik Torenberg
why don't we get into what are critical min- minerals and why do they matter?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Critical minerals fundamentally, uh, underpin everything that we do every day. Um, and that's why we're personally really excited about it. But it's not just aerospace, energy, renewable energy, battery energy storage systems, uh, the massive growth in AI that's happened in the last, you know, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four months. Um, it's also, uh, and defense obviously, but it's also everything that we use every day, right? Like you have rare earths in your phone, you have various in your AirPods, your screens, your laptops. Um, and so it really does, it like crosses everything that we use. Um, but where they're produced and, um, how they're refined and how they're mined, um, that all happens in the background. Um, and so, uh, it's something that really does need to be brought to the foreground, something that we need to support, uh, more and more of. You know, it's a long chain to go from digging something up to go all the way through to something that can actually be deployed in a, in an end product. And so excited to, to talk about
- 1:54 – 4:05
The Mining Process Explained
- TCTurner Caldwell
that.
- ETErik Torenberg
Well, I wanna get into how do we turn rocks into batteries or magnets and, and why is that so important?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah. So it starts with mining, obviously. Well, it actually starts with exploration. Um, but that's a-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, you gotta find the rocks in the first place.
- TCTurner Caldwell
That's right. You gotta find the rocks in the first place, which, which is hard to do, and there's a lot of awesome companies that are working on trying to condense that timeline. But once you do find them, you have to get that asset or that resource permitted to extract. You develop a mining plan, you have to mine it, um, and when that rock, those rocks come to the surface, you have to separate ore from waste, um, which is something that is not as trivial as people might expect. Um, and then you go through a concentration step. So the ores will come to the surface, they'll be, you know, less than one percent, le- definitely less than five percent concentration unless you have this wor- world-class deposit. Um, and you'll typically go through a concentrating step. So that can be mechanical, it can be thermal, it can be chemical, and that gives you an intermediate product, and those, those intermediate products kind of move all over the world, uh, and typically go to refining, refining assets. The refining operation effectively goes from anything that is like a ten percent concentrate to a fifty percent intermediate product, uh, and turns into a high purity metal. Um, and then you go into a specialty chemical, um, and so that's this intermediate product where you go through another chemical process to either make a metal sulfate or a metal hydroxide salt. Um, and then you will convert that into an engineered material, [chuckles] um, which is the next step. Uh, and that, you know, in electrochemical systems and batteries, um, you'll have cathode materials, you have anode materials, and there the morphology and the electrochemical performance in the system is really important. Um, and then you're ready to deploy into a battery cell, and then you'll go into a module, and then you'll go into a pack, and then you'll go into a car or go into an, uh, stationary storage product. Um, and on the magnet side of things, you know, similarly you'll get to a, a refined, um, a refined rare earth product. Um, and, you know, it's a long list of rare earths. They often get bu- bundled into like one group, but it's important to kind of like break them out. And then the common way of making, uh, magnets, there's a few, uh, flow sheets, but, um, you'll slurry it, you'll get the right blend of, of the different rare earths that you're trying to put in. You'll cast that, you'll center it, um, and then you'll go through a fairly intricate and like high precision machining process to get the geometry that you want with the tolerances that you need, um, before you can deploy that into magnet- magnets, uh,
- 4:05 – 5:46
Challenges in the Mining Industry
- TCTurner Caldwell
and eventually into motors.
- ETErik Torenberg
How specific is it for sp- uh, a given site, uh, given like concentration and other sort of waste products? Like how, how dynamic is it? Like is, is one rare earth mine gonna be similar process to another, or those are gonna be very sort of bespoke set up?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, it's, it's very bespoke. Um, and it's actually part of the problem and what makes kind of the minerals industry so complicated is that the flow sheet, which is ultimately how you go from the ore all the way through to the refined metal, um, is designed for that specific asset. You will have concentrations of impurities that you have to manage. Uh, the concentration obviously of the target metal is different. Um, and y- there's like a library of metallurgical unit operations, uh, that are kind of all stick, uh, stitched together to build a refining operation or a processing operation. Um, but how those are stitched together, that's bespoke for the individual unit operation, um, and tied to the kind of chemical metallurgist process engineer that designed the circuit in the first place. So there's a lot of like human impact on what that flow sheet ultimately looks like. Um, but yes, very bespoke.
- SPSpeaker
And I imagine very hard to change as the nature of the ore changes as you mine a site.
- TCTurner Caldwell
That, that's right. Um, and so, you know, part of what we're working on and what we'll talk about a little bit later I'm sure is, um, how do you, how do you define circuits or, uh, defi- design circuits that have a little bit more flexibility, um, to be able to process ore as it changes over, uh, over time as you mine through the ore body? 'Cause one mine does not actually have consistent ore coming out of it. The earth is heterogeneous. The ore grades are changing. The impurity concentrations are changing. There are different ore zones that have different, uh, properties in how they are floated or how they're concentrated, how they perform in a leaching circuit, um, and all of those things are kind of custom-built-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... for a specific asset.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- 5:46 – 6:40
Career Paths in Mining
- ETErik Torenberg
One, one more question on this. Um, like what, what are the types of job titles, like backgrounds of people working in this space? I'd imagine for, you know, at the supply chain you just described, it's very different types of people, very different backgrounds, but they all have to ultimately work together. But can you talk a little bit about that?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah. That's one of the big hard parts is, um, you have geologists, you have geophysicists, um, you'll have mining engineers, you'll have, uh, um-uh, geotechnical engineers. You'll have, um, process engineers, chemical engineers, chemists, metallurgists, mechanical engineers, structural engineers, civil engineers.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- TCTurner Caldwell
It's the, it's the whole gambit.
- SPSpeaker
Plus the long tail of, you know, workers on site who are moving things from point A to point B.
- TCTurner Caldwell
That's right, which also have a super diverse skill set because you need everything from the, the mining engineers and the chemical engineers and the geologists that sit around to operate the asset, um, in addition to, uh, the folks that have to kind of manage the back office, which is something that, um, often gets overlooked when we're thinking about successfully building and operating a, a complex
- 6:40 – 11:16
Personal Journey and Insights
- TCTurner Caldwell
circuit.
- SPSpeaker
Did you always love rocks? Like, did you-
- TCTurner Caldwell
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... always know that you [laughs] were gonna start a mining company?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, so funny, funny, kind of a funny story. The day that I graduated from college, the, like, urge that I had was to just move to Australia and try to find a job in a mine. Um, I did not act on that urge, um, and instead started at Tesla roughly 10 years ago now. Um, and I started out working on factory design, factory construction, um, and actually slowly over that nine-plus-year period, like, worked my way upstream in the value chain. So worked on factory design and construction, then started working on battery cell manufacturing. Uh, spent a lot of time in Japan with Panasonic, who's our, our primary battery cell manufacturing partner, working on incremental improvements to their battery, legacy battery cell manufacturing systems. The, the, like, pull has always been big things for me, like large-scale infrastructure, um, that has a large impact on, you know, the world. Um, and if you wanna have a big impact on the world, you have to build things at scale. Um, that is, that, that's how you get to impact. Um, but yeah, so was working on battery cell manufacturing. Um, because I was spending a lot of time in Asia, started to explore the supply chain, was building some of the early techno-economic models of how cathode materials are made, how anode materials are made, um, and the balance of the, of the components that go into a battery cell. And ultimately, this was just following cost. It was, you know, when I was working on factory design and construction, the most expensive thing was actually the equipment that goes inside the factory. Then when we started working on cell manufacturing, kind of realized that the expensive part of, of making cells is the stuff that goes inside the cells. And then as you start getting further and further upstream, you realize that the primary driver of cost is the metals that are going into the engineered materials that then go into the cells, and then eventually go into the battery. Um, and so started kind of digging much deeper, uh, into why metals are so expensive. Um, and what you kind of run into is that, um, there's this interesting, um, incentive misalignment that exists between, uh, the customer and the producer of metals. Um, like in the mining industry, more demand, this is totally different than manufacturing, more demand if you have a higher volume, the expectation is that the price goes up. Um, and because it's a, you know, constrained supply, and so the pricing dynamics are totally different than manufacturing companies where higher volume means lower cost. And you are, as you are scaling up and capturing economies of scale, you're starting to drive down, uh, the cost that you can then transfer to your customers. Um, and, like, that expectation doesn't really exist in the mining industry. If you want more of it, it's gonna cost more. And so that, that incentive misalignment was a big one that jumped out, and that only really kind of starts to come to the surface when you start to actually engage with the, the mining companies. Um, but what fascinated me about the mining industry is that you are effectively solving problems at micron scale to start. You have to figure out how you extract... You have a, you have an ore that has 1% of a target metal.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- TCTurner Caldwell
And you are trying to figure out how do you extract, you know, that 1% and get it to 100% purity. Um, and that fundamentally starts at, like, you know, the atoms. [laughs] Um, and then you have to, like, take a process that you develop that is at, you know, starts at micron scale and then deploy kilometer scale infrastructure. Um, and, you know, going back to the thing that was exciting, which is scale, um, is that opportunity to work across, across those scales, which is, which is exciting.
- ETErik Torenberg
Something I always found interesting about Tesla, especially early days working with Panasonic, that a lot of the, the knowhow, the, the process knowledge came from Asia. Spending a lot of time in Asia, just be curious, like, culturally, like, i- and just looking at scale as they sort of built out a lot of the early battery ecosystem and then farther upstream, what, what did, what did you see there? Is it just, you know, more, more chemical engineers? Uh, is it more, more support for that industry?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, I think in the, in, in, like, the battery cell world, the precision at which you need to, um, manufacture the product, like the tolerances on the final battery cell require kind of like a level of rigor and attention to detail-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... that, um, does come out in, like, a cultural, that does have, like, a cultural aspect to it.
- SPSpeaker
Like semiconductors. [laughs]
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, exactly.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and so the, um, that was a big one. Um, but also, you know, the, it's, it's a, it's a long-term investment, you know. In, in Japanese, it's kaizen, right? Where you're like-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... gradually improving over time. Um, and in those, like, super high precision, super high throughput, um, industries, taking big swings where you make, like, a radical change to one unit operation, um, that, that didn't really happen in, uh, in, like, those companies.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
It was much more of, like, an iterative improvement to the, the systems that fundamentally eventually enabled you to get costs down. Um, but yeah, the labor pool is a big piece and, and I think that some, some of it is definitely cultural.
- SPSpeaker
Y- Your
- 11:16 – 12:47
Tesla's Vertical Integration
- SPSpeaker
time at Tesla, like, you know, Tesla famously vertically integrated very early. Um, y- you're building a vertically integrated mining company, which we'll get into more details about later. But, like, what, what did working at Tesla teach you about vertical integration and why it matters?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, I think, um, as we started to scope more and more vertical integration, even, like, outside of the, um, like going further upstream in the, in the supply chain, um, the, the thing that's really interesting about vertical integration is you, you fundamentally are thinking about the, um, incentive, um, structure that exists between kind of yourself and a partner. And so Tesla had to vertically integrate early because people just weren't making the parts that were needed. Like, that was a, it was a do or die. There was no incentive. There was no market for people to build the kind of like subcomponents that were required. Um, and so ultimately, Tesla had to vertically integrate, um, from day one. And then, like, the things that pushed increasing amounts of vertical integration ultimately was the incentive structure misalignment where suppliers and partners weren't, uh, incentivized to, uh, invest and scale at the rate that we wanted them to invest and scale. Um, they weren't incentivized to innovate at the pace that we wanted them to innovate, and so you end up kind of insourcing a lot of that development that enables you to get to the product specs or the component specs that you want. Um-And then it takes a lot of guts [laughs] um, because at the end of the day, when you vertically integrate, you are transferring the risk profile of your partner kind of into, like, your new expanded risk profile. Um, and so you need to be really confident, um, or at least believe that you can- you are better positioned to kind of like take on and manage that risk profile.
- ETErik Torenberg
When
- 12:47 – 16:24
Geopolitical & Market Dynamics
- ETErik Torenberg
you were at, at Tesla and, and looking at and developing relationships with all these global mining companies, uh, as Tesla was scaling and looking for suppliers, like, what were some of the, the key issues that you noticed i- in- from a market perspective, and then ultimately, what sort of led to, to Tesla pursuing sort of, like, further vertical integration?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah. I think the incentive misalignment piece that between the industries and between kind of like a commodity industry or the mining industry and kind of the manufacturing industry was-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... was the big, um, misalignment that existed between the industries. Um, the, you know, the degree to which, um, automation was absent, um, was pretty interesting. Um, there is a, there's a long period of time where mines make no money, right?
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
And so the, you know, a lot of capital goes into the exploration phase, it goes into the development phase. What a lot of people don't realize is that when you start the mine, there's actually sometimes, like, years where you are just getting through the waste to get... or drilling a shaft-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... to get to the ore deposit. And so any additional capital intensity, like, associated with automation kind of oftentimes gets, the capital starts to get tired. [laughs] And-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... that additional, um, automation equipment, um, kind of falls by the wayside, and if you have the people there that can drive the trucks or drive the excavators or run the, run the drill rigs, like, you'll take that. Um, and we're at this interesting inflection point now where those people are less and less available. Um, you know-
- ETErik Torenberg
Right
- TCTurner Caldwell
... the mining industry has kind of been taking it on the, on the head for a long time. It's not been a sexy industry that everyone wants to go into.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and so the labor pool is contracting, it's shrinking, and it's both the trades and it's the engineering skillsets. Um, and that, that, you know, the first things that mining companies say now is that the, the labor pool is one of the biggest challenges that they're trying to solve for. Um, so that, that was apparent. Um, and, and on top of that, these, these mines are not exactly in downtown Manhattan.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
They are [laughs] they are in remote locations that, you know, people-
- ETErik Torenberg
Where have you, uh, where have you gone?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Uh-
- ETErik Torenberg
You've gone outside before?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, of course. Indonesia, Australia, um-
- ETErik Torenberg
What is it-
- TCTurner Caldwell
... China
- ETErik Torenberg
... what is it actually like? People see pictures, but like, what, what is actually going on?
- TCTurner Caldwell
It's a lot calmer than you might expect.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Like, the, the, you know, you're usually working a couple of faces and, you know, you have excavators or, um, or, or front end loaders that are picking up dirt. They're taking them to the, to the unit operation and, and it's not as, uh, it's not as rambunctious and crazy as, as you might expect a mine to be.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and, and that's in Australia and in Canada.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, like, it's not this like buzzing atmosphere. Um, in developing countries, it's a little different. Um, there's like a different degree of, um... There's definitely a different degree of automation. Like, you know, obviously we've come a long way from people with picks and shovels.
- 16:24 – 20:47
Technological Innovations in Mining
- TCTurner Caldwell
but, uh, AI and ML are getting, you know, to the point where... And it, and it's not that... It has, it hasn't been that long, right? Like, the AlphaGo moment was kind of in 2015, 2016.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and people were using reinforcement learning to like, kind of like, there's a paper from 2008 on reinforcement learning for, like, helicopter control. Um, but we're at this point where kind of like the compute, um, and machine learning, reinforcement learning, um, do really enabl- enable you to go no humans in the loop in how a lot of these plants are controlled. Um, and as you, like, build more of that large scale infrastructure and kind of, like, see the problems that humans have to solve on a daily basis, it becomes, like, pretty obvious that these are problems that humans don't, aren't best positioned to solve. Like, these are large, multivariable optimization problems that, um, RL is, like, perfectly poised to, to solve. Um, and then on the construction side, um, that is, like, an entirely different story. I think construction, um, there's a lot of workflow automation opportunities, and there's also tons of menial tasks, um, where people are fat fingering data between databases. Um, the data systems are completely dis- disaggregated. Um, and LLMs are presenting this opportunity where we can start to... And again, this is like a two-year thing, really, um, where... And it's just gonna get better. And so the opportunity to build, um, kind of like from scratch, no legacy systems, um, and have some control over kind of like the destiny of the company that I'm, that we're building, um, like, that's just an exciting opportunity.
- ETErik Torenberg
What, what, what is, just to level set, like what is, what is status quo in the industry today? Like, what, what, what is like the BHP and the Rios of the world doing? For like a lot of, like some of the stuff you're talking about, like the, from a software perspective, like internally-
- ETErik Torenberg
They have digital innovation arms.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- TCTurner Caldwell
They do have-
- ETErik Torenberg
They're there
- TCTurner Caldwell
... they do have digital innovation arms. I think that, um, you know, the F- the Freeports and the Rio Tintos and the BHPs, they outsource a lot of that. You know, I think that they've, like, gradually started to, like, hire more and more folks that can do more in- internal things. But you have McKinsey, you have Palantir, that, that basically act as consultants, and they will look at-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... the large data sets, and they'll kind of provide recommendations. Some percentage of those recommendations, oftentimes sub 50%, um, are taken. And-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... you know, what's interesting about, um, you-What you want from the ML models or the RL models is that you actually want them to tell you to do things that are counterintuitive because, like, humans are, ah, naturally going to find like a local optimal operating condition. Um, and it's like it's very risky to take shots outside of something that is currently working where there's a billion dollars on the line.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and that culture of, like, trusting the counterintuitive recommendation from the model is one that we wanna try to build, and, and it's hard to build that within, like, large companies. I think the, um, on the construction side, when they build new projects, you know, they're building five, ten billion dollar projects.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and so they are always bringing in an EPC and kind of like throwing that over the fence to the EPC. Um, and in the, in the mining industry where, you know, it is a bespoke plant-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... like it is custom and you kind of need to think about the refinery and the mine and the processing facility as the product.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and when you outsource that, you know, you lose a lot of control of what you eventually are going to inherit-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... and, and, and operate.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and then EPCs, um, you know, that, that model has shifted away a little bit from kind of like a turnkey, uh, like we'll deliver you a project. It's, it's kind of moved towards, um, selling hours and [chuckles] -
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... um, and like selling man hours, um, and, and selling reports, especially in the mining industry where it's like-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... they'll do a pre-feasibility study. They'll do a feasibility study.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- 20:47 – 28:19
Industry Challenges & Opportunities
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... should be core today.
- SPSpeaker
I mean, and we've seen this from the, from the investor side. Like we've, you know, there are a lot of really exciting new technologies being developed for mining and a lot of incredibly impressive startups that are building for, you know, various pieces of the mining life cycle journey, whether it's autonomous vehicles or drilling or, you know, other various software and, and, and hardware tools for mining. But the challenge seems to be like how do you get these kind of calcified large incumbents who operate in a very decentralized way, have very low risk a- appetite, and, um, you know, not a strong internal culture or affinity for tech? Like, how do you get them to adopt them quickly? Like, you're kind of... If you're a young startup, you're sort of at the beck and call of this behemoth, um, and you have very little control over your own destiny, which I think has made it really hard for tech to kind of penetrate this market up until now. That's at least what we've observed-
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... on the VC side.
- TCTurner Caldwell
I mean, calcified is, is a good word. I think the, um, you know, the, the way that it's... There's, there's construction companies and, and, and mining companies, and, and really all, a lot of big companies, is that the way that they'll identify and, and evaluate risk is, um, you know, fixing the status quo or making like a step change improvement in the status quo kind of requires doing like a thousand things. Um, but you'll evaluate risk on each individual thing of that thousand things, and the downside of each individual thousand things is that the plant goes down, which is a multimillion-dollar event. Um, and so you're really not incentivized to change things. Like even small changes could result in multimillion dollars of loss, um, and, and you, you need to kind of like approach it of like how do I do the thousand things all at once so that I am not stacking incremental returns on innovation with the same risk every single time?
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and that's where kind of like spot technical solutions are challenging to sell into the mining industry. And they'll do pilots. They'll definitely do a pilot.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, like there's no skin off their back to do kind of like a pilot. Um, but you'll end up doing a lot of pilots, um, and because they don't build enough plants, um, kind of sequentially, like they'll build one big mine every five years-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... um, if, if that. And the... Like there aren't just, there just aren't a lot of opportunities to get into a commercial scale, uh, application, and if you don't time it perfectly where like your pilot plant was five years before the commercial scale plant was planned for, um, like you're not gonna be in that one, so you'll be in the next one, which is five years later.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
And so the, just like the pace at which the industry moves, um, in terms of like deploying commercial scale infrastructure means that there just isn't a lot of opportunity to get new tech into commercial scale applications.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and so there's a lot of folks that are doing like SaaS, SaaS products to... which is kind of the lowest cost way to get into, um, to like generate uplift in a, in a, in a mining project or a, or a minerals refinery. Um, and the, the, like, barrier there is ultimately, um, how do you get the, get the operators to trust, um, the-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... recommendations from the, like, this, this SaaS tool from this small company that is trying to kinda tell you how to run a plant. Um-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- TCTurner Caldwell
... and, you know, the culture is typically like, "Don't touch my things. Don't touch my cash register," and like, "What do you, what do you all know about running a mine?"
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and it, it, it does, it does stack up, and it makes, you know, I've been calling it a death spiral for a lot of the, the, the, the folks that are trying to sell into the, the mining industry because it, it's hard.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm. Just to like step back a little bit on the geopolitical context, like, you know, uh, the, the stuff you're describing, I think very obviously true with a lot of the Western companies, but at the same time, a lot of Chinese companies that have sprouted over the last twenty, thirty years have grown rapidly. Um, curious, why do you think that is?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's like a lot of top-down, um, and, and early recognition that critical minerals were going to be critical [laughs] um, and needed to be supported. And so, like, shouldn't, um, kind of like the everything around policy and everything around kind of like supporting companies to go and deploy both infrastructure domestically and infrastructure internationally, um, to kind of like secure critical minerals, build infrastructure that secures a position, like that has definitely happened. Um, but I think that what people oftenDon't talk about enough is that the talent pool is insane.
- SPSpeaker
Hmm.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Like, it is not just a large talent pool, it is a large, skilled, experienced talent pool. I was in Indonesia, um, in February and was kind of visiting one of the, uh, recent Chinese nickel, um, refining operations. And so they buy ore, they also have some mining operations. Um, but they, they had 13,000 people on site, um, during c- uh, construction and commissioning. And, you know, if we were building a refinery in, in the US, which we did, um, it's hard to mobilize, you know, a 10th of that realistically.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and when you have... It's not just about the number of people, it's about being able to iterate on every individual work front as fast as humanly possible. Um, and we just don't have that labor.
- ETErik Torenberg
15 years ago or t-20 years ago, would the, the same companies that were big now have been big, big then? Like, what, where's kind of the evolution of the, of the space of it?
- 28:19 – 29:30
Mariana's Product & Thesis in Construction and Mining
- SPSpeaker
Well, maybe then, I, I think this might be a, a, a good opportunity then to talk a little bit more about, like, what is Mariana's product. Like, y- you said a few minutes ago you're not a, you're not a SaaS product. You know, what does it mean to be a diversified metal and minerals company, technology-enabled mining company? Like, give us a l- Take us a, in a little bit more detail.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah. Um, so we're a vertically integrated software-first minerals project developer and operator. And so we focus on the back end of the minerals value chain, which is actually doing the detailed engineering, getting through the permitting, um, building, building the asset, commissioning the asset, and then operating the asset. And, um, going back to some of what we were talking about around the labor pool, um, like, those labor pool shortages exist in construction, and they exist in mining. Like, they're, they're har- They're felt very, very intensely. Um, and so our fundamental thesis is that the, um, with a contracting labor pool, um, you know, you have to start with an awesome team. The table stakes is that you build an awesome team. Um, but how do you enable 200 people to do what 10,000 people are needed to do today, um, at least on the, on the, like, parent, parent co side of things?
- 29:30 – 32:02
Leveraging Technology in Mining
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and that comes from, uh, leveraging the recent advances, advances in LMs to automate workflows in the construction side of things and the engineering side of things and the procurement side of things, which take an insane amount of time. Like, it's a, you're-
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... you make a lot of lists, and you fat-finger a lot of data between databases. Um, and the, and, and that is all about reducing churn in construction. I think that there's churn, churn and latency. Um, latency is one thing that I think, um, people sometimes don't appreciate, uh, from, like, status quo construction, like, large scale mega projects, is that what's happening in the field and what the, like, the back office kind of sees or what the executive team sees or what the project director sees, um, there's, like, a three-week lag generally for, like, really large construction projects where you are trying to aggregate data from all the different contractors, all of the different, um, and all the different parts of the facility, um, into a consolidated integrated schedule, which you can then make decisions off of, of like, how do I prioritize what I'm doing today? Um, and the way you run from on those, like, in between those three weeks is people stand in circles every morning, and they say, "What are you doing today? What are you doing today? What are you doing today?"
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- TCTurner Caldwell
And they go off, and they do the thing. They'll send, like, a very brief kind of, uh, progress report back. Um,And it takes a long time to then take those progress reports and actually measure progress, um, so that you can reevaluate priorities and understand kinda like how the project is trending. Um, and so we're really trying to accelerate and democratize access to data fundamentally, um, and run construction projects like manufacturing facilities. Um, and it starts there. And, and the reason construction and mining are so kind of integrated, and some people might disagree with me, but like a mining project is a big civil construction project.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
It just never ends. [laughs] And, um, or you hope it never-
- ETErik Torenberg
It's more of a deconstruction project.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, that's fair. You are, you are... Well, you d- you do, when you're, you know-
- ETErik Torenberg
I guess you have to make-
- TCTurner Caldwell
You have to drill pits
- ETErik Torenberg
... you have to construct piles
- TCTurner Caldwell
... and you're building piles. And-
- ETErik Torenberg
Okay. Fair
- TCTurner Caldwell
... um, the, uh, but the, there's actually a lot of similarities in kind of like just moving the dirt for like site prep. Um, and the, the same kind of like software stack that is enabling you to get feedback from the field live is the same thing that the mining industry struggles with. Um, you know, there are, uh, mining companies will lose equipment, um, like especially in underground mines that are like these like deep mazes and, you know, the industry's getting better at having like actual location, uh, sensing on like where the equipment is. Um, but losing equipment in the mine is like, it used to be a super common thing. Now we start with construction and then, and then we start to get into the, you know, the second core, uh,
- 32:02 – 35:25
Automating Chemical Processing & Optimizing Refining Operations
- TCTurner Caldwell
software stack is what we're calling PlantOS. Um, the construction stack is Capital Project OS. Um, and PlantOS is really aimed at removing humans from the loop and deciding how the chemical processing operations and the refining operations work. Um, and these are like, uh, big refineries are effectively big robots. You have the sen-sensing and telemetry, you have the actuators to control how the plant operates and, um, you know, they're, you know... Imagine like teleoperating, uh, humanoid robots like forever. Like, that is what the refining industry and the processing industry has been. Um, and there's obviously like, uh, PID control loops that kind of like maintain set points so you can maintain temperature automatically, maintain pH automatically. Um, but the thing that really matters is that the feed material to the processing facilities is constantly changing 'cause the mine, uh-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... like the ore body is changing over time.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and so the way that the industry manages that today is they will blend the feedstock to minimize variability that's going into the processing facilities, and that enables them to minimize the amount of change that has to happen on a processing facility. So we're trying to flip that and say, okay, if we build a hyperdynamic, um, and highly flexible refining circuit, ideally without adding a whole bunch of cost, um, what does that do to like optimizing the global operation from the mine to the refinery? Um, but it's first aimed at reducing reagent consumption, reducing energy consumption. Um, and you know, Google kind of proved this. They, they bought DeepMind in 2016, 2017. Um, and one of the first things they did was, you know, throw the DeepMind team at automating, uh, and optimizing the data center thermal systems. So air handler, chiller, cooling tower. Um, and you know, that's not a super complex system. You have weather, which is a factor. You have loads within the building, which is a factor. But you ultimately have like nine control variables between airf- airflow, uh, like airflow rate, supplier temperature, uh, the cooling water temperatures and flow rates, uh, both in the chiller system and in the cooling tower system. Um, and the, that, just in that relatively simple system, they were able to reduce energy consumption by 30, 40%.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah, it was like 40%.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and it happened relatively quickly. [laughs] Um, and so that's the opportunity when you remove humans from making the decisions on how kind of like these, these process systems operate.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, like that's the opportunity. Um, and then when we, when we look at kind of refining and processing facilities, that's like 1,000 control variables, and it's no longer single pass. 'Cause what's really interesting about minerals refining is that you never wanna lose the metal, right? Every, every piece of metal that you, or every atom that you lose, kind of in the processing facility is another atom that you have to mine. Um, so recovery in the r- in the, in the refinery is actually like the biggest lever when it comes to cost. Um, and so what that means is that the upstream unit operations think of a refinery as like 20 unit operations, kind of all in series in a s- in a relatively simple refinery. [laughs] Um, the upstream operations-
- ETErik Torenberg
Relatively simple. [laughs]
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, right. Um, the upstream operations, uh, obviously impact the downstream operations. 'Cause if you're changing the process conditions in the upstream operation, that changes what the downstream operation is seeing. Um, but the downstream operations will recycle the, like reject stream back into the upstream operations. And so it's this big interconnected web where if you make a change in one part of the circuit, and, and it's a high latency web also, where if you make a change in one part of the circuit, you may not see that change cascade for another 24 or 48 hours.
- 35:25 – 36:55
Challenges in Scaling & Commissioning Refineries
- TCTurner Caldwell
And the, when we're commissioning refineries like the world, um, the, that like latency ends up being a major driver of kind of the time it takes to bring a refining operation, uh, to spec and then eventually ramp it to, to throughput. So-
- ETErik Torenberg
So how long does it take to bring a refining, to commission a refinery today?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Uh, I mean, there are some refineries that were built recently that are still not commissioned.
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, the, like, they were built in like the t- like four, three years ago. Um, but the, it's like the, it's, you know, the Chinese companies are doing it in like six months. Um, and a lot of Western companies are, it takes two to four years. Um, and that stacks up, where we need to build like an insane number of mines and refineries, and if you are kind of four times longer or five times longer every time you build a refinery-
- ETErik Torenberg
At every step of the, of, of the process.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah. And so we're trying to bring down the co- the time that it takes to, to, um, to bring the, the refinery to spec, basically throughput and, and hitting the kind of like output requirements of the product that you're making. Um, and then ultimately you start the, this like historically very long haul of gradually bringing down the cost over time. Um, and that's something that we think that reinforcement learning is gonna do r- quickly, much, much faster, kind of like in line with what, um, in line with what Google demonstrated with the, uh, the thermal systems and data centers, um, is, you know, achieve global optimal operating conditions, um, you know, on an order of magnitude faster timescale,
- 36:55 – 38:05
Deciding What to Build & Where to Partner
- TCTurner Caldwell
timescale.
- ETErik Torenberg
So how do you think about, like, you're building a, a company that-
- SPSpeaker
mines and refines a product, there's a lot of tech that you can interject at essentially every step of that process. Like, how are you deciding what to build, where to partner? You know, what, what are you developing in-house versus, you know, where are you going to market?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, I think we're, we're, at, at the beginning, we're focused on how do we take kind of commercially demonstrated unit operations and, and be a better integrator and a better, um, like, operator of that integrated circuit. And so focus on the software systems that enable you to kind of control the plant more optimally. Um, and that's generally what project-level financing parties wanna see also. Like, it's hard to get project finance on a first-of-a-kind facility where you're demonstrating a new unit operation for the first time.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and so we think that as we're kind of entering the market, the right place to start is take commercially demonstrated individual unit operations that operate globally, um, and try to achieve, try... go, go after the uplift that's available just by being a better integrated operator. Um, there's a whole bunch of bottlenecks in building these facilities that [chuckles] that we will need to
- 38:05 – 40:20
Supply Chain & Commercial Deployment of New Technologies
- TCTurner Caldwell
solve. I mean, the, like, industrial supply base just for, like, manufacturing tanks is broken. Like, the kind of, there's-
- SPSpeaker
Oh, no
- TCTurner Caldwell
... specialty-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] That's a new one. [laughs]
- TCTurner Caldwell
It's, it's, it's just ha- like, every, like, things that we kind of take for granted, um, just take a really long time, um, if you wanna kind of not go to China for sourcing those, uh, that equipment. Um, and that has a big impact on the operating side of things too, where the supply chain for, like, a new pump, um, in Australia could take, you know, 30 weeks, um, and getting that exact same pump, um, but with a mine in China, it shows up in, you know, a week or three days. Um, and so, like, that entire industrial, like, equipment supply base, we're gonna have to look at at some point. Um, that's obviously a much bigger, uh, bigger bite, uh, to go after, like, commodity equipment manufacturing.
- SPSpeaker
You're not gonna, you're not gonna vertically integrate to be a mining-
- TCTurner Caldwell
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... equipment manufacturing company-
- TCTurner Caldwell
Mining equipment manufacturing company
- SPSpeaker
... do you? [laughs]
- TCTurner Caldwell
I, I don't think so. Um, I hope not.
- SPSpeaker
You'll let me know.
- TCTurner Caldwell
This is the... Yeah, that's right. Well, this is the, this is the kind of, like, what is the incentive structure of the partners and the suppliers and, like, is it required or not? Um, I think that the, there's a whole bunch of companies that are working on awesome, like, novel process technologies that have not quite gotten over the hump, um, trying to sell to the big mining companies, and we wanna be the customer that helps accelerate commercial deployment, um, and the partner that helps accelerate commercial deployment. And one of the big issues that is, that, um, that comes up when you're kind of, like, deploying new processing technologies is that part of the reason why it takes a long time for it to get to the point where it's commercially viable, other than all the headwinds from the industry being conservative and process-driven and all those things, um, is that they, like, humans have actually never op- operated that process chemistry at scale before. And so you have all the, you'll learn a bunch of things at pilot scale, but pilot doesn't really tell you what's happening at commercial scale.
- SPSpeaker
And you have to train people and there's-
- TCTurner Caldwell
You have to train the people to operate it. You have to... It's, like, new environmental things that might come up depending on the chemical that you're using. Um, and the, that, like, scale jump is actually something that we think that RL in- end will enable with, like, a pretty meaningful, like, pace adjustment, um, where you don't need the humans to kind of, like, fine-tune the process conditions around a new process chemistry because the, you know, plant OS is doing it.
- 40:20 – 42:59
Venture Capital & the Mining Industry
- ETErik Torenberg
Ryan and Erin, h- how did we approach this, this industry? Is this a space that we spent a lot of time thinking about or thinking about opportunities in this space, or h- h- how did we, uh, how did we approach it?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. We've, we've, uh, we've wanted to do a mining investment for a long time.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
You know, when you think about v- venture capital, um, you know, we care about massive markets and, you know, there's, there's f- not that many massive markets left that have been sort of, like, largely untapped by technology, and mining sort of screams one of the largest markets in the world, um, very little adoption of technology. So, uh, you know, I, it, over many cycles, we've gone out and spent a lot of time meeting companies. And, you know, as I mentioned before, the challenge is how do you sell a point solution or a point piece of technology into this industry that is, has very little incentive to adopt it, and is also ha- like, has a very complicated geopolitical dynamic-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- SPSpeaker
... where you have a very large global player with their hand on the scale. We put out a piece, uh, a couple weeks ago around our thesis in mining and why we think a vertical mining company is the answer because you actually, we actually do believe you have to control every single piece of the entire journey, the entire life cycle of, you know, an, an, an atom of metal end to end to actually be able to build a tech company here. This is not about, you know, a point solution for one particular part of the process. In order to actually capture the gains and efficiency and build a, a feasible business, you really have to own the entire process end to end.
- TCTurner Caldwell
The only thing I'd add there is that this is the intersection of geopolitical urgency and tech. Like, to what Seth Turner's been talking about is, like, now we have technology that can actually go and disrupt this, but also as a talent base, people coming from companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Anduril, other sort of hard tech companies working in sort of dirty spaces, willing to go out in the fields and actually-
- SPSpeaker
Roll up their sleeves
- TCTurner Caldwell
... yeah, roll up their sleeves, go out in the middle of the desert and, and, and work on this stuff. Uh, and so now is the time to build this company.
- SPSpeaker
And the, and the political-
- ETErik Torenberg
I agree.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs] And the political tailwinds are there. There is, um, you know, e, e- even my, you know, my, my conservationist mother, who I think if, like, we had had this conversation five years ago, she would've clutched her pearls. She doesn't wear pearls, but she would've-
- ETErik Torenberg
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
... clutched her pearls at the idea of, uh, um, domestic US onshore mining. Um, you know, I think b- broadly speaking, the, the American public, and certainly the government, has come around to the idea that metals are in every single thing we use as consumers. Our supply chains are highly reliant on China. It's a huge problem.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
We have to figure out how to address it, um, and that means investing in mining in the US again.
- TCTurner Caldwell
W- we talked a little about, we mentioned,
- 42:59 – 47:45
Critical Minerals & Their Importance
- TCTurner Caldwell
like, rare earths. You mentioned lithium and things like that, but, like, there, there are many different critical minerals. Um, you, you talked about a little about in the very beginning, but specifically, like, what, what are the interesting ones for you? How does that, how does that map to sort of the, what people see on the headlines, and, and what are the business opportunities are?Yeah, I mean, we, you know, the- when we look at what needs to happen in the next 10 years and, you know, forecasted demand will only materialize if the supply is there, so we'll see-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... if that forecasted demand materializes. The, the metals that actually need to grow the most by like mass flow rate are the, are like the big metals. Like we need a lot of aluminum, we need an insane amount of copper, um, we need more iron, we need more zinc, um-
- ETErik Torenberg
What, what, what are some of the things that these, these metals are-
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah
- ETErik Torenberg
... just for-
- TCTurner Caldwell
Sure thing. I mean, like iron goes in everything that is-
- ETErik Torenberg
Yep
- TCTurner Caldwell
... infrastructure.
- ETErik Torenberg
We got iron.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- TCTurner Caldwell
We got iron.
- ETErik Torenberg
We're good with iron.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Zinc is, zinc is one that people sleep on because you actually have to galvanize a lot of that steel.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and so zinc k- oftentimes kind of pops up every once in a while as being something that we really do need to, to continue to focus on. Um, copper is the, is the workhorse of, you know, this push to electrify everything, um, and, and to just i- uh, grow the grid, um, to be able to supply AI, to be able to, you know, enable r- uh, accelerated renewable penetration. For EV penetration to happen, like you're gonna need a lot of copper. Um, aluminum is one that I think is underestimated. It's, uh, people underestimate kind of its importance. It's actually like the number one most consumed metal in defense applications. Uh, like the grid is, you know, people talk a lot about copper, but, uh, there's a lot of aluminum like conductors-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... in the transmission lines that are, that are critical to actually growing the grid, the grid capacity. Um, and, and in automotive obviously aluminum's big. Um, magnesium has a whole bunch of defense applications. Could- potentially could get more into, uh, automotive applications and like for lightweight, lightweight, uh, metals. Lithium, you know, needs to 4X in the next, in terms of production capacity, in the next 10 years roughly in order for the, uh, batteries that we wanna build to be built.
- ETErik Torenberg
Well, we're all, we're all about batteries, so.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Right, right, right, right.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah. [laughs] Um, nickel is a, is a big one. I think that, um, what has happened in, [clears throat] in nickel in the last five years is Indonesian kind of like, uh, production capacity has scaled to the point where it's now something like 70% of global nickel comes out of Indonesia.
- ETErik Torenberg
Hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
And a lot of that was on the back of like meaningful investment from China to be able to, um, kind of expand production capacity in, in Indo- Indonesia, and then also do more of the downstream processing in Indonesia.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, and nickel goes into everything that is specialty alloys, anything that needs high temperature or corrosion resistance, um, and also of it is like kind of the unsung hero of high energy, um, batteries, where these-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... these lithiated transition metal oxides, which are high nickel. Um, manganese is important. Manganese goes into a lot of alloys and also goes into batteries. Um, the uranium, if, if fission is gonna continue to grow and we're gonna continue to like deploy more nuclear capacity-
- ETErik Torenberg
Definitely will
- TCTurner Caldwell
... in the US-
- 47:45 – 53:46
Permitting & Regulatory Challenges in the US
- ETErik Torenberg
So, so everyone knows, you know, i- i- people hear it takes forever to, to get a mine started. I don't know how many new greenfield mines we've developed in the United States in the last decade. I mean-
- TCTurner Caldwell
Not, not many.
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah. So like i- i- and, and I know Australia and Canada ha- have been able to do this faster, which is, which is interesting. Uh, you know, you don't know Canada for, for moving quickly. What, what are some of like the, the, the bottlenecks there? What, what, why, what, what does America need to do to accelerate this as, as one of these companies trying to not only mine but also refine in the United States? Like, what needs to be done?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah. I think one thing that, um, folks don't always see is actually the permitting requirements for exploration. So there is like if you are exploring over, on federal land if you're exploring over more than a five-acre parcel, you have to submit like a plan of record or plan of operations that, uh, needs to be approved by the BLM before you can start to expand, like expand and explore over a larger p- uh, piece of, uh, of, of land. And so the, like bringing down the permitting thresholds and the permitting burden associated with exploring, like that is why we have such a small, like relatively small rare earth resource.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
It's like it's not because there isn't, like the US has tons of natural resources.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
And the, like the, the kind of like USGS estimate for US, like the US reserve on rare earths, just picking on that, um, like that is tied to a lack of exploration activity, not necessarily fundamentally like a lack of kind of like geo- geo- geological presence.
- ETErik Torenberg
And we haven't looked for it.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, we haven't, either we haven't-
- ETErik Torenberg
It's kind of hard to find
- TCTurner Caldwell
... looked for it or it's-
- ETErik Torenberg
Or-
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah, well, it's, it's hard to find in like high concentrations that are mineable, which-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... we're trying to kind of like drop the per-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... percentage requirement, um, that makes something economical. Um, but it's also there's just a lot of like kind of like permitting burden to be able to actually go and deploy drill rigs to go-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... and actually explore.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
And then, um, there's definitely a-- we, we c- the, the government currently is doing a good job of kind of highlighting the importance of the minerals industry, and you're definitely seeing like a little bit of a tone shift over the last twenty years-
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm
- TCTurner Caldwell
... um, that is much more supportive. There's way more tailwinds when it comes to kind of like making mining, um, be viewed in a more positive light than a critical light. Um, and that, that will help to solve some of the talent pool problem, um, where people, people that are, you know, awesome, they, they wanna go build things. They don't wanna go and like work on a project that kind of sits around for five years and maybe gets permitted and maybe doesn't. Like, they wanna go work on hard problems that-- where they can see the, like the impact of the work that they're doing. Um, and so if we're getting in the way of, um, of enabling projects to get built, like that is actually a major deterrent for talent because they won't actually see what they're, like the, the like output of their, of their, of their work. Um, and then I, you know, I think the permitting requirements broadly for going from a discovery to a, to an operating asset, there, there's a, there's a big, there should be a big focus on kind of efficiency in reviewing environmental permits. There should be a big focus on kind of like streamlining those workflows and the back and forth between kind of like field offices and state offices from the BLM, just focusing on the federal side of things. Um, because the way that projects get permitted right now is you'll throw a, you'll throw like your environmental assessment over the, over the table, and then they'll go and they'll divvy it up between a whole bunch of experts that they, or like kind of consultants that they bring in to review the permit, um, and they'll get back to you eventually at some point. Um, but there isn't a lot of visibility into like how they are progressing with reviewing the permit applications. Um, and, and discussions are getting more bilateral, like the, a-and again, there's been a little, a, a definitely a change with the new administration where there's a little more accountability on the, like the permitting offices. Um, but there's tons of room for making those reviews more efficient. Um, and again, LMs will make, make it more efficient. We just need to kinda like penetrate that side of the, the federal bureaucracy and like enable people to review things faster.
- ETErik Torenberg
Uh, what, what else? Aside from kind of permitting efficiency, um, what are other things that if you, you know, if you could send a list of recommendations to the government for what they should do to support the US mining industry, what would be your top three?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah. I think supporting the demand side is probably like the biggest lever. Um, and if you wanna mobilize kind of private capital into the sector, having some level of support on demand side is, is major. Um, and so that's offtake agreements with floor pricing, and you know, they did this just now with MP Materials. Um, and that, you know, ideally provides some stability on the revenue side of things so that investors like the-- there's trillions of dollars of capital, kind of like dry powder just sitting around waiting to be deployed. It has historically kind of avoided the mining industry because of the, um, market price uncertainty. And so as soon as you provide-
- ETErik Torenberg
'Cause it's a commodity cycle
- TCTurner Caldwell
... it's a, it's a commodity cycle, and like what if you're building at the wrong time?
- ETErik Torenberg
Yeah.
- TCTurner Caldwell
And, you know, the infrastructure funds are not the ones that are here to play, like be intelligent about the commodity price cycle. Like they, they're looking for annuity-type returns. Um, and so the, um, those folks, um, would, would mobilize if there were more demand side support from the government, either providing price floors or fixed pricing for critical minerals that, you know, you're trying to incentivize more production of in the US.
- 53:46 – 54:44
International Strategy & Future Goals
- ETErik Torenberg
Mineral deposits, specifically like high-grade mineral deposits, don't obey borders. Like, is there a broader international strategy here? I mean, I would love to think we can mine and refine everything United States, but, but obviously there, there's a lot Australia, Canada, Latin America. Curious sort of what-
- TCTurner Caldwell
Africa
- ETErik Torenberg
... Africa, under-underwater, uh, sea floor. Like, like what, what is the overall strategy in your mind?
- TCTurner Caldwell
Yeah. We're, we're starting in the US because, um, it's closer to home and we're focused on developing a platform that we can scale off of.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
Um, but at no point have we told ourselves that the US is kind of like the, the only, the sole focus. Um, like you have to be able to, um, like bolster the company to be able to operate internationally if you wanna be able to scale beyond kinda like the resource base that the US has, like, available today.
- ETErik Torenberg
Mm-hmm.
- TCTurner Caldwell
And so more exploration is going to happen in the US. We'll probably discover more resources, and like that pool will grow over time of projects that we can build in the US. Um, but yes, we are absolutely going to expand overseas, um, and underwater maybe.
- 54:44 – 55:59
Conclusion: Rebuilding Infrastructure & Capability
- ETErik Torenberg
When we look back a decade from now, what's the single clearest indicator that Mariana has achieved what it set out to do?
- TCTurner Caldwell
We won't be as worried about our ability to secure the critical minerals that we want to secure because we will have kind of rebuilt, um, and established like an entity ideally that is able to go across borders, to your point, um, and, and build these projects cost-effectively, time-effectively, um, and, and responsibly ultimately. Um, and the reason that we are so panicked about it right now is because we have fundamentally lost the ability to build large scale infrastructure, and we have lost the ability to, like, operate complex, um, minerals plants. Like, that's what we have lost. Um, and we need to build that back. You know, we, we wanna build 10 projects in 10 years. Those projects will be in increasing scale over time, um, but the work will not be done in 10 years. What I think, uh, will have demonstrated that the, you know, the 10-year mission will have been accomplished, um, other than building those 10 plants, uh, is that we will no longer be as worried about, like, our fundamental capability to go and build this complex, complex infrastructure. Um, like, we will have unlocked it. [upbeat music]
Episode duration: 56:13
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