Financial markets are soft, but we're bringing things into production. Rare earths are not commodities. They're not like copper or any of the base metals, and you have to complete a supply chain.
They also present some unique chemistry issues, so producer A can produce a concentrate, producer B can produce its concentrate, and no two deposits are ever the same. One of the challenges is how you separate them. And all rare earths appear the same; there are 17 elements that all come together and they have to be peeled off, like an onion. Can we develop a centralized facility to take feeds from different units? The answer is yes. But no two feeds are the same, so you now get into questions like what the chemistry issues are, what the innovative solutions are, and then whether you can demonstrate it. The answer is that I think you can.
There are a number of other technical.... As I said, we've brought together a group of innovators—the theme talked about before, which I liked—where engineers from the technical leaders from each of the companies got together and said, “No, we can't talk”, “No, we don't have any problems”. But at the end of the day they prioritized seven common projects and said, “We have a similar kind of issue. We are finding that this reagent scheme is probably the best. It's only produced in one location and happens to be controlled by the Chinese. It could be re-engineered. How about we collaborate and solve this problem, reverse engineer it, tweak it as need be, and move forward?”
It's that collaborative platform. As I commented before, with CREEN and the Conference of Metallurgists, we've demonstrated that the ability is there for the juniors to do it and draw upon some of the bigger organizations. In conversations with the CIM, the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgists, and the Mining Association of Canada, some of the larger folks are asking, “How do we support you, and how do you draw on some of the capabilities we have to solve problems we don't even understand, but individual skills are there and that's what innovation is. I have solutions and how do we apply them?”