Welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we're very pleased you joined the Clean Energy Metals Conference. Our next presentation is from District Metals. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides, and you can also view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking "Book a Meeting" in the top toolbar. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Garrett Ainsworth. He's the President and Chief Executive Officer of District Metals, which trades on the OTCQB Venture Market under the symbol DMXCF and on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol DMX. Welcome, Garrett.
Hey, thanks very much, John, and it's a pleasure to be here presenting for the OTC Markets Conference. For those of you that aren't familiar with District Metals Corp., we are a mineral exploration and development company in Sweden. We've been operating in Sweden for about five years. We're focused on our five uranium polymetallic projects, with our flagship being the Deakin property. I will get into great detail about that. Just a cautionary statement, I'm not going to go through this in detail. You can find this on our website, on our news releases, all the fine print. From a very high level, this is a great slide. If you take away anything, this would be it. This is how I try to communicate the company to anyone who says, "Hey, why would I invest in District Metals?" First and foremost, it's the team.
We have management and board that have a track record of success from exploration, discovery, through to production, capital markets, and communicating the message. It's just so important to have that well-roundedness. Obviously, we're operating in Sweden. This is an amazing jurisdiction to be in. It's even gotten better over, especially the last three years, for a number of reasons that I'll get into. Of course, our flagship property, the Deakin property, hosts the Deakin Uranium Deposit, which is the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the world. It's low-grade uranium, but it also contains significant amounts of other important and critical raw materials, such as vanadium, molybdenum, nickel, copper, zinc. There's potash in it. There's also potential for rare earth elements, and I'll get into the details there. We also have four advanced exploration stage uranium properties in Sweden, with three of them: Sågtjärn, Nianfors , Ardnasvarre.
Those are non-alum shale, which is what the Deakin deposit is. We've got alum shale properties where we're trying to find another Deakin deposit. You can see our properties are well spread out across Sweden, and we've definitely got the right team to take advantage of it. Myself, I'm a geologist by training. I cut my teeth in the Athabasca Basin looking for and discovering high-grade uranium deposits. I was the Vice President of Exploration and Development for Alpha Minerals. I took a lead role in the discovery of the Triple R Deposit. We discovered that in November of 2012. It was an Alpha Fission joint venture. The following year, Fission bought out my company, Alpha Minerals, for CAD 189 million. I went on to NextGen Energy as the Vice President of Exploration and Development. When I joined NextGen, the market cap was CAD 50 million.
When I left in 2018, the market cap was CAD 3 billion, all Canadian dollars. I had a lot of success there with the Arrow deposit discovery, other discoveries along that trend in the southwest Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan. I won a number of industry awards for my discovery efforts with the Triple R Deposit and also with the development of the Arrow deposit with NextGen. In 2018, I got a hold of District Metals as a shell company. We were backed by some very solid shareholders that included Warren Irwin from Russo Asset Management, also some very good investors from Ventum Financial. At the time, it was PI Financial. I looked all over the world for a project that we could get excited about. It didn't happen until 2020, and it was based on a project in Sweden called Tomtebo, which was a base metal polymetallic project.
We still have two base metal polymetallic projects, but our focus for the company really is on our uranium polymetallic projects in Sweden. We've put together a very talented team. Our CFO, Marlis Yassin, does an amazing job navigating everything and most recently took a very strong role in getting our listing on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market in Sweden, which has been performing excellent. We bolstered our technical team quite early on, bringing in Hein Raat and Rodney Allen. They worked with Boliden for many, many years, and they know the ins and outs of Sweden extremely well. On the board, we have a well-rounded board with a skill matrix. Joanna Cameron, I worked with at NextGen. She's a lawyer by training, now currently at Osler. Doug Ramshaw, huge strategic and capital markets experience.
He's trained as a geologist, but has had a lot of success with Great Bear and Minera Alamos. [Jonathan Chelis], capital markets experience, excellent mine engineer. He just brings amazing advice to all of our meetings. We've got a very strong and diverse advisory committee. Galen McNamara, I worked with at NextGen. He recently took Suma Silver, combined it with another company called Silver 47. Rob Chang was a uranium analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. Sophia Shane worked with the Lundin Group for almost 30 years, I believe. It's been just amazing in supporting everything we do in Sweden. Rita Bennett, she's the President of Great Discovery Group, and she really is so important in helping to navigate the world of what marketing should we be using, what should our corporate communication strategy be. I'm very proud of everyone that's on this slide right now.
Looking at our share structure here up to the end of July, 165 million shares out. We've got about 10 million warrants. Most of them are at $0.30 strike price. Some of them are at $0.20. We've really concentrated on bringing in the right investors, whether they be funds, family offices, high net worth. You can see we have a very large institutional and high net worth holding in previous financings. We had Cap come in, Satchem Cove out of the U.S., Extract Capital out of New York. We have very significant shareholders in Europe and in Sweden. The Jordan Fund is out of Sweden. They're a group of high net worth investors that have been backing us since 2023, and was a big part of why we got listed on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market in Sweden.
Of course, management, we have a very large stake in the company as well. I have over 4 million shares myself of District Metals that I've bought anywhere between $ 0.12-$ 0.44. For those of you that don't know Sweden as a place to mine and do exploration, mineral exploration, it is an amazing jurisdiction, and it's just getting better and better. More recently, Sweden was ranked number six by the Fraser Institute as a jurisdiction that's for investment attractiveness. This has leapfrogged up quite a bit. I think it was previously around 14 or 15. The current government that's in, they realize that Sweden's role for the EU in particular should be continuing to act as a powerhouse for important critical raw materials, and also the bread and butter like iron, copper, lead, zinc, silver, gold. It all has to do with their history of mining.
It goes back to 400 BC at the Garbemedda mine, that's just located north of Stockholm there. There are some big players, obviously Boliden is one of them. BHP is operating in-country. Agnico Eagle, LKAB, Mandalay Resources. The regulators are very supportive, you know, very low taxes, and you know, there's a form for everything. If you go to get your drill permit, you fill out all the forms, and things happen as they should happen, which is amazing. Let's turn our eye to uranium in Sweden. Historically, Sweden has been quite big on nuclear energy. In and around 2018, they were looking to phase out nuclear energy, and in doing so, they put a moratorium on uranium mining. Fast forward to 2022, Russia invades Ukraine. Energy prices go up three to four times. There's geopolitical turmoil. All of a sudden, things change drastically. Now Sweden has gone pro-nuclear.
They want to build out 10 more nuclear reactors by 2045. They currently have about 30% of their electricity coming from nuclear, but in conjunction with building out more nuclear reactors, Sweden realizes that they need to secure a domestic supply of uranium to fuel these reactors. It's been quite the step shift. To give you a bit of a history here, it was a center-right government in 2018 that implemented the moratorium on uranium mining. They currently are now more positive on building more nuclear reactors. This is the opposition currently, and they've also said that they're okay with mining uranium as a byproduct, which is exactly how you find the uranium in our Deakin deposit. The current government that came in in 2022 said they're pro-nuclear, and they're going to lift the uranium ban.
Actually, just yesterday, the Swedish Minister of Environment did a press briefing highly positive, saying that, you know, laying out why they're lifting the moratorium, how they're going to do it, and the timing is that within the fourth quarter of 2025, a bill will go to Parliament. The government says they have a majority to approve this bill. Once it's approved, then the change to legislation to lift the uranium ban should occur on January 1st, 2026. We have all of our uranium properties full steam ahead for 2026. Let's look at the flagship Deakin property here. We own 100% of it. It's completely royalty-free. It's quite a large package. All the black outline here, we even have Deakin NR4 that continues way off to the northwest. The Deakin deposit that's being drilled off is within this dashed line here.
It was originally discovered, you know, that there were these alum shale host rocks in the 1970s, but foreign companies weren't really allowed to own 100% of mineral licenses up until the 1990s. It really took until the next uranium cycle, you know, 2004- 2008, where Continental Precious Minerals came in and they did mineral resource estimates and preliminary economic assessments on the Deakin Uranium Deposit. We've currently done our own updated mineral resource estimate as of April of this year. Our next-door neighbors, Aura Energy, have the Häggån deposit, which is the west extension of our Deakin Uranium Deposit, and have shown some, you know, very, very good potential for these alum shale type deposits in a mining scenario. Here are the numbers from the NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate we did on Deakin that was released in April of this year.
Just looking at the inferred category, this is very large: 4.3 billion tons, 1.5 billion pounds of uranium, 24.3 billion pounds of vanadium, and with billions and billions of pounds of molybdenum, nickel, copper, zinc. There's potash, there's phosphate. There's also potential for rare earth elements, and not all of the rare earth elements were historically assayed. That's one of the first things we're going to do once the uranium mining moratorium is lifted. We're going to go back to historical drill core. We're going to assay for all the rare earths because, you know, it's really important with this deposit. The uranium, the vanadium are great, but the more strategic we can make it, the more important it is for adding value to the project, but also the more strategic it is for Sweden and the EU, which should make permitting easier going forward.
I get asked all the time, what's it worth? It's a tough question. I can't really pinpoint exactly what it's worth. That would be psychic abilities would be required, but I can look into the past and see what's happened in the last uranium cycles. In Southern Africa, it's known for low-grade uranium, and all they have is uranium. That's it. Just low-grade uranium. There's no vanadium or any other byproducts that come out of it. In 2007, Uramin was bought out by Areva, now Orano, for $2.5 billion for Trekkopje. It's a very low-grade uranium deposit. There were also some other African uranium assets as part of that acquisition. In 2012, Extract Resources was bought out by CGN, which is a Chinese state-owned nuclear company. It was AUD 2.2 billion Australian dollars for 90% of the Husab deposit, which is actually currently in production.
It's got somewhat higher- uranium grades, up to almost 500 parts per million uranium at Husab. It really shows multi-billion dollar monetizing events occurred during the last uranium cycle or just somewhat after, because 2012 is after Fukushima, which was obviously a terrible event for the nuclear industry and the world in general. Another way to look at the potential value that District Metals brings, this really stands out, especially when you look at our inferred resource category where we have just over 1.5 billion pounds of uranium. Looking at the EVs of peer companies, you get the average of just over $3 per pound. You look at our Deakin Uranium Deposit, and we're sitting at about $0.09 per pound. That's come up; when we initially acquired the Deakin property, that's come up from about $0.02 per pound.
It's good to see that we've moved up, especially as this very important date comes within Q4 where the government says it's going to be lifting the ban on uranium mining. Even when you look at the measured and indicated versus EV, our $0.76 per pound sits very, very well below the average for some of our peers in the industry. That's it for the Deakin property for now. I can answer questions on it later. I'll just hop on to one-pagers on our other uranium projects. Sågtjärn, this is not an alum shale, so it's got higher- grade uranium values in it. The mineralization here would be similar to grades you would see in the USA in the Colorado Plateau. Sågtjärn has a historical mineral resource of 1.14 million pounds at about 700 parts per million U3O8.
It also has some historical drilling, very shallow, but shows very good intercepts of 0.13%- 0.18% over 5 m-9 m type intervals that are open in all directions. We've actually been flying a drone magnetic radiometric survey that we'll be putting out results on in the month of September, which will be really fun to see. There is Nianfors, which is very similar to Sågtjärn in the style of mineralization. The very exciting area here is Majest Barriet, which has almost a thousand uranium polymetallic mineralized boulders. It's got outcrop with mineralization. These boulders were averaging 0.16% U3O8 with the highest grades up to 1.4% U3O8. Very good grades there. In the 1980s, the Geological Survey of Sweden put together an exploration target estimate of minimum 13 million pounds, ranging from 700 parts-1 ,400 parts per million uranium.
We're also flying a drone radiometric magnetic survey here that we'll have results out in September. There's Arnasverde. This is a bit further up to the north. This has a few different types of uranium targets. The red rocks are basement, the yellow rocks are sandstone. Where they meet, there's an unconformity. This is similar to what you would see in the Athabasca Basin. We have uranium occurrences and historical resources within both types of rocks, but no one's really looked at that contact. It's going to be really exciting for myself as a uranium geologist to come into this project. We know there's high-grade uranium boulders in the area that are up to 29%, so 29% U3O8. There are very high-grade boulders around. The last drill hole was just a singular drill hole in 2008, returned seven meters of 0.17% with a more narrow interval, almost up to 1%.
It's very shallow. We're also flying a drone magnetic radiometric survey here that we'll have results out hopefully in September for this one. If not, maybe October for this one. There's our alum shale properties, which are located to the north of our Deakin property. What we're looking for here is another Deakin deposit. We've actually flown another geophysical survey at Deakin and also at the alum shale properties. It's called Mobile MT, and it picks up the conductive nature of the alum shale, which is the host rock, because there's graphite sulfides in it. What we're looking for are alum shales that are shallow and that they're thick and could potentially be positive in a mining scenario, and that's what we're going after.
Along with the polymetallic nature of these important and critical raw materials that are hosted in alum shales, these could be very important for Sweden and the EU to wean themselves off of countries like China and Russia, which they rely on heavily for these raw materials. Just looking at, let's move for the milestones and upcoming catalysts. In Q3, we started a Mobile MT airborne survey at Deakin and alum shale properties. We commenced airborne drone radiometric magnetic survey at Sågtjärn, Nianfors, and Arnasverde, which are not alum shales. We put out drill results in Q3 from our Tomtebo base metal project. We should have probably in late September, I'm thinking, results and interpretation out hopefully for the Mobile MT survey on the Deakin property. Going into October, we should have Mobile MT surveys out for the alum shale properties, and actually the drone radiometric magnetic surveys.
Those hopefully we'll be getting out in September. On the government political side, there will be news flow coming from the government regarding the timing of the bill that they'll be voting on to lift the uranium mining moratorium. They say they have a majority to approve this with the idea for once it's approved, then the change to legislation will happen on January 1, 2026. We are full steam ahead on, we'll be looking to start initiating a preliminary economic assessment at the Deakin property for the Deakin Uranium Deposit. I'll just end off with, just to summarize everything here, we've got a very strong team with experience in uranium, but also on the base metal side and general knowledge of Sweden. It's so important. We're obviously very focused in Sweden, which is ranked number 6 by the Fraser Institute.
We were able to assemble a very exciting uranium polymetallic portfolio thanks to the uranium mining moratorium that's been in place in Sweden since 2018. We've also got two other base metal polymetallic projects that we're not working on too much anymore right now because our main focus is really to turn to the uranium side of things. I'm just really proud of the shareholders that we have got on the registry. We've got some really big names, and they understand the story. They know what we're trying to do to build shareholder value, and they've just been really good backing us along the way here. With that, I'll say thanks very much for listening to the presentation, and I'm happy to take any questions here. Let's see. I see a lot of questions have come in. Good, good.
I'll start off with, can you elaborate on the effects of Boliden's exit earlier this week? Great question. You know, we had a great working relationship with Boliden. They were funding $10 million over four years. We got about halfway through that. Just this year, Boliden acquired two large base metal mines in Europe, one in Sweden, one in Spain. I would think that the exploration funds are now going to go to near mine exploration. They're very complimentary of District's technical expertise and how we executed our drill programs as operator of our collaboration with them, on budget, on time. I'd say when we put the news out earlier this week, the market spoke, and it didn't seem to be too bothered. We actually ended up quite positive on the day.
What this does is it allows us to be laser-focused on our uranium projects in Sweden, which I think is very important considering this moratorium should hopefully be completely lifted on January 1, 2026. Okay, with Deakin's relatively low uranium grades, how can the project still be economically viable? How important are the byproducts to profitability? That's exactly it. We have grades of uranium that are similar to grades of uranium that have been or mined in Southern Africa. What they don't have in Southern Africa are these other metals like vanadium and potash and molybdenum, nickel, copper, zinc. If you add up the value of the rock in our Deakin Uranium Deposit by adding up all the different metals and minerals, you're going to get a much higher uranium U3O8 equivalent than what you would see in Africa.
Those have been profitable, especially during a good and strong uranium market. Deakin is not just a uranium deposit. The grades of vanadium are actually quite good. They're about 0.28% vanadium. Vanadium right now is in a kind of a multi-year low in terms of pricing. The future of vanadium looks very good for enforcing steel as an alloy, but also for vanadium redox flow batteries that are used to store electricity long-term for wind turbines and solar power. That's actually a huge potential growth area for vanadium. All right, are any of your uranium properties brownfield? Brownfield in where they historically mined? The answer is no. I call them advanced stage exploration because our uranium properties in Sweden have all had drilling on them. They have many of them, most of them have historical mineral resource estimates. There's been no historical mining of uranium on our properties.
There was some mining of an alum shale type deposit in Sweden, further south in Sweden called Ranstad. It's in a much more densely populated area. It was mined in the 1960s. I think they didn't quite have the technology to pull out the vanadium or any of the other metals or minerals out of it. They did get, I think, recoveries of 80% uranium. The rationale for getting the uranium there was for non-nuclear energy reasons at that time, which is something you wouldn't see, I think, today. Once the uranium mining moratorium is lifted, is there a specific time it will take to start doing the preliminary economic assessment? How much time is it estimated it will take? I think in general, we have two paths here.
With the uranium mining moratorium lifted, and we've got this Mobile MT survey, we either do the preliminary economic assessment within the existing mineral resource estimate, which will make things go faster. I would think that would probably be about six months. If the Mobile MT survey shows us that we should be concentrating on an area outside of the existing mineral resource estimate, then we'll have to drill that off. That'll take more time. That would be maybe more than six months, could be upwards of 12 months. We also have to do a lot of other metallurgy work as well. I would gauge, you know, six to 12 months, and we'll know more as we get the Mobile MT interpretation and results back. I think that's about it for time right now. I wish I could answer more. Please send any questions to info@districtmetals.com.
We can set up meetings afterwards. I really appreciate the time you've taken to listen and the great questions that you've asked as well. Thank you very much.