Thanks Carbondriver for link, US President Donald Trump has come to office fixated on the mineral wealth of Greenland and Ukraine – and, as chance would have it, Sage has substantial mining interests in both.One of his companies holds a controlling stake in Greenland’s Tanbreez project – a rare-earths behemoth touted as one of the world’s largest, and handily located in the country’s accessible southern reaches.And he says he’s also in the box seat for a lithium project in western Ukraine, near the border with Moldova and Romania, which he reckons could yield 90 million tonnes of ore with a relatively high yield. The day a ceasefire is signed, he says, “we’ve got staff ready to go straight in”.Some of Sage’s fellow mining types along Perth’s St George’s Terrace are quietly sceptical about the complex web of projects and corporate structures that the 64-year-old veteran has woven together in the past two years.But it would be hard to deny that Sage seems to be having a moment.
During a recent trip to Washington and New York, there he was, popping up on CNN and Fox News as a centre-stage commentator on the latest twists and turns in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and Greenland.“Tony, this is such great stuff and I hope we’ll have you back to talk more about it,” gushed one Fox News host, in the aftermath of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Oval Office showdown with Trump last month.Sage tells The Australian Financial Review he was in the US to canvass the State Department and the White House, trying to gauge where the Trump juggernaut might be taking him.He isn’t getting ahead of himself. The second Trump presidency “definitely started off as a tailwind, but now we’re heading into choppy waters”, he cautions.The share price of his two companies arguably tell the same story. Shares in ASX-listed European Lithium, which holds the Ukrainian exposure, were trading at 8¢ apiece on the day Trump was inaugurated, and are now back below 5¢. His Nasdaq-listed vehicle, Critical Metals Corp, which holds the Greenland project, has dropped from $US6.55 to $US2.04.But Sage, whose last public appearances were during the “profound sadness” of his exit from Perth Glory, seems ebullient.Green light in GreenlandTrump’s arrival has “brought attention to Greenland”, Sage says. This has put the Danish territory in a position to ramp up its economic development, and burnish its allure to miners and explorers.“They do not want to be part of the US, but they don’t want to be part of Denmark either,” he says. With pro-independence parties at the helm after an election this week, Greenland can now “go to a referendum for independence, and then they’ll get independence, and then they can open up a bidding war, basically”.“
I’m sure Trump will give billions a year to help with the infrastructure and hospitals and so on, which the Danes haven’t been happy to do over the years.”A protest in Nuuk against Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland. APThe Greenland government has opposed foreign extraction projects in uranium, oil and gas, but Sage says the administration is otherwise
mining-friendly. The trickiest political issue he faces is that he’ll have to import a couple of hundred foreign skilled workers – which would breach local rules designed to protect the small Greenland population.He says Critical Metals has struck a deal with the authorities and trade unions for a three-year exemption to the rules, allowing the miner to bring in the staff. But he’ll have to house them on a 200-berth service ship, “so they don’t have to disturb the town”.In a filing last week, Critical Metals estimated the Tanbreez resource at more than 45 million metric tonnes of rare earths and rare metals – which would exceed half the world’s total supply.
The next step is “discussions with strategic partners and government agencies focused on establishing secure, Western supply chains”, the Nasdaq statement said. In a classic blue-sky minnow’s promise, Critical Metals says the definitive feasibility study, if needed, could come as soon the end of this year.
Sage is a relative newcomer to Greenland, having joined forces in 2022 with fellow Perth miner Greg Barnes, a geologist who has held the Tanbreez tenement since at least 2010.Barnes, a 76-year-old former drinking buddy of disgraced Perth businessman Alan Bond, is reputedly the man whose White House briefing on Greenland for Trump in his first term sowed the seeds of the president’s acquisitive interest.“I’ve known Greg Barnes for 20-odd years. Everyone knows Greg Barnes,” Sage says. “I did a deal with him in 2013, 2014, in Sierra Leone of all places: he had an iron ore mine there, I had an iron ore mine there. So we got to know each other quite well, and he kept on banging on about this project in Greenland.”If Trump also keeps banging on about Greenland, Sage stands to benefit: his company is American, so the president is in effect working as his agent.In a long-winded bit of financial engineering, Sage last year pulled off a backdoor listing on the Nasdaq via a “special purpose acquisitions company”. The SPAC’s name changed from Sizzle to Critical Metals, and it houses not only Tanbreez but also Sage’s long-running and slow-moving Wolfsberg lithium project in Austria.Sage has since been able to use Critical Metals scrip to make other acquisitions, such as a potential lithium project in Ireland, which then sit within ASX-listed European
Lithium.
European Lithium owns about three-quarters of Critical Metals, a stake valued at $US139 million ($220 million) based on the Nasdaq company’s current share price.
The ASX company’s own market cap is just $63 million, which Sage has for some time how claimed as a looming arbitrage opportunity.
The Australian company owns the Irish prospect, some Wolfsberg-adjacent Austrian lithium sites, and is responsible for a lithium processing joint venture in Saudi Arabia.Ukraine projectsEuropean Lithium in 2021 also bought Petro Consulting, a Ukrainian company that is looking for 20-year lithium and extraction permits “through either court proceedings, public auction, and/or production sharing agreements with the Ukraine government”.The Petro acquisition went through just months before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. One of Petro’s two targets was the Shevchenkivske project in the Donetsk region, which is now under Russian control and was last year written off by Sage.A Ukrainian soldier in Pokrovsk on the frontlines in the Donetsk region. APThe other is Dobra, and Sage is not the only Western investor with his eye on it. TheFinancial Times last week reported that TechMet, a company in which the US government has a stake, wants to muscle into Dobra. European Lithium is yet to get the final sign-off from Kyiv, but Sage is as optimistic as ever.“This is where the growth is going to be,” he declares. And his calls at the State Department last week persuaded him that the US-Ukraine minerals deal, if it comes to fruition, would not sweep Dobra into its ambit.“The clear edict was, if it’s held already by a UK, French, Australian company, they’re not going to touch it,” he says. “What they want is all the other assets that the oligarchs have swept up, the Ukrainian ones, the Russian ones, and whatever is still owned by the state.”Now he’s just waiting for a ceasefire. He has insurance cover for staff, as long as the fighting stops. The first step would be to “go in and twin hole about 25 per cent of the ground”, which would take “one month and probably five million bucks”.
When Zelensky went to Washington at the very end of February to ink the deal, Sage told the US television networks he was on the edge of his seat.“We were ready to pop the champagne corks yesterday, thinking that we’d be able to get back into the country,” he told Fox News. But Zelensky “made a fool of himself”.As far as Sage is concerned, the minerals deal, which locks the US into Ukraine economically, “is a much better security guarantee than what Zelensky’s after”.Ukraine’s rare-earths potential is under-explored, so the US-Ukrainian deal won’t ease the West’s total dependence on China. “Greenland is where the West gets saved, by exploiting the deposit there. It’s the biggest one in the world,” Sage says.Either way, Sage hopes to be in the thick of it. His career has had its ups and downs, so who knows. But maybe it was the nadir at Perth Glory that helped opened this new door.“I’ve had a lot more time since I got out of the football club. The last 18 months I’ve been out, I’ve managed to find these projects, to do a deal with the Saudis – that was no mean feat,” he says. “I was just in the right place at the right time.” (Fin Review)
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