We are pleased to present an insightful conversation into Rare Earth Elements and Locksley Resources’ (ASX: LKY) strategic moves with LKY’s Matt Hartmann, President of US Operations.

Join host James Whelan, as he interviews Matt on the remarkable grade of Rare Earths at El Campo, strategic geographical proximity to Mountain Pass and the exciting journey towards unlocking the vast potential of their Mojave project. 

Locksley Resources' flagship Mojave project is located next to the only operating REE mine in the US producing roughly 15% of global supply, shedding light on the company's potential for a secure supply stream. Plus, recent discoveries are highlighted by rock chip samplings at El Campo, revealing over 12% total rare earth.

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James Whelan: Hello, my name is James Whelan, Managing Director of the Barclay Pearce Capital's Wealth Management Team. And you are joining us for another Corporate Showcase interview. This time I am joined by Matt Hartmann, who is the President of U. S. Operations at Locksley Resources, LKY, ASX stock code, which is there. Now he just joined recently and I am glad to talk to him. Matt, how are you now?  

Matt Hartmann: I'm doing well all by myself, James. It's a lovely Sunday evening here in Colorado dealing with the time change here for you.

James Whelan: Yeah, it's, uh, you're just catching us on a Monday and Sydney again as usual sparkles, and I look forward to catching up over here on our Sandy shores that we've got.

Uh, look, we're going to get straight into it. Because these things seem to need to be sort of snappy, but not too snappy. That's there. Um, again, thank you everyone for joining us on this one. So you have joined recently to the Locksley team. Uh, what excites you about the story?  

Matt Hartmann: I think it's, you know, the grade. Um, I think that's the one thing that jumps out anytime you talk about rare earths, that is, what is the grade of the project? You see a lot of different projects that are sitting out there with relatively low grades. But what Locksley has, especially with some of the rock chip samplings at El Campo, um, showing over 12 per cent that catches attention, it definitely caught my attention.

James Whelan: Matt, recently I was out in Las Vegas and was honoured enough to be invited out to the Mojave desert to go and have a look at the holdings out there. El Campo is one of them. Long day in the desert. That was the boots still, uh, everyone thought that the RM Williams wouldn't get any dirt on them when I bought them. It turns out that was very much not the case when I was out there actually going out and kicking the rocks in the desert actually seeing what was going on. There are rare earth elements that are in that vicinity as well. Mountain Pass, which is just nearby has a line of sight.

I don't want to fill in your story for you, but do you want to tell us about the relevance of that particular holding with regards to the neurology that it has to that site?

Matt Hartmann: Sure. And sorry, I missed you too, James. I had to get onto PDAC but, uh, wasn't able to join you in the field.

James Whelan: Could do the job.

Matt Hartmann: Yeah, we're right next door to Mountain Pass. Mountain Pass is the only, uh, you know, producing rare earths mine in the United States. Um, captures a large percentage of the production market globally.

I think about 15 per cent comes out of that mine on a global basis.  If you stood on El Campo and that's probably where you spent a bit of time as we have outcropping mineralisation there, rock chips coming back at roughly 12 per cent total rare earth oxides. But you can stand on the strike of that outcrop and look right off to the northwest and you see mountain pass mine, you can see the mine dumps there, you can see where the open pit, you know, kind of falls away into there.

And all the activity that goes on, and then up on the north side, obviously, our north block claims, butt upright against mountain pass. So we've got a nice, you know, for lack of a better word, a neurology play that actually has values on it. Um, you know, it's showing to have some great potential and, uh, you know, lines up nicely on trend with the mineralization that they're exploiting right now on mountain pass.

James Whelan:  Yeah. And even if you want to take a bigger picture view of the entire situation, geopolitical climate, I mean, China is a big producer of this particular element or these particular elements as well. You can see the relevance that it is of having US holdings there to various entities and agencies that want to make sure that it's protected. And that really shone out when I was over there having a look at exactly what's there.  

Matt Hartmann: Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, from a secure price,  secure supply stream story, mountain pass factors very large within that. There are not a lot of other sources in the Western world for rare earth elements and certainly, none, uh, more concentrated or more exploited than the mountain pass right now.

We're hoping that we can find something, you know, very similar to that within our claims. And so far we're seeing some grades that are very similar to what they are mining in Mountain Pass right now. So hopeful that we can assemble and put together something that leads to a resource and something we can have further studies on to see what the economic potential might be. 

James Whelan: Now let's go back over the story of Locksley here. So, well, what's ahead for us? So we're talking about the completion of a follow-up stream sediment sampling program. You want to go into what the situation is there?

Matt Hartmann: Yeah. So over the past, you know, less than a year actually, uh, but say over the last nine months or so, we've completed several stream sediment sampling campaigns, the most recent of which was completed in probably early to mid-February, late February.

Um, on the back side of that, obviously we have the results of that, we've seen anomalous values all over our Northern Claim. I think we're going to plan on going out and doing some additional, more comprehensive mapping, just because the anomalous samples are so widespread, we need to kind of narrow things down and we're seeing that stream sediment samples aren't honing in maybe as much as we'd like, and we need to just Finish up with some rock chip sampling and some better mapping around some of those anomalies.

Uh, so looking to finish that up on the North Block, we haven't yet even touched the South Block. Um, and you know, it is pretty exciting for us because we've only tapped, you know, maybe half of this land package so far with any of our exploration activity. So there's still a lot to do and a lot for us to work on through this year.

James Whelan: Yeah. Did you want to go into the South Block at all?  We don't have a whole lot of knowledge on it yet, other than, you know, some, some just, uh, the basis of the original staking, which was, you know, just proximities locations and following trends off of Mount Pass and El Campo going to the south.  So, right now, we're looking to get in there.

Um, but we focused mostly on the north block today. And with that, with some of the results that we've had also off the north block, you know, we've staked some additional ground in there. I think we just released some, uh, released that out in our news release probably about two weeks ago. We picked up additional roughly six square kilometres of claims in that area. So now we total somewhere around, um, 25 square kilometres of claims that make up the Mojave project in those three blocks. As I said, the North Block, the El Campo and then the South Block. Um, so quite a sizable project. It's going to take us some time to work through that and find all the opportunities that may exist there.

James Whelan: Well, it does sound like there's a long pipeline of decent, potentially decent results to come through, but some results to come through. A lot of places to move around that you could have. If Uh, we could zoom it back out again. Now I've spent a lot of time talking about sort of the bits and pieces that you've got around the locations, rare earth elements and their role in global decarbonisation. It's close to the heart of Barclay Pearce Capital here with the decarb story, um, but mainly with the everyday use.

So if we just go into, and this is a conversation that a lot of people have had over the past, but where do rare earth elements come into our day-to-day lives?

Matt Hartmann: Well, I think there are a lot of places you don't realize they are. Um, magnets in general are in almost every electrical motor that you use. Um, they're in a lot of different pieces, a lot of different hardware and components of the electronics that have come into use by everyone on a daily basis now, and that's only going to grow.

So I think there's a lot of opportunities for the reverse. I mean, if you look at the market overall, it fluctuates, we see highs and lows, but overall, the trend is on the, um, and we've seen that now for several years, and I think it's only going to sustain in that same direction. Uh, so Locksley's position itself to get advantage of that, you know, these projects don't come online fast, if they came on fast, there wouldn't be much market for these, but, uh, they're difficult deposits to find and take time to get there. And so, we've lined this up. Um, hopefully we have some success and hopefully we are able to play in that, in that market going forward.

James Whelan: All right. Well, thank you very much for joining us, Matt Hartmann, president of U.S. operations for Locksley Resources. Now, if any investors want to support or know more about the Locksley and the rare earth element story through their journey, then please reach out to myself through a thousand different ways or Barclay Pearce Capital, again, a thousand different ways that are going to be posted through the link attached to this as well.

And we will make sure that you get added to the chairman's list so that you get all of the updates and everything that you need as quickly as possible. Matt, thank you for joining us, mate.  

Matt Hartmann: Thank you, James. I appreciate your time. No problem at all.

James Whelan: My name is James Whelan, MD of Barclay Pearce Capital's Wealth Management Team, and you have joined us for a corporate showcase interview with Locksley Resources.



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