ASX: OD6 - OD6 Metals
- Matt Birney
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
OD6 Metals: New project - a critical mineral used in all the big industries… but not mined in the USA!
OD6 Metals Managing Director Brett Hazelden on 3AW, 2GB, 4BC & 6PR Bulls N' Bears Report
Listen to ASX-listed OD6 Metals Managing Director Brett Hazelden talk to Matt Birney on the Bulls N’ Bears Report about OD6’s brand new USA project that boasts critical minerals used in everything from AI chips to the nuclear industry.
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RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears, brought to you today by critical minerals explorer, OD6 Metals
Matt Birney - ASX code: OD6
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney, and I'm joined now by the Managing Director of OD6 Metals, Brett Hazelden.
Matt Birney - Hi, Brett.
Brett Hazelden - How're you going Matt?
Matt Birney - Okay, so critical minerals including rare earth are back, baby, and OD6 Metals has hundreds of millions of tonnes of them around Esperance. Another mineral that is now firmly on the international critical minerals list is fluorspar. And you might be surprised at how many in vogue industries need that stuff right now. OD6 has just picked up a fluorspar project in Nevada, USA that is sporting some off the chart grades and historical production.
Matt Birney - Okay, Brett, I want to talk about your new Quinn Fluorspar project in Nevada, USA in a minute, but just for context, who uses fluorspar and why?
Brett Hazelden - So lots of people use fluorspar on the new future facing product, AI semiconductors for chip etching, battery technology goes into all your lithium ion batteries, nuclear fuel processing. To upgrade it up to nuclear fuel rods you need to have fluorine or fluorspar. Goes into steel production and also refrigerants as well and plenty of options in defence.
Matt Birney - What sort of grades does this stuff get mined at around the world?
Brett Hazelden - So around the world it's between 20 to 40% grades, generally China dominated at the moment, they're sort of producing 63% of the world's production.
Matt Birney - Tell me when was this project, your Quinn project, you've just taken an option over it, when was it last mined and at what grades?
Brett Hazelden - The Quinn project was mined back in the 1950s last before sort of America offshored everything over to China and the grades were sitting anywhere between 30 to 70% at the time depending on where they were mining within the area.
Matt Birney - What other exploration work or perhaps historical work is pointing to mineralization beyond that historical mining activity?
Brett Hazelden - Yeah. So based on the history there, they only mined what was sticking out of the side of the hill effectively. So there's plenty of scope for it to extend both up dip and down dip as well. And also it's breccia pipe in some areas. So will go down deep as well. So plenty of scope to expand these resources significantly.
Matt Birney - And what geological indicators have you got? Soil samples, rock chips? Have you got drill holes? What's there?
Brett Hazelden - Yeah. So lots of rock chips, lots of channel samples as well. So some of the channel samples are going sort of 15 m at 48% CAF2 which is what they measure it in. There's lots of rock chips also up to about 90% CAF2 as well. So plenty of scope there to get some really good grades.
Matt Birney - Yeah, good numbers. I'm guessing with uses in AI chips, nuclear defence, all of those sorts of things, the USA has a pretty big demand for this stuff. What other operating mines are there in Nevada? Who's your likely competition?
Brett Hazelden - So, there's actually no operating mines in the US at all. So, US is 100% import reliant at the moment and so listed critical mineral by Trump as well in his first term. So, plenty of opportunity there for us to get in there and make America great again.
Matt Birney - What other ASX companies are exploring for fluorspar? I think you might be the only one, are you?
Brett Hazelden - The main one there is Tivan in Western Australia there. So Tivan's got a 40 million tonne resource at about 8% CAF2. So lower grade but more tonnes. They're now billion dollar market caps and doing some deals with the Japanese. So they're looking into Asia. We'll be looking obviously into the US market.
Matt Birney - Brett Hazelden from OD6 Metals.
Matt Birney - Thanks for joining me on Bulls N' Bears and remember we're only here to give you information, not advice, which you should of course seek independently.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and this is Bulls N' Bears.
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