Company Interviews

Interview with Dr. Mike Jones, MD of Impact Minerals Ltd.
Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/impact-minerals-asxipt-advancing-scoping-study-with-10x-throughput-breakthrough-in-hand-10564
Recording date: 11th September 2026
Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT) has spent the past three years repositioning from a conventional Australian exploration company into a twin-pathway high-purity alumina (HPA) developer, and the scoping study for Alluminous, the company's 50%-owned chemical-process technology in which it holds its stake alongside two US-based institutional co-investors, is the first independent test of the economics behind that pivot.
The study, prepared by NewPro Consulting & Engineering Services, compared four development cases across Perth and the Houston area. Impact's preferred pathway stages a US Gulf Coast plant from 2,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) up to 4,000 tpa as customer qualification, offtake and funding mature, rather than committing to full capacity immediately. The case models a post-tax NPV at an 8% discount rate of A$518 million ($362.4 million), a 42.3% IRR, and a capital payback of roughly 3.8 years, on total installed capital of $74 million. Net operating costs, after crediting a saleable ammonium sulphate by-product, come in just under $9,000 per tonne. 
Management's central claim is capital efficiency: it puts listed peers Alpha HPA and Advanced Energy Minerals at roughly four to five times Alluminous's capital intensity per tonne of installed capacity, while operating costs remain broadly comparable.
Alluminous sits alongside Lake Hope, Impact's 80%-owned flagship Western Australian project, which uses a different, natural lake-sediment feedstock and completed its own Pre-Feasibility Study in June 2025 - a standalone A$1.2 billion NPV case at a 10% discount rate with a 47.5% IRR. The two projects are run and owned independently, use different feedstocks and produce different by-products (Lake Hope yields sulphate of potash; Alluminous yields ammonium sulphate), but both compete for the same downstream battery, semiconductor and sapphire-glass markets. Lake Hope's naturally low uranium and thorium content - independently confirmed below 1 part per billion without a dedicated removal step - is pitched as a specific advantage for semiconductor-grade qualification, a hurdle competitors have typically had to engineer around.
Both projects remain genuinely early-stage. The Alluminous scoping study carries a wide +50%/-30% cost accuracy band typical of FEL-0 order-of-magnitude estimates, and the study's authors note they relied on Alluminous-supplied data without independently verifying the underlying technology. The integrated process has not been demonstrated continuously at scale, batch testing has produced filtration challenges, and no binding customer offtake or project debt exists for either pathway - the model assumes 100% equity funding throughout. 
Near-term catalysts include converting the Perth pilot plant to continuous operation, further validation work with battery-technology partner C4V, a formal Texas Gulf Coast site-selection study, and the start of Lake Hope's own Definitive Feasibility Study in 2027. Impact closed a A$4.13 million entitlement offer on September 9th 2026, underscoring that further capital will likely be required as both projects advance toward construction decisions.
View Impact Minerals' company profile: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/impact-minerals
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Interview with John Florek, President & CEO of Emperor Metals
Recording date: 11th September 2026
Emperor Metals is a Canadian gold exploration company advancing two projects in Quebec's Abitibi Greenstone Belt, one of the world's most prolific gold-producing districts with roughly 200 million ounces produced historically. The company's flagship asset, Duquesne West, sits on the Porcupine-Destor Fault Zone, a structure credited with over 110 million ounces of historical production, and neighbours active and past-producing mines operated by Agnico Eagle, IAMGOLD and others.
In July 2025, Duquesne West received a maiden inferred mineral resource estimate of 26.9 million tonnes at 1.69 grams per tonne gold, for 1.46 million ounces, based on a $2,300 per ounce gold price assumption. That resource is roughly double the 727,000 ounce historical estimate that predated Emperor's 2022 takeover as operator. Management, led by President and CEO John Florek, a geologist with 35 years of experience including senior roles at BHP, Placer Dome, Barrick, Teck and Detour Lake Gold attributes the growth partly to an AI-assisted geological modelling process that identified a large-scale, lower-grade open-pit envelope surrounding higher-grade underground lenses that earlier operators had not recognised since the deposit was first discovered in the 1940s.
The company describes the resource as substantially under-drilled: approximately 140,000 metres of drilling have been completed to date, which management estimates at 15-20% of what comparable projects required to reach similar ounce totals. A 15,000 metre drill program and an 8,000 metre historical core re-sampling campaign - aimed at converting inferred ounces to indicated via duplicate drilling of older holes - are currently under way, funded through the end of 2026. Management has signalled an intent to pursue a further 30,000-50,000 metre program from around October 2026, subject to financing, ahead of an eventual preliminary economic assessment once the resource passes roughly 2 million ounces.
Emperor's secondary asset, Lac Pelletier, sits approximately 30 kilometres south and offers a different risk profile: a historical resource of 227,000 ounces at 3.9 grams per tonne gold, permits valid for production until 2030, and roughly C$70 million of prior infrastructure investment including more than 3.3 kilometres of underground development. Two historical bulk samples averaged 96.3% gold recovery. Management's near-term plan is to update the historical feasibility study and evaluate a production decision, rather than to advance immediately to construction.
As of June 2026, Emperor had 194,850,005 shares outstanding (242,289,794 fully diluted) and an estimated C$5.4 million in working capital. Strategic investors Rob McEwen (7%) and Rick Rule are on the share register. On a company comparable basis, Emperor traded at approximately C$39 million market capitalisation, or C$25.28 per ounce of resource.
Both the Duquesne West and Lac Pelletier resource figures carry standard caveats: inferred resources and historical estimates do not have demonstrated economic viability and are not current mineral reserves. Neither project has reached a construction or production decision.
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Interview with Alan Carter, President & CEO of Cabral Gold Inc.
Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/cabral-gold-tsxvcbr-operating-licence-secured-first-gold-targeted-by-september-11515
Recording date: 11th September 2026
Cabral Gold has crossed the line from developer to producer, confirming the first gold pour at its Phase 1 Cuiú Cuiú heap leach operation in Pará state, Brazil. The pour, approximately 1,130 ounces of doré assaying 93-94% gold, came in well above management's internal expectations, and arrives with construction running roughly two months ahead of schedule. For a company that only secured project financing twelve months ago, the milestone represents a rapid and largely self-executed build.
The near-term operational story is about ramp-up discipline. The dry circuit is fully commissioned; the wet circuit, covering leaching and gold recovery, is expected to follow within days. Stacking rates are being increased in stages toward a 3,000 tonne-per-day design target, monitored through a control room tracking belt speeds and throughput. Management has been explicit that no 2026 production guidance will be issued while ramp-up variables remain unresolved, but formal 2027 guidance is expected, potentially as early as January, giving investors a concrete date to watch.
The cash flow case, while based on a study CEO Alan Carter himself flagged as roughly eighteen months old, is notable: first-year production of 20,000 to 25,000 ounces at an estimated margin near $3,300 an ounce implies pre-tax cash flow in the order of $80 million before any expansion. Carter framed this against typical gold producer valuation multiples of six to twelve times cash flow, arguing the operation could support meaningful re-rating once production stabilises.
Strategically, the more interesting thread is how Cabral intends to fund its next phase of growth. A recent $45 million strategic investment from Alpayana, described as Peru's largest private mining company, gave Cabral a 9.99% shareholder and, combined with Phase 1 cash flow, is intended to reduce the company's reliance on annual dilutive equity raises, a pattern Carter was candid about wanting to avoid.
The larger opportunity sits underground. Approximately 75% of the district's known gold ounces are hosted in hard rock beneath the oxide material Cabral is currently mining. A district-wide resource update due by year-end will model six gold deposits, up from three in the last global estimate from September 2022, incorporating roughly 50,000 metres of drilling completed since. Management is also sitting on some 50 untested peripheral targets, including boulder fields averaging 90 grams per tonne gold across ten to twelve targets. A meaningful increase in the resource base would support a formal Preliminary Economic Assessment on the hard rock opportunity, positioning 2027 as a pivotal year for both production guidance and district-scale resource definition.
For investors, the near-term watch list is straightforward: confirmation of the refinery assay on the first doré bars, completion of wet-circuit commissioning, and progression of stacking rates toward design capacity. Further out, the year-end resource update and the timing of a Phase 2 PEA decision will determine whether Cuiú Cuiú's story broadens from a single oxide starter operation into a genuine two-stage gold district.
View Cabral Gold's company profile: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/cabral-gold
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Interview with Tiago Cunha, Director & CEO of South Star Battery Metals
Recording date: 11th September 2026
South Star Battery Metals Corp (TSXV:STS) is a rare example in the junior mining space of a genuine operational turnaround delivering measurable results within a single year. The company's Santa Cruz graphite operation in Bahia, Brazil came close to bankruptcy in October 2025, with insufficient funds to meet payroll. CEO Tiago Cunha, then a board member and investor, stepped in, personally funding two payroll cycles before a capital raise closed in December 2025. He describes replacing effectively the entire workforce and management team, citing prior contracting misconduct and kickbacks, and crediting the new operational team led by COO Rogério Barcellos with proving the underlying asset was never the constraint.
Since the turnaround began, management reports a 60% reduction in cash operating costs, driven by straightforward fixes: renegotiating electricity from retail to wholesale rates (a 35% cut in power costs within 30 days) and changing filter-press mesh size to eliminate near-daily equipment failures. Current operating costs are reported below $800 per tonne of concentrate. Production restarted in 2026, reportedly around three months ahead of an original July target, with the company targeting 5,000 tonnes per year of capacity by year-end and cumulative 2026 throughput of roughly 1,847 tonnes.
Two distinct expansion paths are on the table. The first to 10,000 tonnes per year is described as low-capex (under $1 million) and fully financed, since the plant's off-the-shelf equipment already has spare capacity and the only bottleneck is a second filter press. The second, a larger expansion toward 25,000, to potentially 50,000 tonnes per year, is being discussed with the Brazilian Development Bank and the US International Development Finance Corporation, but rests on a 2022-vintage feasibility study that Cunha himself says is no longer reliable, given subsequent changes to the processing flowsheet.
Commercially, South Star reports a flake-to-fines split of roughly 70/30, ahead of original design, with flotation grades of 93-97% Cg and 99.95% Cg purity validated downstream. Sales are spread across multiple US buyers, with additional niche markets - such as agricultural graphite at a substantial premium to commodity pricing - cited as a way to avoid dependence on any single customer. Cunha frames the sector's core risk as Chinese pricing behaviour rather than product-specific competition, noting the absence, so far, of any floor-pricing mechanism for graphite comparable to those emerging in rare earths.
With CEO ownership of roughly 40%, funded through the company's near-collapse, and graphite's growing framing as a supply-chain security issue for Western defence and industrial policy, South Star presents a relatively de-risked near-term production story layered with a larger, currently unquantified expansion option.
View South Stat Battery Metals company profile: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/south-star-battery-metals
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Interview with Troy Boisjoli, CEO of ATHA Energy
Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/atha-energy-tsxvsask-district-scale-uranium-play-builds-momentum-with-dual-discoveries-11012
Recording date: 8th September 2026
ATHA Energy Corp. (TSXV:SASK) is a Canadian uranium explorer built around a strategy of maximising exposure to the country's best uranium jurisdictions before committing capital to resource definition. Founded three years ago, the company grew from an initial 3.5-million-acre position in the Athabasca Basin to a seven-million-acre portfolio spanning the Athabasca Basin (Saskatchewan), the Angikuni Basin (Nunavut) and the Central Mineral Belt (Labrador), while retaining a 10% carried interest in Athabasca Basin projects operated by NexGen Energy and IsoEnergy.
The company's flagship is the 100%-owned Angilak Uranium Project in Nunavut, which hosts two parallel value drivers: the Lac 50 Deposit Corridor, carrying an existing exploration target of 61 to 98 million pounds U3O8, and the Mineralized RIB Corridor, where 2025 drilling produced four new discoveries including RIB North.
ATHA reported results from seven additional RIB North drillholes, extending confirmed mineralisation continuity from 300 metres to 1.45 kilometres along the corridor's eastern limb. The standout intersection returned 20.0 metres of composite uranium mineralisation across fifteen zones, including 1.3 metres of high-grade material defined by the company as exceeding 10,000 counts per second on its downhole gamma probe. A separate horizon on the western limb was extended to approximately 220 metres of strike via follow-up drilling. None of this work has yet been converted into a formal resource estimate, and the corridor remains open in every direction.
CEO Troy Boisjoli, a former Cameco chief geologist who led the Rook I project through to feasibility, framed the results as evidence of a deliberate, staged strategy: address discovery risk first through widely spaced regional drilling, then prove continuity, then move into delineation. He argues this sequencing, rather than rushing toward a resource statement, is what reduces execution risk for a company at ATHA's stage. VP Exploration Cliff Revering, previously a senior resource geologist at Cameco and chief geologist at Cigar Lake during its production ramp-up, leads the technical program alongside him.
Management's emerging geological thesis is one of the more distinctive elements of the story. Rather than a conventional Athabasca Basin-style unconformity system, ATHA believes Angilak's basement-hosted, structurally controlled mineralisation behaves more like an orogenic gold system, with graphitic and sulphide-bearing structures making conductive geology itself prospective, rather than a background feature unrelated to mineralisation. If the model holds up against 3D geophysical inversion results due across the full Angikuni Basin in Q4 2026, management believes it could support drill targets across a structural trend extending tens of kilometres, well beyond the roughly 1.45 kilometres tested to date.
The company enters that catalyst window well capitalised, having raised $63 million in Q1 2026, including a $25 million US investment from Queen's Road Capital, funding a three-rig, roughly 20,000-metre program running through the end of September 2026. Investors could weigh the scale of the opportunity management describes against the fact that no resource has yet been defined at either RIB North or the broader corridor, and that the company itself says it cannot currently quantify the eventual size of the system.
Learn more: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/atha-energy
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