Modern Mining February 2024

CRITICAL METALS

Critical Metals on an aggressive growth path

LSE-listed Critical Metals has lofty ambitions that include an aggressive growth strategy targeting the acquisition of five brownfields mines in five different jurisdictions in the next two years. The junior miner expects to be producing a minimum of 10 000 tpm of copper ore from its flagship Molulu Project, bedding down on its drilling programme, CEO Russell Fryer tells Modern Mining .

F urther to this, Critical Metals, which was estab lished to acquire opportunities in the strategic metals sector, is hungry to secure a second acquisition. Listed on the LSE on 28 September 2020 during the Covid pandemic with the odds stacked against it, the newcomer to the resources sector believes that its strategy, being cash generative soon after an acquisition in the key critical metals segment, will see it climb up the mining ranks sooner rather than later. “Our company is focused on those metals that are required by economies for growth. If access to these minerals or metals were to be severed, the western economies would struggle. Moreover, given that Africa contains the minerals our company is looking to invest in, we remain focused on the continent. In fact, Africa compares well with Australia and North America in terms of potential value and, importantly, the ability to permit a mine is much quicker in Africa than anywhere else in the world,” notes Fryer. He adds: “Our investment criterion for a poten tial asset is that the asset must be cash generative within 12 months following its purchase. We are clear that we are project developers and operators, not explorers or speculators. What this means is that the financial community can estimate cash flows and profitability within 12 months of an acquisition.” According to Fryer, an operating asset or one that

has been in care and maintenance, is “easy to get up and running as it requires minimum investment and effort to become operational”. Although there are “plenty of opportunities” in the critical metals market because there are several previously operated mines on sale and large mining houses remain keen to dispose of non-core assets, the challenge, concedes Fryer, is that as the miner als and metals being pursued are also on the US and Europe’s critical metals list, they are also being courted by a number of industry players. “The whole world has cottoned onto critical met als and there are an increasing number of players bidding for assets. We are seeing several news faces, in particular, companies from the Middle East entering the fray. Typically, in this space we compete

Below: Team inspecting the Molulu Project core samples.

18  MODERN MINING  February 2024