I'm sitting here with Kurt Budge, the CEO of Beowulf Mining. Warm welcome.
Thank you.
Let's start off this interview with you describing Beowulf Mining.
Beowulf is a listed exploration development company. We've been listed in Stockholm since 2008, and we're also listed in London. We have activities in Sweden, Finland, and Kosovo. We're most well-known for our Kallak Iron Ore project in Norrbotten County in northern Sweden, for which we got an exploitation concession last year, March 2022. In Finland, we have an exploration development company in the graphite sector. We're looking at both, defining natural resources, but also moving to develop a downstream anode materials production capability. In Finland, we're exploring for base metals and precious metals through our investment in Vardar Minerals, in which we own 61% of the company.
You were here two weeks ago, but since the last interview, Beowulf has published a prospect for rights issue and the subscription period is now open. How are you feeling about that?
I'm looking forward to it being completed, if I'm honest. These processes take a long time to put together and really the real work starts when we've actually completed the capital raising, we've got the funds in, and we can actually get to work. Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting it done and dusted.
We previously discussed the Kallak North scoping study. Can you tell us what is happening now?
Since we got the results from the scoping study and announced them to the markets, really we're looking at all the value drivers and the opportunities that we should be exploring in pre-feasibility. I think I wanted to be very clear in explaining to investors that the study that we had done is just for Kallak North, and that's a small part of the bigger picture in the jigsaw that we're trying to put together, and that when we think about how we can improve and increase the value of the project, we're looking at ways of expanding the resource, extending the life of mine, the opportunities to have a higher production capacity, and also to produce higher value products.
There's lots of different work streams that we're now gonna kick off once we've got the capital raising done.
You talk about exploration upside and how this can support a longer-life mine. Can you be more specific about that?
Yes. Again, the scoping study was focused on Kallak North only. That's only a small part of the total iron mineralization that we've defined in the area. I think, you know, it might be confusing for some, but the scoping study was Kallak North. The Kallak project is actually Kallak North and Kallak South. We have a significant exploration target in Kallak South. Beowulf has Jokkmokk Iron has a number of exploration licenses around Kallak, which combined give us a figure of 389 million tons of iron mineralization. That's not resources and it's not reserves, which would necessarily build into a feasibility study. It gives us an opportunity to go and do further exploration work to increase the size of the resource and then within the fullness of time, put that into a mining plan.
In addition to those Kallak licenses, as we would describe them, we've also got the Aavasaksa license to the northeast, which the SGU put a historic resource which isn't classified of 75 million tons on that. Within the area, there's a lot of iron mineralization.
If we're moving on, can we touch upon Vardar and Grafintec? What is the latest?
The start of the year with Grafintec in Finland, which is our graphite exploration development company looking at developing a downstream capability in anode materials production. We announced a pre-feasibility study there to look at the options available to us for establishing an anode materials production hub, as we would call it. That work is ongoing now. We're hoping to complete that by the end of the first quarter. In addition to that, what we've done both in Sweden and in Finland is to start with a resource base. In Sweden, we have a defined iron ore resource, and in Finland, we have a defined natural flake graphite resource. From that gives us the foundation to then build our business on top of.
We're doing the downstream work, the downstream study work, but we're also looking at increasing our natural flake graphite resource footprint, as we would describe it. That means more exploration work in a license that we talked about at the end of last year called Räpysjärvi, as well as doing some optimization work around our Aitolampi project, which we have 1.275 million tons of contained graphite in, looking at how that integrates with our downstream ambitions. Sorry, Vardar you wanted me to talk about.
With Vardar, last year was a year of tremendous exploration success with Vardar, and really what we're doing is now is building on the work that we did last year, the discovery of, the polymetallic epithermal deposit and also the exploration targets around the Mitrovica license, and looking at how we would go about drilling those targets this year and hopefully coming up with the mineralized, economic mineralized grades that we're looking for.
Beowulf typically announces its preliminary result in end of February. How do you summarize the progress and, how the company has worked over the last 12 months?
Well, I think the company has moved significantly forward, and I think when it comes to the Kallak project, it's most evident there. Getting the Exploitation Concession in March of 2022 was a key milestone in the development of Beowulf. Looking forward now, we, in the last few weeks we've had the pre-feasibility, sorry, the scoping study results, put out for Kallak North. Those two milestones, as well as the work streams that are taking place with regards to environmental permitting, there's a huge momentum now coming behind the Kallak project.
In Kosovo, the exploration success we had last year, to discover the polymetallic epithermal system, and then to come up with all these exploration targets, and then to finish off the end of the year identifying the same sort of mineralized system as we're seeing in the adjacent mining project, the Stan Terg Mine. We're very excited about what we can achieve in Kosovo this year. Grafintec, we've maintained the momentum behind our ambitions of building a downstream business in anode materials. It's not a bad place to be when you've got defined resources and you're operating in the lithium mine battery sector in Finland and in Europe.
You mentioned earlier that you can't wait that the capital raise is gonna be completed. When it is complete, what are your investment priorities, and, what's the news for investors going forward here?
I think, the key priority for us is for Jokkmokk Iron to be getting behind the Kallak project and really pushing our work streams on Kallak. We've talked about drilling the resource, the exploration target in Kallak South. You know, ideally we convert that into a resource, and then we can start to integrate that in an overall development plan for the Kallak Mine rather than Kallak North and Kallak South. That's one of the key areas of focus at the moment, as well as the work streams associated with better understanding the value drivers so that we can increase the value of the Kallak project as a whole. There's a lot of emphasis going into how we innovate around Kallak and how we create the most sustainable mining operation possible.
The work that Ulla Sandborgh is doing that leading Jokkmokk Iron is really where our focus is going, as well as also, you know, doing what's necessary with the other parts of the business.
To conclude this interview, what would you like to have achieved by the end of this year?
Number one is a higher share price. I think, my... the shareholders would thank me for that. I think with all the progress that we've made over the last year and clearly with, you know, there are other factors outside of the control of the company which have affected markets as a whole. I'm not happy with where the share price is at. I think, we've demonstrated that we've got value in the company, and it's for me to do a better job of communicating that to the markets and driving the share price. Yeah, number one is share price.
Sounds like a good target. Thank you for meeting up with us again. Good luck going forward.
Thanks very much indeed.