Speaker 1The following interview is sponsored by Eastport Critical Metals. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment decision.
Speaker 2This is the Commodity Culture Podcast, where we interview prominent investors, fund managers, analysts, and company CEOs to give you an edge when it comes to investing in the commodity
Speaker 1space. Hello everybody, welcome into Commodity Culture. My name is Jesse Day. Today is August 12th, 2026, and my guest today is the CEO of Eastport Critical Metals, a critical minerals development company advancing six projects in Botswana. It is Daniel Major. Great to have you on the show.
Speaker 3Thank you very much, Jesse, for the invite.
Speaker 1I want to talk about the critical minerals segment more broadly at first, and then I want to dive into specifically Eastport Critical Metals. So I would like to get your. Your assessment of the critical minerals landscape today in this era of geopolitical uncertainty and supply chain fragmentation is now a time, perhaps more than ever, to bring online critical minerals exploration, development, and production outside of China and other nations that could be considered rivals to the West.
Speaker 3I think the simple answer to that is yes, absolutely. But I don't think it's a short-term problem that we're looking at. It's not a now problem. It's not a long one. I mean, I was actually doing a bit of looking to set up for this call, and I see the first region that put in a critical mineral list was actually the EU back in 2011, and then Canada won in 2021. The U.S. actually came a bit earlier. They came in 2018. But what I thought was interesting, looking at the U.S. one, was in 2018, they had 35 minerals. In 2025, 60 minerals. So it shows how the time has changed. Now, admittedly, one of those is that they had. In 2018, rare earths, just a blanket, which just said rare earth elements, whereas now they've broken them apart. But you just think the U.S. now, half of the periodic table is now classified as a critical mineral in the U.S. critical minerals. So it's a real change. But I think the other thing that's changed there as well, when you look at the difference, copper was not in 2018. It is now in 2025. Has been the way that they have looked at critical minerals as well. So. Obviously, an understanding for data centers, you need copper as a primary supply. So that's been added because it's changed the geopolitical view. The other issue as well being AI, and more importantly, defense. So I think you've had a change as well as what's classified as a critical mineral and why. And that's been exacerbated, obviously, by the tariff wars, export quotas that are coming in as well, and driving this security issue. And I'm really. You've got to highlight that one by. Yesterday's announcement from Japan that exports from China on critical metals down 50% from a year previously. So big change through there. And it's affecting price. I mean, you've got the divergence of price as well for rare earths, like three to five times higher ex-China than it is in China as well going forward. But I think we also have to be cognizant that a lot of these critical minerals, and pretty well everything is a critical mineral now, as we just highlighted, is that on a lot of these ones, particularly the ones that we all think are critical minerals, we're not going to think about critical, the rare earths, et cetera. Actually, they're quite small components in a lot of things that they're needed for. So if you look at a car, it's a 3% of the total car on an EV car. So if you increase the cost by three times, it's less than 0.1% of the value of the car actually changes. But if that's in energy storage, it's about 25%, in which case it's a 5%. So I think that's there. But governments have responded. I mean, there's obviously got Project Vault. Across the world, different governments are doing different things. So very much time. I think those of us that worked in Africa as well have seen this for a long time, this geopolitical push-pull between the US and China over getting hold of assets in Africa, particularly Zambia being a very good one, where you've now got the Loboto Corridor going one way and then the Tanzanian Railway going the other way, one funded by the US, the other one funded by the Chinese. So this is not new. I think it's getting more important geopolitically and continues to get more important geopolitically. And there is going to be an ongoing, you know, struggle between governments and that. And you've got not just China, not just the US. You've got Japan pushing hard, the European Union also pushing to develop critical minerals. So it is going to be a wider spread.
Speaker 1You mentioned copper there. I'd like to home in on that because it's been hitting all time highs several times this year, even in the aftermath of the war in Iran, kicking off an event that has tended to put downward pressure on commodities, particularly gold and silver. Why do you think copper has held up so well? And what are your overall thoughts on the trajectory of the copper market right now?
Speaker 3Yeah, I think in the short term, I mean, let's look at the short term issues. You've had disruptions in direct supply, whether it's Grasberg, Kamoa, export reductions out of the DRC, sulfuric acid supply and water issues in Chile have all put pressure on the supply coming through. The other factor that's driving in there is obviously tariffs. The on off pull of tariffs and stockpiling into the US has also been supporting prices going forward. So you've got the short term push pulls. But I think at the end of the day, people are looking out there at that long term, which is one of the reasons why we have copper in Eastport. You know, as I was reading an IEA report the other day and they talk about the age of electricity, that's the headline, the age of electricity. And this is all everything that we've got in Eastport. And I come back to that is related to electricity, the demand for electricity. I think the long term growth for electricity in general is about 3.6 percent all the way out to 2040. I mean, we're looking at incredible growth, whether it's EVs, data centers, grid modernization, urbanization, all of these things going forward. And I think in copper, you're looking at the moment, what demand of about 28 million, you've got supply, mine supply at 22, the rest is being made up at the moment by recycling and recycling will always be there. And whether it can increase its percentage is going to be the issue. But you're 2040, you're looking at demand at about 35 million. But you're looking at supply peaking out at about 25 million in 2030 on existing and planned projects. Now, admittedly, you know, we can see new projects coming on. But like all commodities and it covers and we'll come on to that on to others is, you know, projects taking longer to get on online, they're making it more difficult to get them financed, risk, et cetera. So, you know, that ability to miss production pipelines is still there. And you are looking at a structural deficit there that sits at risk.
Speaker 1Perhaps no example is more stark when it comes to China's control of the commodity space than the rare earths business, where China controls the vast majority of processing, along with 60 to 70 percent of global rare earths production. Walk us through this. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you're seeing in China and what you're seeing in China and how you're seeing it through this conundrum on the supply side and how it can be addressed moving forward.
Speaker 3Well, you're actually right. I mean, I think most of the news on critical minerals relates to rare earths. I mean, and that's what most people put out there is their first thought on critical minerals. And it does. I mean, it controls, you know, 80 to 90 percent of the processing of the downstream with the majority of the mining. But we are seeing mining sort of developing in other regions going forward. And I think the other thing that makes it worse as well. With China is these export tariffs that they're putting on. As we talked earlier, you know, Japan's just had its reduced by 50 percent. So it's not just controlling the refining, it's controlling who it sells to as well going out. And I think that's the bigger problem that we're sitting here now in our industry. We're getting a complete bifurcation of industries. And you're seeing that on the pricing, you know, with that three to five times higher outside of China for rare earths. And you are paying inside of China, but governments are responding to that, obviously. I mean, you've seen in the U.S. a lot of investments in rare earth projects. And I think there's also been an awakening up, particularly that it's not just about mining, it's more about processing. But you have to have projects. You've got to have the whole process stream in place and catch up to it. And there's been very a lot of good articles on this recently. I think there was an assumption this would take a long time. But I think that. You know, the U.S. and other parts, Japan, particularly, they've had a lot of history in this anyway. And they're accelerating through. And, you know, the best thing to support an industry is high prices. And this external high price is doing a lot for that. I think the other thing on that building, though, that we have to recognize is that there is a strong demand going out. Fifty to ninety percent growth is the demand by 2040 for rare earths. But it depends which one you're in as well. And a lot of this pipeline is following the easier metals as well, the light rare earths particularly. And it's the heavy rare earths that still need to be resolved, the terbium, the sprosiums. Those are the ones that I think investors as well have got to look at, the projects that have those, because they aren't that common around. There's a lot of projects with high grade, but a lot of those grades are light rare earths. They're not the heavy rare earths that are coming through. And that's something we're certainly looking at on a Semarula project. thought because we can see we've got and TB and that, but just got to figure out the grades on it. So with that RE, it's those magnet ones that are the most important.
Speaker 1The bull case for uranium is getting stronger than ever, in my opinion. Like many assets, the equities have seen a ton of volatility as of late. Would you say we're still early in the uranium cycle here? Because obviously the whole thing kind of kicked off in terms of this bull market starting, kind of started 2020. Some might argue 2018 is when things started to move and a lot of money has already been made. You know, Rick Rule famously says the big money's being made or the easy money's being made, but the sure money is ahead of us in uranium. What's your thought on where we are in the uranium cycle right now?
Speaker 3Yeah, for someone who's just spent 13 years in that industry, you kind of felt the pain going down. But I mean, in my view, I mean, when you look at the, sorry, when you look at the bottom of that market, which is what, November, 2016, it went down to like $18. I mean, it was brutal around that time and getting projects through was hard, but it kind of moved up and then finally Sprott Fund came in and started buying. And that really shook the market up at that point. It did what it needed to do. It broke through the $35 benchmark that was just sitting, couldn't get past. But I think, you know, the story remains the same for uranium. We're looking at this long-term growth in energy demand and from all sources. And on nuclear, it's about three and a half percent. You're looking at what, 420 gigawatts of capacity out there at the moment, going up to seven, somewhere between 550 and 700 gigawatts by 2040. You know, so you've got this incredible growth rate in front of us that needs to be there. And it's not just one area now. It's not just China story or waiting for Japan to restart its reactors. It's across the board, Europe, US, everybody. The SMRs are bringing a whole new part to that recipe as well. And you've seen a lot of people, you know, they're bringing a whole new part to that recipe as well. And you've seen a lot of push on that side. So you're looking at demand at the moment, going from what, 180 million pounds to 320 million pounds, supply 160, but it's going to struggle to get much past 200 without new projects. And it's not just about price for those new projects. There just aren't projects out there in the pipeline ready to go. Some of our older, bigger mines are coming to the end of their lives going forward. You know, so I think there is a lot of legs. I mean, the market as well from an equity point of view tends to just follow the spot price anyway. So the stock price is, you know, somewhat staggering along at, I say staggering along at 86. I mean, considering we were back at 18, I'll take 86 any day. I mean, that's a great place to be. But the term contract, which you know is about 80% of the market is at 96 and talk of much higher prices out there. So, you know, if you're looking at the overall market, there's ways to go, but the equities will go back to where the price is. And the real price is up there at that long-term contract price and will continue. And you just need a bit of tightening on somebody needing some metal. And I think that's the one thing people don't always watch. If you look at that forward curve on demand that they always say, oh, you know, it's great in the future, but it's usually quite capped in the short term because they've covered their contracts. But as soon as that starts to be uncovered short term, which it will, then this is when this market will really kick off going forward. So, you know, the fundamentals for uranium,
Speaker 1absolutely brilliant. Completely agree. Let's talk about how eSport Critical Metals fits into all of this. Why do you start by giving us an overview of the company and lay out your long-term vision for us?
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean, as I was saying earlier, I mean, I'm new to this company. I mean, a month and a half now, but I came to eSport because I like the portfolio of projects. We've got a range of them. And what is interesting is they all relate to electricity demand. And I certainly believe in the sort of age of eSport. I mean, I've been in eSport for a long time. I've been in eSport for a long time. And I think that's the key. I think that's the key. And where we're going to in electricity demand. And that's what we're all moving towards on a mining point of view is why most metals are now sitting on the critical minerals list because they all relate to electricity demand one way or the other unless they're defense. So if you go through them kind of scale wise, we start with Matsutama. It's a large copper exploration ground about 2,000 square kilometers sitting up near Francis Town. A lot of exploration potential. It's got two copper mines, one at either end. Capano running at about 2% copper, about 40 million tons. The smaller one at Takadu running at about 1%. There's copper everywhere on that project. I mean, literally everywhere. And we'll come back to these in detail, I assume. And then the next one I would go to would be Semarula. Early stage rare earth, project. Hours drive, less than hours drive from Gaborone. Really big cyanide geological structure. We've drilled some holes into it. Continuous mineralization based on an XRF for rare earths. Could be really big. We'll wait and see where that one goes to. Then if I jump back north, we end up with our Salibi East project right next to Next Metal's Salibi mine. Very similar geology. Really interesting early stage exploration. You've got Foley Uranium right next to Leficani. Lotus's Uranium project, some recent drilling there, showed that we've got new mineralization extending there. And then we've got Zhuang for diamonds and Kang, which is a nickel PGM. But they're much lower priority projects within our portfolio. So an interesting band, very much linked to that energy supply story.
Speaker 1Well, let's focus in on the projects that are most top of mind for yourself and for the company in terms of how you're advancing these various properties. Where is your focus right now? And on the properties that are your focus, could you dive into some details, infrastructure in place, milestones achieved so far, future plans, anything else you think is important?
Speaker 3Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, let's go back to Matsutama. It's right up near Francistown. I say the one thing I have enjoyed is coming back to Botswana. Um, you know, as a country, uh, I was last year in the early nineties when it was dirt road everywhere. And now you can drive from Gaborone to Francistown and five and a half hours on a nice, comfortable road. There's power everywhere. Every village with more than 200 people has power. Uh, and the one thing that I think shocked me more than anything else. And, uh, I think most people in the Western hemisphere will understand you to stop at a traffic light or a junction. There's no rubbish. There's nothing, not a tin can, not a bottle, piece of paper, nothing. It is an incredible country from that point of view and the government and well-educated. So, you know, great jurisdiction to be in as well. And so we're right here up at Francistown. You can just drive through on the road to Arapa. Um, you go about 500 meters off the dirt road and in the dirt road, and we're right at our camp. It is 2000 square kilometers of exploration with these two copper mines, one at either end. Within the project, we have a small resource already called Nacalaquana. Um, it's about 10 million pounds running at about half a percent. But what we have seen, and we've done some recent drilling on that, we want to confirm that NAC main was, was true, um, based on the historical drilling and to understand the structure, how it worked in that area. And, and just, this is a structurally driven copper project. It's clearly a source from deep down, whether it's porphyry or IOCG, it's still to be defined, but there's clearly a lot of work to be done. If you look at it from a soil anomaly, the whole thing's yellow. The whole project here is yellow. I've got a piece of malachite up here I just found next to a trench just lying there. Um, we've got intersections at one, well over a hundred meters of copper running at, you know, 0.1 to 0.2% copper. So there's a lot of copper in this system, but the parts of it have never been explored. And particularly on the north and boundary of it, we have a, some very high soil anomalies. There is a bit of drilling, but it's only down to about 40 meters, but there's some really big structures there as well. So we've got folding, massive amount of folding. You've got the geology twisted together, and then you've got structure through that as well. Um, and that's where our highest soil anomalies are as well. So the target for that one really in the next year or so is to go in and redo our geophysics. We're going to have to go and drill deeper. We need to do geophysics over it, fully understand where our targets are. We've proven we can do it. We've proven with the drilling already down at NAC that it's structural. Um, and we can see how that trend goes through. And then once we figured out the geophysics, start drilling down, but super excited about what I'm seeing up in that part. If I go to Semarula, um, on that one, next step now is really just to understand the mineralogy for it. Um, and then we'll continue to drill out, step out drilling to define the resource there. As I say, when you've got big, long holes at 330 meters in length, and they're just mineralized all the way through, we need to understand the scale. And, you know, we know in this industry on the rare earths, it's all about the downstream. Um, and if we can prove up our dysprosium, particularly our terbiums, our NDPRs as well, then that's going to be the key to this project and how it can be processed. Looks relatively straightforward so far. If I look at, um, Salibi, as I said, right next to next metal, I mean, they're running, I think a copper equivalent or something like five to six percent, um, is their copper equivalent grade at the Salibi mine. Um, you know, they've got, well, they mined 40 million tons of nickel ore, copper nickel ore out of there already. There's 28 million tons or, leftover in reserves and they're drilling and just adding to it all the time but what is interesting the original mine was found by doing soil geochemistry over the geology and it tied in with the amphibolites the mafix ultramafix exactly and they drilled those and that's how they found the project so we've just done that stage in fact we've just put our pressure release out on that one and getting a really good correlation between the mapped amphibolites and the soil anomaly so we'll go back and do some em work on that to find our targets for that one as well and drive drive forward to where that's going on the other three i'm going to sit down next week and actually figure out what our target is going to be we've found uranium obviously at foley where do we keep progressing it this then becomes really a strategic question you can't have you can't drive all projects at the same time you've got to figure out the ones and i certainly think matsutama is a straightforward simple one it's copper most investors like copper that's going to be our driving force samarula has to move forward as a critical mineral and and the um salibi is quite low cost at the moment from an exploration point of view so we'll keep that one moving and with what we're seeing next door in the development of the salibi mine we have to move forward to that project
Speaker 1we've discussed uh matsutama the copper project but you've also recently announced drill results from that project including a confirmation of extensive copper mineralization could you dive into the details and how you're going to do that the details and how those results will inform your work at the project from here on out yeah
Speaker 3as i was saying just now and that sort of coverage this is very structural uh the whole everything we see around matsutama is related to structure um and we needed to understand that and how it fitted so there were two parts to that one the first announcement we put out was related to knack main um and and understanding if those old results were correct uh they were before our project and they did they matched up beautifully and you can see there's a potential resource there and it's structure so the other ones were to go east and west from it and to define along where we perceive the structures to be and drill down on those those at knack east particularly which are five kilometers away um on there came through with these long intersections over 100 meters say between 0.1 and 0.2 with some good intersections in between i mean some really good intersections in between but it was more about understanding one the structure two if we had extension um but three just to really prove that there is so much copper you don't get 100 meter intersections in copper without there being a lot of copper here um and so you know we now have to sit down here um and figure out you know what's the next step do we continue at knack or do as i said do we go and now go up to la pash instead where i think really that's where our real target is no drilling done before at all um our biggest structures are up there the biggest soil anomalies i mean there's there's a high soil anomaly out there it's 30 kilometers long in these long twisting snake shape where all of the geology i mean the rock mapping as well is just twisted and into folds you know and those of us like geology and like mining know the place you want to go and find big deposits is right where there's bends as everything traps in bends and then if you look at it the bends have got folds right through the middle of them so you can see that there's a lot of sediment as well so folds faults are the things that crack open the earth to let the juice get in copper is very mobile so it's going to want to come through these so we've shown extensions possible we've shown big intersection of copper is available on the property we've sewn structure it works for us so we've proven up the model we now need to prove that model works in the right places to get us the big resource that we need to find
Speaker 1let's talk about boots one as a jurisdiction for a moment um i've spoken to a few other companies who operate there and it from all accounts it's a very stable area to operate as a mining company i wonder what your experience has been in botswana what the relationship is like with the local government how supportive they are of the mining industry and relationship with the local community as well
Speaker 3i've worked in africa 25 of my 35 years in this industry i have to say botswana is probably one of the easiest countries that i have ever had the pleasure of working in and i've been working in in in in this part of the world um it is highly developed um technically developed as well um good excellent infrastructure across the country um wherever you go i mean as i said earlier it's a pleasure just to be able to drive to every project um and be on a main road um you know and just drive i mean look we were driving up to francistown for example and as we're going past we go we're driving past our foley project now and it's right there by the fence and then coming back from mazatama and a different route and they go well that's the salibi project over that fence and i'm like here i on a double-lane highway like oh okay that's all right and the ground is flat so i was like well don't bother going to do a site visit because i can see what it looks like all the way in so you know so from that point of view absolutely brilliant um electricity cables are all over the place and the government's spending a lot of money at the moment with private investment as well put more power on uh there's a company building a 900 megawatt coal-fired power station at the moment it's a lot of solar going in as well i mean the people i'm dealing with you know coming in i'm i've got a great team of geologists they're well educated they've been in this industry the government you know the short time that i've been there um they're very open in discussions on things they're putting new regulations through they relate to an act that's already there but it's a very open communication that i'm seeing as well whereas in other governments i've seen you know put an act out and then just change the regs in the background this isn't it's very open they understand that they have to diversify from diamonds and to do that they need the other parts of the mining industry to grow as well so you know you everybody notes well they're number seven in the world on the fraser institute number one in africa as well you know this is a a really world-class um jurisdiction to work in
Speaker 1what are the main upcoming catalysts and news flow that holders of eastport critical metals should be looking forward to for the remainder of 2026
Speaker 3yeah so we just put the one out for salivi literally it's going out while we're doing this interview um so you know that's one have a look at that and then we've got another couple of press releases coming out one for matsutama some remaining holes we've got the semarula holes coming out as they come through so it'll be our three big projects all with news flow coming through i'm going down into botswana next week to see if we can get some news from them and then we'll see you next week down and figure out what the full strategy is going to be and then look for us to continue to give news flow on each of our projects going forward you know i've got to time what we do from a um geophysical point of view and what we do from a drilling point of view so i think a lot of the early news is going to relate more to geophysics and targeting uh with the exception of semarula where we know it's just going to go straight into drilling um but those are going to be the step changes going forward and as we go into 2027 that's going to be targeting where we are going to be drilling at matsutama where are we going to be drilling at salibi so i think there's a lot of excitement going on here these you know and i think that's the one point i have to make to people you know it is a diversified company it has different projects while we really push forward on something like matsutama recognizes value out of all three of these and any one of these could be a real company maker and i think in my view each of them could be in an individual company on their own right they are such good projects
Speaker 1fantastic well i'm going to put a link in the description below to eastport critical metals website as well as social media for people who want to follow along with the company daniel fantastic conversation thank you so much for coming on the show
Speaker 2that's
Speaker 3an absolute pleasure thank you very
Speaker 2much commodity culture is a podcast that covers investing in commodities and natural resources if you'd like to hear more be sure to subscribe so you were always alerted of the latest episodes We'll see you next time.
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