Right now, the green energy sector is one of the most active in capital markets and on the Stockhouse Bullboards. That’s where companies like Canadian-based
Anfield Energy Inc. (AEC) (
TSX-V.AEC,
OTCQB: ANLDF,
Forum) are stepping up to the plate to meet an existential global need for green energy solutions.
AEC is a uranium and vanadium development and near-term production company with a conventional uranium asset portfolio underpinned by its Shootaring Canyon Mill – one of only three licensed, permitted, and constructed conventional uranium mills in entire U.S…located in the historic and mining-friendly state of Utah.
Stockhouse Media’s Dave Jackson was joined by Anfield Energy’s Chief Executive Officer, Corey Dias, to get our investor audience up-to-date on this fascinating green energy play.
(CLICK IMAGE TO PLAY VIDEO)
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
SH1: To start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the history of the company?
CD: I've been in capital markets for about 20 years. I've been involved with Anfield for close to 10 years as the CEO. My background lends itself to what we've been doing with Anfield, a lot of M&A work, a lot of work in the finance side. We have been acquiring assets over the years in order to create an entity that we believe is worthy of production. Anfield, as an entity, started off quite small, we looked at the opportunities of potentially doing third party mining to milling through another mill. Ultimately, decided that it made more sense for us to have in-house production and so we sought out an asset, the Shootaring Mill, which we acquired back in 2015. Fast forward to today, we've created a portfolio of assets which lend themselves to significant production through the mill from assets in Utah and Colorado and Arizona and our aim, given where the uranium price is today, is to accelerate that process, to reach production in the coming years.
SH2: As I mentioned in the intro, Shootaring Canyon is one of only three licensed, permitted, and constructed uranium mills in existence throughout the U.S. Can you unpack the benefits of this?
CD: If you're going to mine, you need a way to process the material and turn it into Yellowcake. There are only a handful of ways to do that, especially on the conventional side. Back in the 1980s, there were probably about 40 mills in existence in the US - given the recession, given the drop in Uranium price, a lot of those mills were dismantled leaving three mills. We own one, Energy Fuels owns a mill, which is the only running mill today and Rio Tinto is the third. So, the scarcity value of having a mill and the ability to produce material can't be understated here. It is something that is a significant advantage for us vis-a-vis our peers. It's very different on the ISR side of the business where there are a few more processing facilities but for hard rock and conventional assets we are in a very unique position.
SH3: Can you tell our audience a little bit about the rest of the Anfield portfolio?
CD: Our focus is on the hard work side. As I mentioned, we've got the West Slope properties, which we acquired from Cotter back in late 2018. West Slope consists of nine different mines which recently produced in the early 2010s. They are still permitted and available for production, heavily vanadium laced mines, more so vanadium, than uranium mines. The ratio is roughly 5 or 6 to 1 in terms of vanadium to uranium, which means the rock today is quite lucrative. We're talking about $450 to $500 per ton of rock. Which means that we can ship it from Colorado to our mill and be quite profitable today. We also have a property, the Velvet Wood mine, which is kind of the jewel. It's relatively close to our mill, probably likely to be first feed into our mill. It's also a past producing uranium and vanadium mine and so with those two assets alone, or those two parts of our portfolio alone, we can have a long-term production complex just based on Shootaring Mill, West Slope and Velvet Wood. We continue to look at other assets that we have within our portfolio to compliment those other assets. We do believe that we created this mine and mill complex which is very unique in the sector and certainly with the price continuing to move up, we are in a prime position to start production in the relative near term.
SH4: What’s the strategy for the company moving forward through 2022 and beyond, and what should retail and institutional investors be looking out for?
CD: Well, I think we've been putting out a lot of news recently, if you've seen. We've had three news releases in the past three weeks emphasizing our new focus or a more recent focus on the hard work side of our business. I think that as you spend a lot of time in the sector, you realize that having your own production, your ability to control your own production, is a huge advantage and so we've returned to the idea of pushing forward our own production, pushing forward on our own mines to fill our mine. So, our strategy going forward is to continue that process, advance the assets that don't have economics on them, to put economics on them and then create a long term plan for production through the mill that we hope to execute on in the coming years.
SH5: Can you please give some insight into Anfield’s corporate management and board teams, along with the experience and innovative ideas they bring to the uranium and vanadium space?
CD: Our board has a lot of uranium experience, but it also has a lot of commodity experience, which I think is another differentiator because it's not just about uranium and vanadium, but also moving into production. If you have production experience in other commodities, it certainly would be beneficial in this sector, because uranium production has been very fleeting, I guess you'd say over the past 25 years given the historic events that have slowed or stopped production, I think having the experience on our board of actual production taking place in other sectors makes a big difference. We have people on our board who have asset specific experience. We have people on our board who have environmental and regulatory experience. We have people who have sales and marketing experience, and people who have public marketing experience related to the uranium space too. For example, someone working for Ontario Power Generation, so understanding the nuclear side of the equation. We brought everybody together and sought out those types of experiences in order to compliment others who sit on our board and certainly help us as we move forward into different phases, towards production.
SH6: And finally, Corey, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked the floor is all yours.
CD: I think we've touched based on of where our core values lie and where we aim to reach in the coming years. Our portfolio has manifested itself, has grown, has changed in a number of different ways. As I mentioned, we spent a lot of time on the M&A side of the business looking for a more perfect path to production. The assets that we do have, we still have assets that we could potentially look to monetize or turn into other assets which better fit our strategy going forward for production, and we'll continue to seek out opportunities to work with others. We've done a lot of M&A recently with both small companies and large companies, we haven't been averse to engaging large parties in order to get things done and we've managed to do it. So we've done, I think, a pretty good job of creating a portfolio, which we think stands second to none.
For regular updates, visit
anfieldenergy.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.