Bianca Gimondo, The Market Herald: Magnum Mining and Exploration has partnered with Midmetals of Saudi Arabia to jointly fund a feasibility study for a HIsmelt facility in the region aiming to produce net zero carbon pig iron with director Athan Lekkas and CEO Neil Goodman visiting Midmetals to further these discussions. To discuss, I am joined by the company’s CEO, Neil Goodman. How have these discussions with Midmetals progressed?
Neil Goodman, CEO Magnum Mining & Exploration: So the discussions with Midmetal went very well. We had several weeks of talking to them on Teams. We had our first face-to-face meetings this week in Doha. It’s about a five-hour drive across the border from Saudi Arabia from their steel works to Doha. Very amicable, very good in-depth discussions technically and commercially. We jumped straight to an agreement to work together on this study and the Project. It's a very exciting time for Magnum and for Midmetal.
Gimondo: And their interest is in HIsmelt. Why?
Goodman: So the reason that Midmetal picked HIsmelt is they saw our Appalachian Iron website where we proposed to use mill scale waste materials – such as DRI fines, mill scale, Cfines output sludge, things like that – in this HIsmelt to produce pig iron. It’ll be Green, because we'll use biochar. Midmetal want do the same in Saudi Arabia. The original thought was to use a blast furnace, but that can't use the waste materials as efficiently, and also it can never be 100% Green because you’re always going to need some coke for the dead-man inside the blast furnace. The “dead-man” is the name that they use for the solid coke in the heart of the furnace that carries the solid materials inside the furnace. In a HIsmelt we don't have a dead-man. We're 100% liquids. We use powders, so we don’t need strong coke. We can use 100% biochar powder as our reductant, and this is why HIsmelt can be 100% Green.
Gimondo: And Neil with this study underway, will the Company continue to explore other off-take opportunities?
Goodman: So we'll continue progress and discussions. We’ll finish the Study by the end of this year. We’ll negotiate binding agreements for off-takers, funding, etc. But we’re still going to talk to other potential off-takers because Midmetal are only looking for about 800,000t/year of iron ore to top up their waste materials. So we could actually keep selling DRI grade material to other users. So we'll continue talking to other to other off-takers. And we have meetings set up with Mitsubishi and Anglo in the future and also other potential off-takers. So then talks will continue, and we could potentially be producing 800,000t/year of iron ore for the pig iron plant in Saudi Arabia and/or we could be reducing 800,000t/year for the DRI grade market which is in great demand at the moment.
Gimondo: And Neil, what are the next steps for Magnum?
Goodman: So our next steps are to …heading off to New York again to talk to investors. We’ll brief them on the priority play which is now with Saudi Arabia. So we’ll be talking with them about the DRI grade material which has got great interest from ESG investors in the US. Now we think this pig iron play will have greater interest. It's a larger project altogether - about triple the capital cost. But the profits will be more than triple. So a very exciting time for investors and ourselves. So that's our next step – we’’ll follow that up with talks with Mitsubishi and Anglo in Asia, and then we’ll be coming home just before Thanksgiving.
Gimondo: Thanks for that, Neil. We look forward to speaking with you again soon.
Goodman: Thanks for your time, and we'll talk to you later.
