[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Not literal gold, you nimrods. Figurative gold.[/perfectpullquote]
When we first met Mag One Products (MDD.C) and their CEO, Gillian Holcroft, back in early June, they were floating around at $0.085 a share, having traded as low as $0.05 in the previous nine months, touting their technique for clearing magnesium from the tailings stacks of mines.
Tailings are essentially waste product, left over when a producing mine crushes the rock it pulls out of the ground to get at whatever ore they’re trying to get at.
The big stuff is easy to find. The finer stuff is often too difficult and just gets left behind in tailings.
For those of us who enjoy a clean planet, those tailings stacks are ass. They’re either leftovers that will for many years taint a landscape, or they’re an expensive thing to clear away. Either way, there’s no joy in tailings.
Until Holcroft came along and changed the game.
Mag One hasn’t been a runaway success of the ages – not yet anyway, because sitting in between the energy metals market and the mining space, effectively picking through the trash of one to sell bits to the other, makes for a a little heavier lifting on the story telling side.
That had proved tough for the company over the last year. Volume was low, trading was by appointment, and the work being done on the pointy end to get their tech into a workable state was going unappreciated by the investor class.
That’s starting to change.
Us, in June, via Greg Nolan:
Magnesium is being called the “Metal of the Future.” They ain’t whistling Dixie with this lofty designation. Magnesium (Mg) has some compelling properties:
- a very high strength-to-weight ratio
- an equally high stiffness-to-weight ratio
- the best machining properties of all metals
- a high vibration dampening capacity (great for when speed is involved)
- high dent resistance
Get this: Magnesium is 75% lighter than steel, and 33% lighter than aluminum.
Magnesium alloys are 48-78% lighter than steel and 22-35% lighter than aluminum.
Lighter frames and components mean greater energy efficiency in a vehicle.
Magnesium is a god-send for the electric vehicle market. But, slight catch – it’s tough to get at.
Last May, the US Department of the Interior named 35 minerals critical to national security. Magnesium made the list. China is the world’s top producer, accounting for roughly 66 percent of global output. With tariff and trade wars in full-on escalation mode, new, domestic sources of the metal need to be delineated and developed.
Enter Mag One…
Imagine you have an old asbestos mine, long shuttered because, well, poison, but in that mine you have great big stacks of waste mineral that was, at the time, worth less than the primary product being mined.
In this case, fat asbestos mines in Quebec pulled that product out of the ground and tossed the magnesium to the side because, hell, who needed it back in the 60’s, and even if you did, who could extract it in profitable ways?
Right now, Mag One can.
“So what!” I hear you say. Tailings stacks are only so big.
Not these ones. Those asbestos mines ran for decades and produced a lot of spill.
Check it out.
These are literal mountains of tailings in the background of that shot, with a large amount of magnesium therein. Right there on the surface. Just needs to be bulldozed and processed and you have a supply that could run for a long time, in a meaningful way.
[contextly_sidebar id=”CHqGHPHPOLOWAyKF3RsX1SGDl2SaQ2RB”]Mag One has access to the tailings in that picture above, for CAN$1 per tonne, to be paid as they’re processed.
They also have a deal with another asbestos mine in, naturally enough, Asbestos Quebec, which has 50 million tonnes of tailings to be picked through. The Thetford mine has 60 million.
Mag One has access to the whole lot.
And their process to access that magnesium leaves the site better than they found it, because their process is environmentally friendly, has a low carbon footprint, and close to zero waste.
Other metals present in the tailings (silicon, iron, nickel) can also be extracted as a side earner.
The tech involved in getting there? It’ll require a small plant to be built, but the government is interested in helping fund things.
“The Agreement outlines three phases of development and demonstration work with the final phase involving the design, construction and start-up of Mag One’s first 5,000 tonne per year primary Mg metal module with additional modules being brought online to coincide with market demand. During the term of the Agreement Mag One has an exclusive, worldwide license to the Tech Mag Technology as well as the exclusive right to acquire full ownership of the Tech Mag Technology and all associated intellectual property.“
When we started talking about them, MDD had a very small $4.3m market cap. That’s up to $6m now, which still leaves lots of room for growth for timely investments.
If you haven’t already, listen to the CEO telling the story. It’s worth your time, especially if you can make money on energy metals without leaving black marks on the planet.
https://equity.guru/2019/07/25/mag-one-mdd-c-subtle-art-giving-fck-environment/
Stock is up 23% today on moderate volume.
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: Mag One is an Equity.Guru marketing client, and the author has happily bought stock on the open market.
