← The Shawn Ryan Show
The Shawn Ryan Show
#231 Gerard Barron - CIA Project Azorian & Deep Sea Mining That Could Change the World
01:47:20
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A
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A
Jared Barron.
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C
Welcome to the show, man.
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B
Such a privilege to be here. Thank you.
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C
It's a privilege for me. Thank you. Thank you for coming. You first popped up on my radar from mutual friend Cole Fackler from gbrs. And so we started looking Indio. And I've been interviewing a couple of different guys that have been mining different.
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A
Areas of the universe, I guess, and.
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C
So haven't talked to anybody doing it under the sea. So I thought this would be. I'm just fascinated by innovators and what you guys are doing. So I really appreciate you coming.
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B
Well, appreciate the chance to talk on your platform to a new audience.
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C
Perfect. Well, everybody starts with an introduction. Here we go.
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A
Jared Barron, entrepreneur, hailing from a Queensland, Australia dairy farm. Built global companies across media, technology, battery manufacturing and resource development. Chairman and CEO of the metals company leading the charge in deep sea mining. A first principles thinker, committed to resource extraction with minimal impact on people and nature. A global traveler splitting time between London, California and Tonga.
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C
Where the fuck is Tonga?
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B
Well, I should correct that a tiny bit. It's more. You know, Tonga is a beautiful Pacific island country, but I should mention Tonga and Nauru, which is also an even smaller country. Little island in the Pacific. But look, it's a. It's a pretty. I'm a pretty frequent traveler, that's for sure. And I'm Australian, of course, as you said. But. But over the last 14 years, I've been working with Pacific island countries. And I mean, they are amazing people. I mean, Tongaru is beautiful. Nauru is really special. It's where the birds used to stop when they headed south. No kidding. And so it was discovered about, you know, 80 years ago that it was rich in phosphate. And so the Germans and the English and Australians and Kiwis came and took it all. And, you know, it was discovered back when good old James Cook was sailing the world after he discovered Australia and he called it Pleasant Island. And then everyone came and took all of their beautiful phosphate, which was used to feed the world. And so now you have 80% of the island that's uninhabitable. Then they handed the country back to the people of Nauru, Said, how would you like independence now that we've taken everything that you've got? Yeah, right.
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C
I mean, where's the favorite place? Where is your favorite place that you've been?
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B
Oh, that's easy. Australia.
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C
Australia.
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B
I'm a very proud Australian. Very proud Australian. Although Erica, my partner, said, why don't we get out of 23 and me done, you know, our DNA? And it's like, yeah, I'd be interested in that. Came back 100% Irish.
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C
No kidding. 100%.
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B
Yeah. Yeah.
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C
Right on, man.
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B
Yeah, right on. So my ancestors were well behaved. Kept it in the family anyway.
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C
Perfect.
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B
Many generations in Australia.
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C
Perfect. Well, we got a couple things to get through before we get into the interview. And so one thing. First thing is I got a Patreon account. And Patreon is a community we built. Been here with us since the beginning, and when I started this damn thing in my attic. And now we're what, this is our third studio, hopefully our final. But they've been with us through the whole journey, and they're the reason I get to be here with you today. So one of the things we do is we offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. So this is from Eric, Algeria.
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A
Jared, most people see you today as the frontman for Deep Sea Mining.
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C
But before the metals company, you were.
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A
Behind Nautilus Minerals, which collapsed under controversy. What did that failure teach you about how much of this battle is really technology and environment, and how much of.
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C
It is winning the story the world believes?
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B
Well, I didn't think it's about winning the story, but maybe. Great question so I can set the record straight, because in 2001, a friend of mine went to work for Nautilus. He was the second employee there, and he was telling me about it, and I said, man, that sounds amazing. He said, yeah, and we've got no money. Can you put some money in it? I mean, I was building my own company at the time, but I was like, yeah, yeah, of course, of course. Well, because I thought it was such an obvious idea and they were focused on a different type of metals. They were focused on sea floor, massive sulfides, which is where the chimneys pop up between the tectonic plates. Anyway, so I agreed to fund the first one and a half million dollars. And it, despite it almost sending me broke at the time because I was building another company as well at the same time, which needed money. It ended up being a great success and we floated the company in 2006 and I sold out in 2000 in seven, eight, pretty all the same time. My friend left the company, but I never worked for it. But I was very helpful in attracting other capital. And then the big guys came in. We raised 4 or $500 million. And then of course, after I sold out Papua New guinea, the country in 2012 maybe decided they wanted to invest as well, because they were focused on a project up in Papua New guinea and, and by law the government has the right to invest. So they said, we want to invest. So they did. And then what happened? I'm winding the clock forward now. Keeping in mind I sold out in 2007, in 2018, the owners, there were two main people funding the company, even though it was public. And they said, look, we're the only two people that appear to be happy to keep funding it. Why don't we put the assets up for sale? So it was really called an administration, a reorganization. No one came forward. So they bought it and privatized it. And so 2018, I sold out in 2007 and I made some good money out of it, to be honest. But it was a very different time. Firstly, it was operating in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea. It was a small resource by comparison because they only ever found millions, single digit, millions of tons of this stuff, very high grade, rich in copper and gold. Whereas we've got 2 billion tons of these rocks, like the one in my hands, defined resource of 1.6 billion. But we think about another 4 to 500 million tons of these rocks on our resource. So very different scale and also a different time. You know, the geopolitics weren't as lively back then as they are now. But I think, you know, that project will get into production. The people that privatized it are continuing to push forward and I think it will be a success. And you know, but these projects are tough, you know, getting a new industry started is tough, you know, and I, we started this company in 2011. So my biggest gift from Nautilus was made some good money out of it, but it taught me about polymetallic nodules. And so in 2011, we started this one, and here we are, 2025, and, you know, we're what I believe to be the final stretch before the industry becomes big and commercial. So. That's a very long answer to Eric's.
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C
Question, but, yeah, it's a good answer.
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A
One more thing.
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C
Everybody gets a gift.
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B
Oh, thank you. I've seen people chewing away at these. How many packets did. Did our friend Palmer Lucky eat of these? Because he seemed to be chewing a lot that day.
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C
He loves them.
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B
Yeah, he loves them.
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C
Yeah. I can't remember how many bags, but it was a handful.
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A
So, yeah, he was all hopped up.
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C
On gummy bears, but.
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B
Well, thank you. Well, I bought you a gift today as well.
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C
Oh, I love gifts.
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B
Yeah. Well, this is a very precious poly metallic nodule, and we had them made about 5 million years old. This one, we had them made by an artist in Detroit. And this one is particularly oxidized, turned a bit gold, and it's the same as the one that sits on the Resolute desk. We prepared one for President Trump when he signed the executive order on April 24 and got the American flag and the coordinates of where we found it.
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C
Oh, man, that is cool.
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B
So.
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C
That's beautiful. Look at that.
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B
It's going to look amazing on one of these shelves.
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C
Yep. It's going to go right over there.
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B
Yeah. Good.
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C
Good, man. Thank you. This is really cool. Thank you.
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B
Yeah, I'm pretty sure no one else will give you one of those.
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C
I'm pretty sure they won't either.
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B
That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you. I've got to give a shout out to my buddy Andre, who's my, you know, one of my partners on this project. He would love this room. He would love this room. Everything about it.
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C
Well, yeah, maybe I'll show them one day.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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C
I gotta give a shout out to Eric Bethel, too.
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B
Oh, yeah, totally.
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A
He told me when I first met.
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C
Him, we had dinner at a place here, and he was telling me about some of the investments that his VC had made, and the first one that he had brought up is your company. Actually, he told me about that before we ever even met and told me about what you guys are doing and. Sounds awesome. I can't wait to dive into it. But, you know, and like I said, it's interesting. I've had, you know, had people come on, talk about mining the moon, talk about mining asteroids, enriching uranium, and now you're here, we're doing it under the sea, so it's going to be fascinating and, but what, what got you interested in, in, in metals, in nodules?
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B
Well, you know, I'm a. Grew up on a dairy farm, went to university, had four jobs in my first year, realized there was no time for a fifth start the company and that company worked out pretty well. And I'd been building companies my entire life so I'm kind of naturally drawn to things that are a little bit unique. And you know, I've been lucky to build some great companies and grow them globally. And then as I mentioned, I invested in 2001 in another project, Nautilus. And then we started this company in 2011. And originally I was just going to be a financial backer. I only decided to step into the ring, you know, and formally I took over in 2017 and became chairman and CEO. Before that we'd hired someone out of one of the big mining companies and it wasn't working out so well. And I thought what do I know about running a mining company, a resource company, you know, you'd go to BHP or Freeport to go and find one of them. But actually when I started to dive into, you know, the data behind this resource and how big it was and how impactful it could be and to global supply and of course a number of things then came along to help as well. Like geopolitics has now made this a really hot topic. Critical minerals are on everyone's mind. And if we take a step back and apply some of that first principle thinking 70% of our planet is ocean, yet we don't get metals out of the ocean. We get a few diamonds, but they're slowly being replaced by lab grown diamonds. But we don't get our nickel or copper or cobalt or manganese out of the oceans yet. In this one little deposit where we are focused, 70% of the known reserves of nickel and cobalt and manganese sit in the form of these polymetallic nodules. And they literally just sit on the sea floor like the one in my hand. And so it's only a matter of time that we got around to it. And there was a false start back in the 70s when. And that's another story, right, because the CIA were very involved in getting this whole industry started.
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C
Really? Why so. Well, I've got some ideas. I got a feeling it doesn't have anything to do with mining.
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B
It has nothing to do with mining, but it was a great cover story. Yeah. And the Russian submarine which had nuclear warheads on it, the K129 sank in the Pacific. It had set sail from a Russian port. And the Americans were. This is dating back to 1968. The Americans had already implanted listening devices on the seafloor around the Pacific so they could detect nuclear explosion and other activities. And so when they were tracking this submarine and all of a sudden they heard an explosion. And the Russians didn't have this same technology installed in the oceans. And so the Americans quickly clocked onto it and the CIA got involved. But they had to have a reason to be out there because the Russians were looking for their lost submarine and they'd had no idea where it was. They could just say, well, it left this port this time. And we last heard at this date in this location. So the CIA went ahead and started to plan how they could recover this. First they needed to establish were the warheads in place, were they worth recovering? And when they decided yes, they were, they said, well, actually we can't just go and pick them up because the Russians, it'll become an international incident. We might have World War three on our hands. And so they said, we need to. There's a lot of polymetallic nodules around them. And so we need to use the recovery of these polymetallic nodules as the COVID story to go and recover these, the sunken Russian submarine. So they thought, well, they're not going to believe that we, the government, are going to be involved. So who can we get to front it? Howard Hughes, because everyone thought, he's a bit crazy, he'll be up for this. And so they reached out to Howard Hughes and he said, yeah, of course, no problem. And so the CIA funded it all and there were other companies involved. And the Glomar Explorer was, you know, became the first deep sea exploration vessel and mining vessel. And it, you know, that attracted other people into the industry because, of course, no one else knew about this. And so then you had other consortia forms. Shell and BP and Mitsubishi from Japan and many other corporations became involved and this whole industry was moving forward. But then the United nations decided they wanted to get involved as well, because they were like, well, who owns the ocean? We should all agree this set of rules, we should share these resources in a more equitable MANNER. And so 169 countries now signed onto this treaty called UNCLOS. But what it meant was America had this leading position when it comes to polymetallic nodules and ocean metals. But then they decided to step back and see where this international consortia went. And so the mining companies involved then got busy looking for more minerals on land. But when you see this deposit, like they estimate there are more than 20 billion tons of these.
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C
Wow.
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B
More than 20 billion tons. As I said, we have an estimated 2 billion tons on our license area. So it's generally regarded we've got the best ground out there. So you had all of these countries form this treaty, and of course, well, not form it, agree a treaty, but Ronald Reagan was the president then, and he's like, no way in the world we're not going to join another international treaty. So America stood aside and said, well, because no one has sovereignty over the oceans, right? Every nation can traverse the oceans. Every nation has the rights to the seabed minerals on the floor, to lay cables. But all of these other countries said, well, when it comes to the seafloor minerals, how about we agree a set of rules? And so they signed the treaty, but America did not. It's been a pretty exciting year for us, last 12 months, at least, because we've pivoted our business away from this international organization to now focus entirely on permitting this resource through the US Administration. And that really became possible with the election of President Trump.
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C
That's good to hear. That's good to hear. What? I mean, what percentage of that rock has precious metals in it?
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B
Well, it's amazing, right? This forms through precipitation, so it grows a little bit like a pearl grows. And so we turn 100% of this into saleable material, and it's got about 33% pure metal. But the rest of the material is. There's some silica in there, there's a lot of crystallized water in there. So about 24% of it is moisture, but the rest of it, we all turn into saleable product. And that in itself is almost, well, very unique to this resource, because on land, you go looking for a copper deposit, and last year, the average grade of copper mined was about 0.6 of 1%. So it means that you go digging up a ton of material, a thousand kilograms of material, and you have to treat it and process it and cart it and take it places, looking for 6kg of copper. So it's. So it's very inefficient and it's very expensive, and it creates a lot of impacts. Whereas we lift these up, take them to shore, process them, and we turn it all into salable material. So it's kind of unique.
- [21:03]
C
You do the processing as well.
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B
That's our plan.
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C
Wow.
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B
That's our plan.
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C
Mine and process.
- [21:09]
B
Yeah. And. And the reason why we're so excited about the US is because President Trump and his administration made re industrialization a priority. Because for decades America has been outsourcing mining and processing and refining to other parts of the world, particularly China. And then of course, you wake up one day and you realize that your adversaries have control out of all of the critical minerals that you need. And it was a foolish playbook in hindsight, but it was hard and heavy industry. You know, the world wanted to be involved in cool new industries, but when it comes down to it, if it ain't growing, it's mined. And so you can't just dream up a land based mine. They don't just appear out of nowhere. And all of the obvious ones were found and developed. That's why if you look at about half of our revenue comes from nickel. And 100% of the growth in nickel supply over the last seven years has come from what we call rainforest nickel. And to get to it, you've got to remove the rainforest to dig up this material called nickel laterite. And of course you, and we're not talking about, you know, anything other than pristine, beautiful rainforests which are filled with indigenous people in some cases, certainly filled with enormous amount of biodiversity and biomass, filled with cute cuddly animals and you know, led by China. It's just, you know, bulldozing it out of the way. And that's the beginning of the impacts, you know, because you, you to process that material comes with a host of impacts. The waste material gets spilt into rivers and oceans and kills off the local industry, the fishing industries. And you know, I mean, for your listeners, just punch into your favorite search engine, rainforest nickel. And you know, I've, I've, I've had the firsthand experience of witnessing, you know, in one particular region, it was in INDONESIA actually, where 10 years ago there were no people focused on nickel mining. We visited there, my team and I. Maybe three years ago, this town of 70,000 people had been built all focused on nickel mining. Like 70,000 people.
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C
70,000.
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B
That's a lot of people. And all of a sudden, and it was all 100% done by China. I mean, when China sets its mind on things, they become very, very impactful and successful. And in this case that's what they've done. And I know we're going to talk about it today, but this industry almost went that way as well, man. And it was only the election of President Trump that provided a pathway to us rescuing it and America reasserting its dominant role when it comes to ocean metals.
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A
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A
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- [29:23]
C
So is this a US Based company?
- [29:26]
B
We started the company in Canada, but we set up a US subsidiary in 2013, and it's our US subsidiary that is applying for the permit.
- [29:35]
C
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. And you said 50% of our revenue comes from nickel.
- [29:40]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [29:41]
C
Is that U.S. revenue?
- [29:43]
B
Well, at the moment, we haven't generated our first revenue. 2027 is when we're aiming for first production. Yeah, but if you look at the metals in here, we've got nickel and copper and cobalt and manganese. And America imports about 50% of its copper, but it pretty well imports almost 100% of its nickel, cobalt and manganese.
- [30:07]
C
Wow. What do we use those metals for?
- [30:10]
B
Well, let's think about. Well, copper's used everywhere, right?
- [30:14]
C
For wires.
- [30:15]
B
Wires and many other things. But nickel is mainly used to make. It's a hardening substance to make stainless Steel. So you add it to steel to make stainless steel. It's also used in super alloys. You need it for making military equipment. And then cobalt is of course used in your iPhone battery, but it's also a very efficient thing. They're all used in batteries for cars as well. So if you have a Tesla ev, it's full of nickel and used to be full of cobalt, they kind of managed to get cobalt out of it, but mainly because they weren't able to get an affordable supply that hadn't touched the hands of child miners in the Congo, which is where the cobalt market is characterized. And then manganese is used to make steel. You can't make a ton of steel without manganese. And now more manganese is going into batteries as well. So these are all what we call base metals. They're the foundation building blocks for industry. And you know, if you want to, if you want to look at, you know, over the last, since 2002, about 20,000 companies have evaporated who were involved in heavy industry. 20,000.
- [31:37]
C
20,000.
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B
20,001.
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C
Wow.
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B
20,000. Millions of jobs have disappeared. And it's all because of outsourcing to developing countries. You know, China saying we can do it. And of course, you know what, I know that the current administration are very focused on looking at dumping and have these materials being coming back into the country at cheaper prices. And, you know, 232 reviews are underway. I understand. Because it's another way where you can go and buy, where you can go and buy market share and end up controlling an entire industry because the incentive price for local production is too low to attract investment into those industries. Because, you know, there are, there are some nickel deposits or in America, they're small, but they need nickel prices to be 50% higher than where they are to even break even.
- [32:52]
C
Interesting.
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B
We don't have that problem because we're so high grade. I mentioned before, last year the average grade of copper was 0.6 of 1%. So this is filled with nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese. But if you were to put all of those other metals into copper equivalent, just for value perspective, we're like more than 7% copper equivalent. So an order of magnitude richer material. And that obviously has a big impact on the economics. And so, you know, we, we can withstand dumping from, you know, certain markets like China.
- [33:30]
C
So we're not mining any nickel here in, here in the U.S. no, there.
- [33:36]
B
Are some that are, they've shut down.
- [33:37]
C
Because the, the what the, they're not making. The company's not making Enough money.
- [33:44]
B
No, that's right. If you. Yeah. Over the last five years, you've seen, you know, some of the biggest nickel miners, you know, BHP Vale, you know, slow down or shut their operations, put them on care and maintenance, hoping for a recovery in the price, but there doesn't seem to be any recovery in the price available in the next few years. And, you know, and at the moment, you know, if you've got 70% market share, which is probably what China has when it comes to nickel.
- [34:17]
C
70%.
- [34:18]
B
Zero. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? Go for 100, keep the price down there. Yeah, go for 100 and then you can put the price to whatever you want.
- [34:28]
C
That's true. That's true, man. China's just got us in so many different angles. The whole world, it seems like that's.
- [34:36]
B
Because they're really smart, you know, and I. You mentioned Eric before Bethel. He's one of the guys that gets it, you know, because he's lived there, he's lived the experience. I've lived the experience as well. I've admired their approach. I was, you know, one of the companies I. I grew was making batteries in China back when they started to attract. Invite foreign investment, you know, in the early 90s. They were starter batteries. Not so much. They weren't EV batteries. You know, I watched Padong come out of the. Out of the ground. You know, there were hundreds of cranes building at the same time. It was like. I remember I used to take people with me on trips to say, you've got to come and see this. Like, you will not believe it. You know, you'd pull up at a train crossing and there'd be 2,000 bikes there. Now you pull up and there's no bikes there. You know, it's, it's a. It's, it's, it's just. It's impressive. It's impressive. But I think the west has fallen into the trap of letting them do that, thinking it'll all work out in the end.
- [35:54]
C
Mm.
- [35:55]
B
But that's a trap.
- [35:57]
C
I don't think you're right. I know you're right with that. I know you're right. I mean, they. They own practically our whole damn supply chain. I mean, is Australia. Are they. Are they concerned about all the stuff that China's involved in and doing and innovating?
- [36:13]
B
Yeah. And I think the, you know, the, the Scott Morrison, you know, recent president, former prime minister, we call them, had a bit of a blow up with the Chinese because he ordered an inquiry into where Covid came from. They didn't like that. So they banned our coal and fresh livestock. Didn't impact it, they just bought it somewhere else and so we supplied them. I think the current prime minister is laying out a red carpet.
- [36:51]
C
He is?
- [36:52]
B
Yeah.
- [36:53]
C
How so?
- [36:55]
B
Sees them as a great trade partner. Sees them as a great trade partner. Not spending enough money on defense. Just thinking everything's going to work out beautifully. It's a trap to fall into. You know.
- [37:09]
C
What is the sentiment in Australia about that?
- [37:16]
B
Australia's lost its way a little bit in my personal opinion. I think that people want to follow, voters want to follow someone, a leader. And there is not a good viable alternative in Australia at the moment. So it's a left leaning government. The net result of that is, you know, you've got eight out of every ten new jobs created in the last four years are in the government.
- [37:59]
C
Are you serious? Eight out of ten. Holy.
- [38:06]
B
Yeah.
- [38:07]
C
Wow.
- [38:09]
B
And you can see a theme repeating, you know, and I think that one of the challenges is, you know, these economies go on until they bust. Right. You know, I see it in the UK now as well. I, I mean eventually, whether it's immigration or whether it's government spending, eventually the books don't balance, you know, and eventually, you know, we've, the, the press coming out of the UK at the moment is horrible. You know, free speech, you can't say things. You end up being locked up for saying stuff. Compared to some of the other crimes that some of the not so welcome visitors are committing. But the world went a little bit crazy and I think it's kind of coming back a little bit. At least people feel safer partly because of platforms like your own being canceled by the media now. Doesn't matter. It's like whatever. There are better avenues to express views safely, you know.
- [39:22]
C
Yeah. I think mainstream media is going to the wayside. Like we were talking earlier. I mean the average, the average viewer of mainstream media right now is about 69 years old.
- [39:34]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [39:34]
C
It will die with the baby boomer generation unless they make some miraculous change, which I don't see that happening at all. Just as divisive as they've ever been.
- [39:45]
B
Yeah.
- [39:46]
C
Maybe more now, but yeah, yeah, look.
- [39:49]
B
I think not before time. I mean, and I've lived that firsthand. I've lived it with China where I've seen what people like Eric talk about. I've had first hand experience of them intimidating me and what we're doing. And now aligning with the usa, they don't like it because they thought they had it all going to plan and we broke the plan.
- [40:17]
C
Good for you.
- [40:18]
B
Yeah, that's honorable. Yeah.
- [40:21]
C
So where, where all does the Meadows Company operate? Is it, is it strictly off the coast of North America?
- [40:27]
B
There's only one deposit that we're focused on at the moment. It's this area known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone. And it was discovered way back in the 1870s by the British who sailed around the world on HMS Challenger with a basket off the back. Thankfully, the steam piston had been invented so they could haul up this basket. It was at sea for four years and they came across this big field of nodules about 1,000 miles southwest of San Diego. I mentioned before, they precipitate, they grow a little bit like pearls grow in the ocean. And so there are nodules found in other oceans, but they're just not as interesting as these because these contain a very high grade of nickel and copper. And the reason for that is if you look to our east, you've got the Rockies and the Andes, and over millennia they eroded into the Pacific Ocean. And so you had these currents that came from the north and south, met headed west. And that's where you have this belt of nodules. It's amazing. It's about 1,000 miles high, about 4,000 miles wide, with like a carpet of nodules. I mean it's the most beautiful mother nature gift. Far away from human settlement. No alternative use for this part of the ocean floor. Just sat there looking proud, saying, come and get me.
- [42:06]
C
Man. So how does it work? I mean. Well, actually, how much of the ocean floor have you explored for other deposits of nodules?
- [42:18]
B
We haven't to be honest. But you know, there are other people exploring, including NOAA, the U.S. agency, they, they go out and, and BOEM who explore their own territorial water waters and of course other explorers that the Chinese, I think, have explored a lot of the ocean floor, a lot more than they probably admit. But this is so big, like it's multi generational deposit. As I said, 70% of the known reserves of nickel, cobalt and manganese are in this one deposit. And so that's where we've had our focus since 2011. Purely that.
- [42:57]
C
So you don't even, you don't even have a need to explore anymore?
- [43:01]
B
No.
- [43:01]
C
Do you, do you think that there are other metals under there that we don't know about yet?
- [43:08]
B
Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably. I mean, you know, before I mentioned where these tectonic plates meet, you know, if you get a map out of the world, you can see how the globe, how planet Earth all Sticks together. So you get a lot of pressure coming out from the core of the earth. And you know, that's where a lot of these deposits have formed and the systems die. So they're very hard. Some of the systems are still active, they're still emitting gases, so they're easier to find. They're like chimneys underwater. They're fascinating. But some of them have been dead for, you know, I don't know, million years or 100,000 years. And so they're covered. And so you've got to go really exploring. And so, yeah, there are other deposits out there for sure. And Tonga is an interesting example there because they have a lot of volcanogenic, volcanogenic activity around where they are. You saw that massive underwater volcano exploded some years ago. So look, some of these Pacific island countries in particular have a lot of metals in their potential metals in their economic zones. So there will be opportunities there as well. And I think what the world is waiting to see is us to get started and then I think there'll be a massive rush. Now, we know we have the best ground in the best area, but once people see firsthand the low impact of what we're doing, the fact that the area recovers fast, I mean, in the last, since 2011, we've spent, I don't know, now, approaching three quarters of a billion dollars, a lot of it on environmental research. Even though I always use this first principle analogy to say we should be carrying out extractive industries in parts of the planet with the least life, not the most life at the moment we're pushing into our rainforests, which is the area with the most biodiversity, the most cute and cuddly animals. When down here. On the other end of that table is the abyssal zone and the abyssal plains and the abyssal hills cover 50% of the planet. Okay, 50% of the planet, almost approaching 70% of the oceans are considered abyssal, characterized by deep, low amount of biomass there because all the food gets eaten on the way down the water column. If you look on our website at Metals co, you'll see lots of video of us doing trials down there. And there are no plants down there, of course, because we're talking more than 4,000 meters deep. And the amount of life living down there is grams per square meter, most of it bacteria, single cell organisms living in the sediment. So if you ever had to have a big resource somewhere, this would be the perfect place. You can't go and grow crops there or live there or, you know, it's the perfect thing. Yet we also have people who wish we wouldn't do it. You know, there's pushback.
- [46:35]
C
I mean, first of all, I love what you're doing. I mean, you're doing it cheaper and you're, you are. I mean, it's a, it's, it's net positive for the earth, right, because the mining is hopefully going into the ocean where there's not much life. But you know, when it comes to the rainforest and you know, some of the stuff that we see, I mean, I've seen documentary, documentary after documentary about what we're doing there and it goes through my head when I see those things. Are we destroying more resources than we're even gaining? And you know, I mean, all the undiscovered life organisms, microorganisms, I mean, timber, trees, clean the air. I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it did, it didn't bother me early on in life because I didn't realize, you know, but now when I see it, I'm like, man, if you look at all the landfills and shit, I just watched one about Amazon. Yeah, and all the destruction that that company is doing to the earth and they, you know, they try to put this facade on that, that, that, you know, we're saving and it's like, no, you're not bad. You've created more waste, you know, through Amazon than, than arguably anything that that's ever existed. And, and so I love, I love that about your company. Was that, was that, is that a early on ethos or is that a byproduct?
- [47:59]
B
Yeah, totally.
- [47:59]
C
I mean, out of it.
- [48:00]
B
Yeah. I mean, I've always deemed myself an environmentalist and, you know, and I often get criticized for the fact that by the NGO community or, you know, activists who don't want to see any progress saying you've just switched from talking about environment to now talking about geopolitics and critical supply chains. It's like, well, if you go back to my presentation decks a decade ago, you'll find security of supply was always highlighted as one of the critical issues. But at the end of the day, geopolitics are pretty important because we've got trading partners who've said they'll turn off supply if they choose to. And that tells you you've got to make some changes in that supply chain. But if we just maybe take a journey down that path, because circularity is something we should aspire to. And at the metals company, we do aspire to it. And if you go, we just had a big strategy day on August 4th, actually where we talked about step one is where can we find the lowest impact supply of these critical minerals? And when I say lowest impact, I mean less destruction of biomass ecosystem, less impact on biodiversity, less CO2 emissions, less impact on freshwater ecosystems. And the list goes on. And we've spent so much money, like hundreds of millions of dollars on, on that whole basket of studies. And they all point to one thing, and that is that we can massively reduce the impact when we create metals from these rocks compared to land based alternatives. No matter where they come from, ocean metals from these rocks is the way to go. But eventually the world has to get more focused on recycling and they will. When I say we need to aspire to circularity in the future, I hope we won't be picking up these rocks in 100 years time. We should be making sure that we're using recycling every single atom we put out there. In fact, we talk a lot about is metals as a service. I built a software as a service company in a previous company. Metals as a service is a similar idea. It's like, hey, we'll give you these metals, you can use them, but we want them back because they have to do something with them right at the end of life you've got a responsibility, so you can't just put them in the waste pile, you've got to hand them back somewhere. So instead of us just treating fresh nodules, we'll treat recycled material, black mass as well. And eventually recycled material will have a growing share. But at the moment there are not enough metals in the system to meet the needs. So we need to find a fresh input of billions of tons until we build that reserve, because there are just not enough metals coming back in to be recycled. It's easy to see how an electric vehicle battery gets recycled, but a lot of the other metals in the system don't get recycled or they have a much longer life. So I can see in decades to come that we will not be in the business of picking up rocks. We'll be in the business of purely recycling the metals that we've previously sold. And that's a good day because that's going to be a great thing for planet Earth.
- [51:55]
C
An amazing thing that's very forward thinking on your part. Do you have any idea how much metal would need to be in circulation for that to actually take place?
- [52:06]
B
We've done the calculations and it's a big number. It's a big number. I think if we use a trusted source, say the International Energy Agency or the World bank, they pretty well align. They say we need to increase extractive industries by between 4 and 500% per annum by 2044 to 5 times more mining by 2040 to meet the needs.
- [52:42]
C
Wow, that's a lot.
- [52:44]
B
It's a lot. I think that that's where people don't give enough attention to where the materials are coming from for the electric car battery that you're using or your iPhone battery or just generally stuff, you know, if it ain't grown, it's mind, it's that simple. And of course we've been talking in the recent years all about AI and you know, bits, you know, it's the bit economy but actually it's time for atoms, you know, because re industrialization is going to depend on the atoms that are contained in here, the real world infrastructure. And so you know, and I think that's where you know, I get criticism from some people in the environmental group who are very anti anything. They're anti growth. They're anti the fact that, you know, despite the fact that we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on scientific research, they criticize the fact. Yeah, but you spent it so you can influence the outcome. It's like doesn't work that way. We went and hired the best universities and organizations to carry out this research. The Natural history Museum, Texas AM, Florida University. There's 20 of the world's leading institutions who have subject matter expertise when it comes to ocean research. We said this is our goal, this is the work program, we'll pay for it. You get to do it, you get to publish your results. But it all filters back into this one integrated environmental impact study. And you know, we've had the green pieces of the world come and board our boat in the middle of the Pacific to try and stop us doing this research because they don't want to see the results. You know, the results are very inconvenient to their argument.
- [54:45]
C
You know, we've seen time and time again that these groups that they don't want to see growth. And I mean I think the first one that comes to mind is US energy sector. I mean we've really kneecapped ourselves especially when it comes to comparison to China. You know, they're building a new coal plant every other damn day and they're way ahead on nuclear it seems to be. And, and you know, we, we, we don't mind our own gas, you know, not nearly enough and can't go nuclear. The cleanest form of energy in the world according to the people that the folks that I've interviewed on the subject.
- [55:26]
B
I agree.
- [55:26]
C
And we use. We want to. You know, there was this big push which seems to have died down a little bit now with this administration, but this big green push with renewables, you know, and the groups behind that claim energy independence for America, but it's not energy independence because all of the. We don't mine our own lithium, we don't produce our own solar, we don't produce our own wind turbines. That's all imported from China. And so I don't understand how anybody can think that that is energy independence when you are beholden to another country for the materials and the tech and actual production of all of the panels and stuff that come from. With China, that's not independence. And you talk about independence from China when it comes to the metals. And so I do have a question. I mean, in regards to the U.S. i mean, we've had the ability to gain independence in a variety of ways from our oil and gas reserves, which we have not tapped into very much. And we are relying on the Middle east for that. We just talked about renewables, we talked about nuclear. I mean, does the US have the stomach to become independent in the metals industry or any other industry for that matter? Do we have the appetite for that? Do we have the stomach? Do you think we'll actually do it? Because we've had the opportunity several times. And it's really, when you think about it in that aspect and how far we are behind on energy, our supply chain, all these things, and beholden to China. I mean, do you see. Do you see the change?
- [57:21]
A
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- [58:40]
C
Is it going to happen?
- [58:41]
B
But I think no matter what your political view, people should be grateful for the Trump administration getting into government. Because I swear to you, Ocean Metals was about to go China's way. And this is a bipartisan issue. Critical mineral supply chain is a bipartisan issue, but not many people have the stomach or the kahunas to be able to see it through. And you know, we saw President Trump issue an executive order on April 24th to say we have a right to these minerals. I want, I'm instructing my government agencies to fast track the permitting because we need the critical minerals. China dominates the supply chain now. They're going to dominate this as well if we don't get busy. I think that a lot of the moves that this administration are making are starting to work.
- [59:52]
C
Every innovator that I've had in here that is doing some type of good for the country is saying the same thing. They're all beating to the same drum saying that this administration is, is getting rid of a lot of the red tape for innovators to be able to do what they do and make the world a better place.
- [60:10]
B
And the thing I see, Sean, is the political appointees. They're really top shelf people. They are people that have come out of, they're either amazingly successful or they're people that have come and put their careers on hold so they can come and help out. There's one guy, the critical minerals are. He just said, the administration needs me. I'm going to stop what I'm doing for this major mining company and come and help the administration sort out critical minerals. And he's at the top of his game. And that's what I noticed with the political appointees that we're dealing with. The same with Noah. You know, the people we're dealing with have conviction and they are super talented. And I think that that is going to create that momentum. And we're confident that we'll be in production during the 47th administration. And we're also confident that we will make it a bipartisan issue because re industrialization is so critical. I don't think anyone would argue that it's not going to be good for the long term benefit of America to bring back some of those jobs to America. You would think the other side of politics wanted even more. But I think this Administration will get that ball rolling and I think it won't matter, please God, who's in power, because once you get the ball rolling, people will get a taste of it. They'll get a taste of jobs being created. Because it's true, right? AI is going to cost jobs. It's hard to. I see the optimist talking about how it's going to work out fine. You know, I'm not sure about that.
- [62:10]
C
I think a lot of people are.
- [62:11]
B
Worried about AI taking their jobs.
- [62:14]
A
And it started.
- [62:15]
C
It's already started, and in just about every sector other than manual labor, but. So let's talk about how this actually works. What does it take to mine minerals at the bottom of the ocean floor 4,000 meters below?
- [62:34]
B
Well, it's a big advantage that they just sit on the ocean floor like this so we don't have to drill or dig or tunnel to find them. It's a two dimensional resource, which is quite amazing. You go down there looking, exploration is pretty easy. So we send a robot down. So we build this beautiful robot. In fact, our partner Allses have built it for us. Allsys are one of our biggest investors, and for the last 40 years, they've been laying pipes in the deep ocean to connect oil and gas, to transport it around the world. Owned by an amazing engineer, Edward Herrimer. And so we build the robot. We have a production vessel floating up top. In fact, our first production vessel, called the Hidden Gem, was a former oil and gas drillship which we bought for. Well, All Seas bought it, but with some help from us, very cheaply. It was a $700 million boat, new in 2011, and bought it for less than $50 million. And we then connect it with a big riser. It's called, think of it as a big straw, which is the vertical transport system. And so basically the robot crawls along and fires a jet of water at these nodules. So kind of a curved head fires a jet of water. It creates an inverse pressure and lifts the nodule, goes into the hopper. We separate the sediment, which we spit out the back, and we then move the nodule into the vertical transport system and pump it up to the boat. 4,200 meters.
- [64:24]
C
How big are these robots?
- [64:27]
B
Well, the first one we built was 6 meters wide. Weighed about 90 tons. The biggest challenge was keeping it on the floor. 90 tons, because when you put it in water, it gets a lot of buoyancy, then you add more buoyancy. 90 tons. Buoyant. Yeah.
- [64:46]
C
Interesting.
- [64:47]
B
Yeah, yeah. In fact, funny story. Another contractor Was out there doing some trials. They too had a collector, but they weren't doing. You know, in 2022, we ran a full collector, full end to end production system. But they were just testing their robot. They put it. They put it over the ship and dropped it, literally. And they thought, oh, my goodness, 4,200 meters. And there was big panic, including from us, because it wouldn't have been helpful to me either. And I mean, shit happens, right? I mean, it shouldn't, you know. But they were able to retrieve it and it was fine because it, you know, just floats down and landed. It's like, okay, I'm here now. And they checked it over and put it back down and it went working. And so anyway, back to my story. So we put a robot down there. Our production one will be wider, more like 15 meters wide, maybe even wider. And it crawls along like snow track tires. And, you know, back in the 1970s when they ran these collector trials, so it's all pretty cool. But then 1979, they actually launched a machine to pick up these very same rocks. Back when America was driving the innovation that was really pioneering engineering. But back then, they used a Archimedes screw drive system to propel it forward. And they made a big imprint in the ocean floor about 80 centimeters, whereas owls makes about a 2 centimeter imprint. Just literally glides on the ocean floor. So we fire a jet of water, separate it out, pump it up, and eventually I anticipate we'll have a lot of production vessels out there. We then offload them. Two analogies I use. One is they're like golf balls on a driving range. We've got to pick them up with the greatest efficiency and the lowest impact. And then it's a little bit like harvesting a paddock of wheat. You just keep harvesting and then the, the bin pulls up alongside. In our case, it'll be a bulk carrier. We offload the nodules, it goes off to port, another one comes, it goes off to port. But you're always in production.
- [67:16]
C
Interesting. And you know what's interesting? What's. What's interesting is this thing weighs like. Looks like it would be heavy. It weighs almost nothing.
- [67:25]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [67:25]
C
And so, I mean, how much of this is Metals?
- [67:31]
B
About 33% of it is metal. It's got a specific gravity of about 1.9. So, no, it's very light. It's because of how they form. Right. Because of them precipitating. It starts around a kernel of something, could be a grain of sand or a broken shell. And How.
- [67:55]
C
And so these are just on the ocean floor, like, like sand. They're just right there on the top. You don't have to do anything, you know, digging wise to get to them. They just go in the hopper. They get sucked up to the.
- [68:10]
B
Yeah.
- [68:11]
C
To the mothership and bring it over.
- [68:13]
B
Yep.
- [68:14]
C
For processing.
- [68:15]
B
That's right.
- [68:16]
C
How many of those can you give me a, a, a snapshot of how much of those you're gaining? An hour a day? I mean, how many of those are you picking up?
- [68:29]
B
Well, our production vessel will do about 3 million tons a year.
- [68:35]
C
3 million tons a year?
- [68:37]
B
Yeah.
- [68:38]
C
Wow.
- [68:39]
B
And we'll be in production about 270 days a year. Yeah. So.
- [68:47]
C
So with this international treaty.
- [68:49]
B
Yeah.
- [68:49]
C
And everybody has access to the ocean. I mean, what would. And you found, you found the mother load of these things or back in. I think you said 1870.
- [69:00]
B
Yeah, the British found them in 1870.
- [69:02]
C
British found them in 1870. I mean, will we start to see, you know, as this gains traction, when it sounds like it will. I think you said 2027 will be the first production vehicle.
- [69:13]
B
Yeah.
- [69:15]
C
How are the competitors, if there are any. I mean, will they, will everybody be vacuuming these things up off the ocean floor in the exact same spot? Will become crowded. I mean, how do you, is there any possibility that you will secure, you know, any specific rights to, to an area?
- [69:33]
B
Yeah, it's highly regulated now. Very highly regulated. Since 2011, we've been working through the International Seabed Authority. If you recall, when I said the United nations stepped in and took over the process, they created this framework called unclos, the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea. It basically said Every country owns 12 miles from your coastline has an economic right to everything within 200, but beyond that it will be considered the area. This UNCLOSS called for the establishment of the International Seabed Authority to be established, which it was in 1994. Now remember, the United States never agreed to it. In fact, they'd been a consistent objector to it. So they're not part of it. But for 169 other countries, including China and Russia, they signed this treaty that said when it comes to minerals, these are the rules we'll play by. And America went, nah, we're not going to do that. They were like, we don't even like multilateral organizations. One vote, one country doesn't seem to work for the biggest economy in the world. And oh my goodness, how insightful they were. How insightful they were because this international organization has been entirely overrun by NGOs. And it's played right into China's hand. So China have five licenses through this body, the International Seabed Authority. But what started to happen was, and this is more a representation of politics around the world, how the world went a bit crazy. You saw governments in Europe be very heavily influenced by smaller governments who had to form coalitions to govern. So you don't have two parties like in some countries, like UK is still that, Australia is still that, US is pretty well still that. But in other countries like Germany and France, you had, or Belgium or the Netherlands, you have like a dozen different parties to form a coalition to get the votes to be able to govern. So you had Green voters who might only hold two or three seats. So a very tiny, tiny, tiny majority. But they might have the balance of power. Without their two votes, you might not have majority. And so what the Green Party started to do is to say, we really care about this ocean metal. And there's no better example than France. So France have a pretty good nuclear industry, right? And if you go back four years ago now, Macron, the President came out with a very public statement which I was very excited about, said, here's our 2030 plan. France needs to re industrialize, we need to bring back jobs. For that we need metals. We have these ocean deposits. We can get these ocean metals far more effectively than we can possibly find metals on land. It was a pretty good speech. 18 months later at COP, I think it was COP 23 total switch. We should ban deep sea mining was Macron's new pitch. And the reason why he changed his position was because once again he was losing influence, losing power. So he had to do a deal with the Greens and they wanted him to pull back his nuclear ambition. He said, I can't touch that, we need it. And it was like, how about I give you ocean metals? It's literally like that. And you know, and I've seen firsthand how they've worked with corporations. You know, WWF did the same to Maersk. Maersk were one of our shareholders, they were one of our early supporters. Great company, one of the great shipping companies of the world. And that WWF went in there and said, we don't like you being part of the metals company, we'd like you to sell your ownership or we're going to come after you for your green shipping ambitions. And it's like I had a friend sat in the room with them like, they are bullies, these NGOs, they are absolute bullies. And so that's how they overtook some of these countries. So these countries like Germany's another great example. Right. Germany used to be an industrial behemoth. Now they're de industrialization because of energy policy and other things. And there is an industry body there that represents every industry association who has pleaded with the government to support ocean metals like they used to because America can't get reliable supply. Sorry, Germany can't get reliable supply. Yet their government were appeasing the green side of things saying oh, we should slow down and just wait. Now this all played into China's hands because we are the most ambitious player in the industry. We were driving the industry forward. China, despite the fact that they want to dominate this because President Xi made a public statement saying we want to dominate deep ocean, deep earth and deep space, part of their plan. But they're running a little bit behind us, five to seven years.
- [75:29]
C
That's good to hear.
- [75:30]
B
It's good to hear. And it was going pretty well for them because the NGOs were in there influencing the countries who were influencing the International Seabed Authority adopting the final rules. And without those final rules, it's very hard for me to get started. And so this is playing into this is when I mentioned it was playing into China's playbook, this is how they were doing it. China sat back going, oh, it's going to take a bit longer, is it? No problem, just let it happen. But for me, I depend on shareholder support and unfortunately shareholders would not have been willing to give me another five years to sit around and see what happens. I would have had to pivot the business into something else, which I was preparing to do because I did not like what I was seeing.
- [76:21]
C
What would you have pivoted into?
- [76:25]
B
Well, we were running the ruler over a number of other assets, land based opportunities. My board didn't like it particularly, but we would have done what we had to survive because we would have just kept the licenses and kept them rolling on. I would have had to shrink the business. You know, the team that we've had together over the last many years would have had to go. But you know, when things get so bad, they've got to self correct. It's like the rubber band. It was just pulling and pulling and pulling and we just knew it would break. Question of when and luckily it broke in the form of President Trump being elected and it had gone so far crazy. So we knew there was a pathway because America put the rules and regulations in place in 1980 that the International seabed authorities still can't agree. And you can understand why they can't agree. There's 169 countries try to agree something, even though they have a smaller council, 36 member council. So getting agreement when the NGOs are there, chipping away, trying to slow progress or stop the industry, that's their plan. And we knew what the strategy of the NGO or the activist was. Their strategy was to bleed the metals company dry, to just slow things down, to let us run out of money. And we were lucky to have amazingly supportive shareholders. I mentioned Andre before, and Allseaze and myself agreed to keep funding the business. And we lent the company money because we believed we didn't want to keep printing equity. We wanted to just keep the business moving, waiting for a moment in time when the value could be restored to something more equitable. And so we knew there was a legal pathway to lodge the application through the United States because they had the rules in place. So this is a very long, windy answer to your question about who's going to dominate it. Because now, of course, that international body, including China, have been very critical of us and of the United States of America for operating outside of the system. But America's like, they came out with very forceful statements saying, we've never been part of that system. We've been a consistent objector to that system. We have a legal right to be able to go and collect these metals. You 169 countries all agreed to be bound by those set of rules that you can't even agree on. So why don't you just keep doing whatever it is you're doing, and we'll see you out there.
- [79:25]
C
That's good to hear.
- [79:27]
B
Yeah.
- [79:27]
C
That's good to hear that we're doing that.
- [79:29]
B
It is, it is. And the administration have been amazing, ranging from the regulator, Noah, Secretary Lutnik. We were lucky to have a lot of people that the President chose in his cabinet who we knew well when they're in opposition. They'd been big supporters of ours, and they'd written letters on our behalf and lobbied Congress to make funding available to do studies on processing here in the United States. And so, you know, all of our stars aligned all of a sudden.
- [80:07]
C
Let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to get into how this concerns national defense.
- [80:16]
A
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C
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A
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- [83:52]
C
All right, Jared, we're back from the break and we want to get into some national security stuff and the implications of this and what it would do for national security. And I know we covered some of it, but I just to want, wanted to, you know, revisit that. I'm big on national defense and, and something I talk about a lot here, so I'd like to just go into more detail on that. So how is this going to help our US's national defense?
- [84:19]
B
Well, as I mentioned in 2000 and since 2002, we've lost so much of the manufacturing industry. We've lost millions of jobs, we've lost hundreds of billions of dollars of annual gdp. And you know, I think all of a sudden when you realize the reason we've lost them is because we've exported those industries because it was very convenient to outsource to the developing world heavy industries industry because it was a little bit dirty. And this was before some of the greener pollution controlling controls became statutory. But it also makes you really vulnerable. The fact that you can't build a ton of steel without manganese means that. And the fact that we import 100% of our manganese puts you very vulnerable. You know, and I think it was a great initiative that the President wants to bring back shipbuilding. And if you think about, you know, what turned the Second World War, it was America's Navy right at the end of the day and they were able to build ships efficiently. And now ships don't get built in America, you know, they're built in other parts of the world. And so I think national defense and national security is a, it's a very complex intertwined network of you've got to have desire, you've got to have really strong partners. And it so happens that because China dominates the, if they don't dominate mining, they certainly dominate all of the processing and refining. So it means that I gave you that example of one town we visited where China went from zero to 70,000 people in less than a decade. They control 70% of the nickel market. And they play the long game. You know, they're playing with the classification standards, they're playing with the IMO standards, trying to put in place initiatives that would become very expensive for the shipping industry, but only they can supply the equipment. You know, and we saw Secretary Rubio come out and stamp on that the other day. I was very pleased to see that. So it's very complex and they're very smart and tactical, the Chinese. And you asked before, does America have the will and endeavor to fix this? And I think the trend of this administration does. They see the problem and they've got people in power who see the problem and they're putting in long term strategic fixes. I know in our case we've had many meetings, become a frequent visitor to the White House because they are making it very clear that they want to support us to come and build processing capacity on USA soil. But they also recognize that capital needs to be available to do that. And when you're competing against a country like China where capital is freely available from the state, then you've got to have something equally enticing from the US Government to encourage it as well. I think that building a reliable supply of all of these critical minerals and including rare earths. We saw them do a deal with NP the other day. You know, it was a smart deal. I think we've heard from the administration that they're going to do more deals like that because they want to see investment on the ground, they want to see jobs created. There are so many good knock on benefits like we talked about before, bring jobs back, you know, and I think giving people purpose is another benefit that's going to come out of this, you know.
- [88:52]
C
Well, you know what's interesting, a couple things there are jobs I want to talk about. But you know, you had mentioned the shipbuilding, you know, that used to take place in this country and that a lot of things seem to be coming back with this administration. In fact, are you familiar with the company Saranic?
- [89:10]
B
Yes.
- [89:11]
C
You know, Dino Mavrukas, he's doing the autonomous surface warfare vehicles. And I mean, and that guy is, it's awesome what he's doing. And I remember, I don't remember the exact stats, but I remember him telling me that China had over 50% of the global shipbuilding capacity and that the US had less than 1% of shipbuilding capacity of the world. And you know, and he's trying to change that and he's making these boats that, you know, they're, they're, they, I mean he's, he's going to pump them out at record pace. And so I'm sure your metals company is going to be able to, you know, enable them to make them even cheaper than what they already are doing. And hopefully we can get back to being, you know, some type of naval superpower with, with many boats. Not, not just, you know, 0.1% or whatever it is. 0.0.5%. I can't. It was less than 1% of the, of the U.S. shipbuilding capacity. Another question that I have for you though is are any of the metals that you are mining in the ocean or getting ready to mine in 2027, do those, will those play any type of a role in the computer chip business?
- [90:37]
B
Nice. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean we do, we do have a lot of rare earths in here as well. We don't recover them in our first plant. We, we. But there is a plan to recover them. And of course there are a lot of the cobalt and, and of course copper is used in that entire AI space extensively, will be used a lot. And so yes is the answer. I just want to go back to that shipbuilding because one of the exciting things about some of these industries is that when China started taking these industries away from the US and other countries, they had a big workforce. Farmers were becoming non farmers or peasants were looking for other industry jobs to move into. And so they were happy to use a very available, cheap, abundant labor force. But of course, a lot of things have happened since then in the automation space. The shipbuilding industry is a really good one to look at. You know, if you look at what Hanwha and Hyundai and you know, the other Korean shipbuilders have done is they've bought a lot of automation into those industries where. And the same is going to be on metal processing. You know that now with automation you can take some of the dangerous jobs away. And what you end up doing is just generating a lot of GDP for local economies. There's a lot of direct jobs, but there's an enormous amount of indirect jobs that come as a result as well. But also it means that you can compete because you're not having to compete with 100,000 almost free labor force. You're actually competing on a technology basis. And once again, China have been amazing at building and deploying technology at a rapid rate. But the west and America are starting to recognize the need to do that. And when it comes to certainly critical minerals, they've made it very clear that they're going to make the capital available to encourage an entire sweet. We took a big investment from a company called Korea Zinc recently and they're in many Metals other than zinc. But they have a rich, long history and outside of China, they're one of the only companies that can produce the P CAM materials using their own technology. And so it's a really important partnership for us. And in fact, the chairman and I attended some White House meetings a couple of weeks ago and they have moved their position and they've moved it primarily because of the Trump trade strategy. Their view was we've already got a recycling business here. It's not working because China is underbidding us or outbidding us for all the recycled material, which is another strategy. China is very smart. It, they're like, you know, we'll overpay to get it, to get them out of the country and send them back to China.
- [94:16]
C
Wow.
- [94:17]
B
Yeah, it's very clever. It's very clever. But if I, I know that a year ago, you know, Careers Inc. Would not have contemplated building here in the usa, but now along with us, they are very keen to bring their expertise and turn it into jobs on the ground and local supply chain. And that of course is the beginning because it spawns many, many other industries. When you have available supply of these metals, then you can look at all of the ancillary industries and my standard presentation, there's like a thousand other industries that can be built off that other industry. But, but if you don't have the material and then of course, if the government truly have, you know, these dumping reviews that are underway at the moment, if they truly do impose some sort of penalty over importers, and it's not just China, there'll be other players as well dumping material into the US Then if that can all be sorted out, then you're going to see a very, very vibrant industrial re. Industrialization go on here. And I think everyone wants to trade with the usa. America will go from import replacement to becoming, under our plan, the the biggest supplier of nickel and cobalt and manganese and a big exporter of it as well. It's a massive turnaround and that's going to lead to tremendous GDP growth. It's going to lead to new companies being formed, new jobs being formed, new industries to support those industries. It's a massive knock on impact and, and, but it's only possible if you've got the kahunas to say, this is how we've got to turn this around. We've got to get things back on a level playing ground. And I got to tell you, when President Trump started talking tariffs, it was like, it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. But I got to say, it's working out pretty well. It's working out pretty well.
- [96:49]
C
When you say that new companies will be formed from the new industry that you're creating right now, what kind of companies do you envision popping up around this?
- [97:07]
B
It's not just what companies, but it's the efficiencies of redesigning new industrial process. And if we think about manganese, for example, there are two ways of treating our nodules. You either dissolve them in acid or you use heat. Now actually because of parts of America's abundant supply of affordable energy, which is ironic. Energy is the cornerstone of a healthy industrializing economy. You need energy. And of course that's why parts of Europe are de industrializing, because they can't compete. But America has it. So it's a great, great starting point. And that's why America will be able to compete with countries like China as well. Capex is higher, but the government recognized that, so they'll make it easier. But operationally actually you can compete largely because energy is abundant and affordable. But when we use heat, we generate really hot. I mean, the furnaces go up to 1200, 1300 degrees Celsius. And as that material comes out, it cools down again. But then when you go and use it, you've got to heat it back up again. One of the immediate opportunities is to be able to use it when it's still hot. You save all the energy of it cooling down and you avoid having to spend energy heating it back up again. There are opportunities to build adjacent industries near where we are to be able to use those materials in their current form. But if we then look at manganese, what else has it been used used for? Well, it's used in water purification, it's used in fertilizer, it's used in batteries. Are now moving to a manganese rich battery cathode. So it used to be very high in nickel, still is, but it's now starting to use more manganese and less nickel because manganese is cheaper. So all of a sudden America could be very competitive. And we've already produced our first, it's called manganese sulfate, which goes into a battery. So we've been working on that for some time. There's no real magic to doing it. You just got to do it. But at the moment there is zero industry. And to make manganese silicon, we import 100% of that in from China at the moment. But to be able to build that right next door to a reliable supply of manganese is More jobs. We don't make much stainless steel here in America because we don't have the. We import the iron ore, we import the nickel and we import the manganese. So all of a sudden there is a pathway to be able to generate that. The material that goes into the stainless steel and the steel making industries. All of these things are very interconnected. And then when it comes to nickel, I mean firstly it's used, it's a super alloy. So you need it for these beautiful planes that we see the US Air Force flying around. Nickel is a vital ingredient, as is cobalt in those structures. But there's a lot of simpler industries as well, whether it's energy related businesses, solar. In fact, I have a page on one of my presentations. There's literally a thousand industries that. A thousand industries, thousand that depend on nickel, cobalt, manganese or copper as an important import. And I think because at the end of the day, one of the great things we've learned from people like Elon Musk is how to get in and drive cost out of processes. He'll look at things and go, well the bill of materials says $100. Why am I paying $5,000 for this? And of course that's what's enabled him to build rockets and cars and everything else much more economically. And then of course he's a great manufacturing genius. So I think we receive inspiration out of that as well. And I think there are many, many efficiencies that when you start focusing on and re industrialization, the fact that we exported it all, and as I mentioned before, more than 20,000 companies have disappeared. More than two and a half million jobs have disappeared in the last 20 years.
- [102:02]
C
Two and a half million, two and.
- [102:04]
B
A half million jobs have disappeared from the manufacturing sector in the last 20 years.
- [102:12]
C
Geez. So the amount of jobs this could create is really unfathomable. With all the new industry that could.
- [102:21]
B
This, I think the opportunity is a lot more new industries. Those two and a half million jobs might come back at a lower number, right. Because of automation and other things. But it's about GDP growth as well. And that GDP growth will lead to more industries around it. It's about direct jobs and indirect jobs. I think that's the exciting part for the American economy. A reliable, affordable supply of these critical minerals is the beginning of a great era, I believe, for the United States.
- [103:01]
C
I think you're right. I think you're right. When it comes to the refining of these things, how fast will you be able to turn that into a usable product?
- [103:15]
B
Well, the good news is the approach that I've taken is to bring partners in who can help speed that up. So for example, I mentioned a company, Allseize, who have worked with us on the offshore and all seas employ many thousands of people. For 40 years they've been laying pipe for the oil and gas industry in the deep ocean. So they're used to 365 day, 24 hour day operations. Laying pipe. It's magic to see. They built the world's biggest production vessel. They built a boat that can lift 30,000 tons at a time. So instead of decommissioning an oil platform at sea, which they used to take apart piece by piece, they build a boat that allows you to cut the legs off, lift it, bring it back to shore and then do all of that de assembling there much safer and much faster. Takes risk out of it and danger out of it for everyone. So they bring all of that expertise to help us on the offshore. And the same is the case with the onshore. We've been working with a group in Japan called Pacific Metals, but more recently we took this big investment from Couriers Inc. And Couriers Inc. Want to come to America. They want to put infrastructure on the ground. They also are the world's biggest antimony producer and a very large gallium producer as well, which are two critical minerals needed here in the United States. They bring a lot of strategic importance as well, but they can help us build much, much faster. And you know, the Trump administration are very committed to taking away the permitting challenges and I think for construction and approval. And I think that's where the red tape has really slowed things down. So you know, there's been desire, but there's been so many people who need to stamp the page. And I think there are tremendous efficiency. Palantir, of course, have really helped perfect that as well. You know, we're talking to those guys about how they could help us streamline that whole permitting process. And you know, they've been very successful in other industries and they can help us in our industry and so much quicker than we could do it by ourselves. Production. I mentioned 2027. We've already got our first boat, so that's good. And I think it's probably a four year window to put processing and refining infrastructure on the ground here in the United States.
- [105:54]
C
So 2031 you think?
- [105:56]
B
I hope sooner than that. I hope sooner than that.
- [106:00]
C
When you say 2027 would be the first actual mining, successful mining operation, I mean how fast do you see that scaling does it start with one vehicle?
- [106:15]
B
It does, yeah, it does, unfortunately. But already this morning I'd been on the phone with Allsee's. We're mapping out how do they build more scale. And I held a strategy day in New York on August 4th, and we had the owner of All Seas, Edward Harrimer there and, and we asked the question, like, what's the appetite? Do you want to have a fleet of these boats out there? And he's like, yes, we want to flee to these boats. And that's what we want as well.
- [106:48]
C
Love to hear that, love to hear that.
- [106:51]
B
And you know, you get the first one done, you know, and the strategy we've adopted at the metals company is we don't want to be the boat owner. There are people who are really good at owning boats and they make a business out of it. Whereas what I want to be is focused on the permitting, owning the resource, letting contracts out to companies who can come and collect our nodules for us in return for long term contracts and owning part of the processing onshore and then very much in the marketing of those materials into the marketplace. Because I'm absolutely certain that when people see the lower environmental and human benefits of ocean metals, they're going to want to buy products that are made with these metals. Remember that great campaign Intel Inside that they used to run you? You should buy a computer with an intel chip. I think it'll be the same when it comes to our ocean metals because we can measure every single thing. We can guarantee whose hands have touched it. We can tell you how much CO2 was generated. We can tell you how many trees we felled. Zero. We can tell you how much child labor we used. Zero. We can tell you how much contamination was caused in the water tables. Zero. And once we start measuring and making these commitments, other people are going to be forced to do the same or.
- [108:30]
C
They'Ll go out of business, or they'll.
- [108:33]
B
Be limited to where they can sell their product. They'll sell their products into markets where people turn a blind eye, but that won't be in the United States of America.
- [108:40]
C
Well, they likely won't be able to compete either because you'll drive the price of these metals down.
- [108:46]
B
I think that's a realistic expectation that prices can go lower if you can deliver efficiencies in the way you handle these materials. Because in years to come there won't be many people on these boats.
- [109:06]
C
Now, Jerry, we're wrapping up the interview. And so my final question is, I bring a lot of innovators in here. And there's some amazing companies that, that are coming to fruition right now in the US and almost all of them have been private companies. And so is this a company that people can invest in?
- [109:32]
B
So we're a public company and our ticker is tmc. We're listed on the nasdaq. And it's fun being a public company. Is it? Some days. Some days. I mean, it is. There's been some dark days and. But the days have been a whole lot brighter since November 6, put it that way. And, but look, we, you know, we. Look, it's, it's. I think it's, it's an amazing place to invest your money. It's an amazing company at the beginning of a new industry. We've got a really loyal group of shareholders. The key shareholders own just under half of the company. Our retail brigade of shareholders are an absolute army of loyalists. We've got a growing list of institutional shareholders and, and we're going to form perform a very important part in reindustrialization, you know, and we're going to be wearing that badge very, very proudly. So.
- [110:48]
C
Well, Garrett, I love what you're doing. It's good for the planet, it's good for the country, it's bringing jobs back and it's not good for China and I love that. So, yeah, thank you for coming and I wish you the best of luck and I can't wait to see, see what happens in 2027. So.
- [111:05]
B
Thanks, Sean.
- [111:06]
C
Thank you. Cheers.
- [111:23]
B
I am Michael Rosenbaum. I am Tom Welling. Welcome to Talk Bill, where it's fun to talk about small though we're going to be talking to sometimes guest stars. Are you liking the direction Lois is going in?
- [111:33]
A
Yeah.
- [111:33]
B
Cuz I'm getting more screen time. It's good.
- [111:35]
C
But mostly it's just me and Tom remembering.
- [111:37]
B
I think we all feel like there was a scene missing here. You got me, Tom.
- [111:40]
C
Let's revisit it.
- [111:40]
B
Let's look at it. See what we remember. See what we remember. I had never been around anything like that before. I mean, it was so fun.
- [111:47]
C
Talk Bill. I just had a flashback follow and.
- [111:50]
B
Listen on your favorite platform. Let's get into it.