Company Interviews

With Mark Selby, CEO of Canada Nickel
Ingo Hofmaier, CFO of LIfezone Metals
Recording date: 30th July 2026
Indonesia has fundamentally shifted its nickel strategy—from flooding global markets to actively managing supply through royalties, quotas, and pricing formulas since late 2025. Executives from Canada Nickel and Lifezone Metals describe this as a structural change, not a temporary adjustment. They argue that the era of nickel priced under $15,000 per tonne is over, with $18,000–$19,000 now representing Indonesia’s break-even and preferred operating range.
Physical supply constraints are compounding policy-driven discipline. Indonesian ore grades fell about 8% last year and are expected to drop another 4–5% this year. Meanwhile, mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP) production has slumped roughly 37% from its September 2025 peak, largely due to sulphur import bottlenecks tied to geopolitical tensions around the Strait of Hormuz.
On the demand side, the market continues to overemphasize electric vehicle batteries while underestimating stainless steel, which accounts for the bulk of nickel consumption and is growing steadily at 4.6–4.8% annually. Both executives contend that consensus forecasts around 3% annual demand growth lag real trends, which have averaged nearly 7% since 2019.
Canada Nickel’s Crawford project in Ontario recently secured a federal Decision Statement, clearing its final major regulatory hurdle. The company now focuses on closing the last 10–20% of its financing package, with a construction decision targeted for 2027. Strategic investors include Anglo American, Agnico Eagle, Samsung SDI, and the Taykwa Tagamou Nation.
Lifezone Metals is advancing its high-grade Kabanga project in Tanzania, where nickel grades exceed 2%, supported by copper, cobalt, and silver byproducts. With over $800 million of its $930 million capex already tendered and $37 million in cash on hand, Lifezone seeks to finalize equity financing ahead of a Final Investment Decision. Construction could begin within two to three years thereafter.
Together, these developments signal a tighter, more disciplined nickel market—one where Western sulphide projects may finally find viable economic footing.
Sign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com

Interview with Mike Sieb, President & Director of Getchell Gold Corp.
Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/getchell-gold-csegtch-low-cost-117000-oz-pa-with-105-year-life-of-mine-7731
Recording date: 30th July 2026
Getchell Gold Corp (CSE:GTCH) released a 2026 Preliminary Economic Assessment on its flagship Fondaway Canyon Gold Project in Nevada, marking the company's advancement toward a prefeasibility study. The PEA, prepared by SLR Consulting, is limited to the open-pit mineral resources in the project's Central Area.
The updated 2026 Mineral Resource Estimate shows 999,000 ounces indicated (22.1 million tonnes at 1.40 g/t Au) and 1.812 million ounces inferred (45.6 million tonnes at 1.24 g/t Au) - a 21% global increase over the 2024 estimate, driven by a targeted ten-hole 2025 drill programme. Indicated resources grew 54% and inferred resources grew 8%. Mineralisation remains open for expansion along strike and dip across multiple sections of the roughly four-kilometre-long Fondaway Canyon gold corridor.
The PEA contemplates a conventional open-pit mine feeding a 12,000 tonne-per-day mill - up from an earlier 8,000 tpd concept - over an initial 10.1-year mine life, producing 1.52 million ounces of gold (150,000 oz/year average) via a flotation concentrate sold to a third-party refinery. At a base-case gold price of $3,200/oz, which management describes as conservative relative to current spot, the project shows a pre-tax NPV8% of $1,004 million and after-tax NPV8% of $905 million, a pre-tax IRR of 58.8% (53.1% after-tax), and payback of 1.5 years pre-tax (2.0 years after-tax). Total initial capital cost is $265.3 million including a 20% contingency and life-of-mine cash costs are estimated at $1,740/oz.
Despite these economics, Getchell's market capitalisation sits at roughly CA$46 million on 202.6 million shares outstanding. President Mike Sieb attributed a significant portion of that gap to an unresolved third-party claims dispute, in which an outside party has challenged Getchell's title to certain claims despite the company's position that its core claims have been valid and in good standing for 70-75 years, making it the senior claim holder. Management declined to discuss case specifics given ongoing litigation.
To fund continued drilling and prefeasibility work - which will focus on converting inferred resources to indicated, along with metallurgical, hydrogeological, and geotechnical studies - management pointed to roughly 50.9 million in-the-money warrants (weighted average exercise price $0.19) that could deliver $2.5-10 million over the next 12 months, alongside 20% insider ownership on a partially diluted basis.
Near-term catalysts include a Plan of Operations filing with the Bureau of Land Management targeted for year-end 2026, continued drill results, and progress toward a prefeasibility study expected within approximately two years. The company's low relative capital intensity gives it flexibility to either self-fund toward development or entertain a strategic partner.
Learn more: https://cruxinvestor.com/companies/getchell-gold-corp
Sign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com

Interview with Steven Sirbovan, CEO, ICG Silver & Gold
Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/icg-silver-gold-cseicg-newly-listed-district-scale-play-fully-funded-for-drilling-9778
Recording date: 27th July 2026
ICG Silver & Gold Ltd. is a Nevada-focused precious metals explorer advancing the Tuscarora District, a roughly 10,000-acre, 100%-owned land package sitting at the intersection of the Carlin and Independence Trends in Elko County. Since listing on the CSE on 31 March 2026, the company's central task has been converting a large but fragmented historical dataset into a coherent, drill-ready district-scale thesis - and the latest update from CEO Steven Sirbovan suggests meaningful progress on that front.
The headline development is data, not drilling: ICG's historical drilling database has grown from 25,000 to 40,000 metres, pulled from lab archives and physical records dating back to the 1960s. Critically, a third-party mineral resource geologist has assessed that database - combined with the company's current 3,000-metre Phase 1 RC programme - as sufficient to support a maiden inferred resource without any additional core drilling. That's a meaningful capital-efficiency win for a company with a tight, roughly 43-million-share basic capitalisation (54.5 million fully diluted).
The Phase 1 programme itself, which commenced 2 July 2026 with Major Drilling International, budgeted at approximately $1.5 million, is sequencing six priority targets: Silica, Battle Mountain, and King's Vein in the Central Zone (roughly 80% of metres), followed by Grand Prize and East Pediment in the more silver-prospective East Zone, before returning to Modoc. Notably, South Navajo - the target with the deepest historical drilling and the district's best-known intercept (4.57m at 127.08 g/t gold, including 1.52m at 368.31 g/t gold, drilled by Novo Resources in 2016) - is being held back from Phase 1 entirely, with management confident in roughly 80% of the historical data there without further verification.
Sirbovan has framed the programme's real objective as testing continuity rather than chasing standalone high-grade hits: understanding whether a lower-grade halo exists between known veins, and whether targets like Modoc, Silica, and Battle Mountain - previously treated as one system - are structurally connected at depth. QA/QC on both historical and current drilling is being led by VP Exploration Korbon McCall, who has been re-verifying historical assay certificates directly against lab records.
Assay results are expected between August and October 2026, with a first mineral resource estimate targeted for Q1 2027 - management has cited an internal ambition of at least 500,000 gold-equivalent ounces as an initial baseline. Management, insiders, and significant shareholders hold over 25% of the tight capital structure. At an approximate C$18 million market capitalisation, ICG trades at a discount to profiled Nevada peers (C$24-160 million), several of which remain pre-resource themselves - leaving the upcoming assay and resource news flow as the key catalysts that could close that valuation gap, assuming results confirm the continuity thesis management has laid out.

Learn more: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/icg-silver-gold
Sign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com

Interview with Lewis Lawrick, President & CEO of Magna Terra Minerals
Recording date: 23rd July 2026
Magna Terra Minerals (TSXV:MTT) is a Toronto-headquartered exploration company advancing a diversified portfolio of precious and critical metals projects across two jurisdictions: Atlantic Canada and Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. The investment case centres on a management team with a specific, verifiable prior success in the same geological setting, a capital-efficient funding model built on partner-funded option agreements, and a first-mover copper-cobalt discovery that remains largely unexplored by outside analysts.
President and CEO Lewis Lawrick previously founded Anaconda Mining, which became Signal Gold and grew the Goldboro deposit in Nova Scotia from an inferred 700,000 ounces to more than 3 million ounces before merging with NexGold. Chief geologist David Copeland and senior geologist Tanya Tettelaar who are both part of that earlier success now apply the same systematic, data-driven targeting approach at Magna Terra, and management frames this continuity of team as the primary reason significant shareholder Michael Gentile who holds roughly 17% of the company took his position.
The portfolio's most technically distinctive asset is Humber, a 50,000-hectare, 100%-owned copper-cobalt project in western Newfoundland staked entirely on the company's own regional geochemical analysis, with no underlying royalty. A new discovery, the Birch Zone, now extends over 4.2 kilometres of strike with grab samples up to 1.26% copper, and management is targeting a first-pass drill programme by fall 2026 pending further geophysics. In New Brunswick's historic Bathurst Mining Camp, Rocky Brook has returned high-grade copper and gold values from trenching and surface sampling across a 30-kilometre land position, while the newly staked Prospect Or's Dream project has identified an epithermal gold vein system over a 7.2-kilometre strike length.
Rather than fund every project through dilutive equity raises, Magna Terra has optioned two assets to partners who are independently drilling them. Gold Hunter Resources holds an option on the Great Northern and Viking projects for total consideration of $10.075 million and began a 10,000-metre drill programme there in June 2026; Magna Terra's resulting approximately 19% equity stake in Gold Hunter (roughly 55 million shares) gives it leveraged exposure to that drilling without further capital outlay. In Argentina, Lunex Metals Corp. holds a $2.375 million option on the Luna Roja project and reported encouraging initial drill results in July 2026, including a new mineralised centre north of the historic discovery zone.
Financially, Magna Terra held just over $1 million in cash at the time of the underlying interview, with total working capital near $3.5 million once its marketable securities positions are included. Additional financing will likely be required to advance Humber past target generation. For investors, the near-term catalysts to watch are continued drill results from Gold Hunter and Lunex which are both funded independently of Magna Terra, alongside progress toward a maiden drill programme at Humber, represents the company's most differentiated, wholly-owned exploration target.
View Magna Terra Minerals' company profile: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/magna-terra-minerals
Sign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com

Interview with Raymond D. Harari, Director & CEO, and Enrique Reichhard, VP Exploration of Argentina Metals
Recording date: 23rd July 2026
Argentina Metals Corp (TSXV:VLLC) is a Canadian-domiciled copper exploration company built around a single macro thesis: Argentina shares the same Andean geological belt that makes Chile the world's largest copper producer, yet contributes almost nothing to global supply, and that gap is starting to close now that Mendoza Province has reopened to mineral exploration. CEO and co-founder Raymond D. Harari, working alongside Chairman Dr. Titus Gebel, co-founder of Frankfurt-listed Deutsche Rohstoff AG, has spent the past year assembling one of the first district-scale, clean-title land positions in the province: 26 projects totalling approximately 146,700 hectares, free of private royalties, NSRs, back-in rights or earn-in obligations beyond what is owed to the Province of Mendoza itself.
The flagship Las Estrellas Project sits within the Malargue District, roughly 1.5 kilometres from a neighbouring advanced target being drilled by Kobrea Exploration Corp's El Perdido project, and shows geological characteristics consistent with both the manto-style Río Damas Formation and the porphyry-style Huincán Formation. A December 2025 field programme returned rock chip samples as high as 9,978 ppm copper, and a January 2026 ground magnetic survey identified anomalies consistent with buried intrusive bodies and structural corridors favourable for Iron-Oxide-Copper-Gold or porphyry mineralisation. Importantly, no resource has yet been defined, and the project remains at an early, reconnaissance stage.
Corporately, the company has moved quickly since raising over C$5 million and listing on the TSX Venture Exchange in mid-June 2026. A Frankfurt Stock Exchange listing followed within weeks, aimed at reaching Europe's deeper mining investor base, and by early July the company had added Chris Paul (CEO, Hercules Metals) and Joaquin Marias (CEO, Argenta Silver) as technical advisors, joining VP Exploration Enrique Reichhard, a 45-year veteran of Codelco, Billiton and Teck across Latin America. The capital structure remains tight: insiders hold roughly 47% of shares outstanding under multi-year escrow, the top ten shareholders control over 70% of the register, and warrants and options represent less than 0.5% of shares outstanding.
The near-term roadmap is one of triage rather than blanket drilling. Of the 26 projects, eight to ten have been ranked as priority targets using public geochemical, magnetic and spectral data combined with the December sampling programme, and these are slated for ground geophysics starting October 2026 field season. The remaining properties will move through permitting for follow-up work the following season. Harari has been candid that the company is still deciding between an aggressive, well-funded single campaign and a more gradual, multi-season approach to preserve its cap table - a decision that will shape both the pace of news flow and dilution risk for shareholders.
View Argentina Metals' company profile: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/argentina-metals-corp
Sign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com