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IRIS METALS LTD (IR1) - Mining the Future: Inside IRIS Metals US Lithium Strategy

• Andrew Musgrave

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Dive deep into the lithium frontier with Matt Hartmann, President of US Operations at IRIS Metals Limited, as he unveils the company's ambitious strategy in South Dakota's mineral-rich Black Hills.

Matt reveals how this ASX-listed company has quietly amassed an impressive 170-square-kilometer portfolio of mining claims since pivoting to US lithium in 2022. What makes their approach particularly compelling is the speed at which they're advancing—already boasting 20,000 meters of drilling, multiple permitted pegmatites, and the recent completion of test mining at their flagship Longview deposit.

The conversation explores their initial resource of 2.2 million tons at just over 1% Li2O at Longview, but perhaps most fascinating is the detailed look at Tin Mountain – a unique pegmatite containing spodumene crystals "the size of tree trunks" alongside a treasure trove of other critical minerals including cesium, tantalum, and beryllium.

At the heart of IRIS Metals' strategy is their hub-and-spoke model, designed to maximize efficiency by operating multiple high-grade mine sites simultaneously to feed a centralized processing facility. Matt explains how this approach capitalizes on the outcropping nature of the pegmatites and the region's excellent infrastructure, enabling a development that harmonizes with local communities.

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Andrew Musgrave Host

Welcome back to ASX Briefs, where we connect with the voices behind Australia's most dynamic companies. And today we're joined by Matt Hartmann, the President of US Operations at IRIS Metals Limited, a company driving forward the lithium frontier in South Dakota. Matt, thanks for joining me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs podcast. 

Matt Hartmann Guest

It's great to be here and joining you, Andrew, and I look forward to the conversation. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, now, Matt, for investors that may be unfamiliar with IRIS Metals, can you just provide a brief overview of the company? 

Matt Hartmann Guest

Certainly, IRIS Metals has not been around forever. A younger company started in roughly 2021 and is focused on gold projects in Western Australia but pivoted in 2022 to lithium hard rock lithium assets in the United States. At that time, they were able to acquire a significant land package in South Dakota, which is a premier mining jurisdiction within the US. Today, IRIS Metals holds over 170 square kilometers of mining claims, both public lands and private lands, that are controlled wholly by IRIS Metals here in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Over the time from 2022 to present, we have completed nearly 20,000 meters of drilling across three projects. 

We envision this to be a multi-mining center development. We have permits in place for multiple pegmatites within our jurisdiction here in the Black Hills of South Dakota and we're moving those projects forward as fast as we can to both build resources and to develop processing capability here to support a hub-and-spoke development model in the Black Hills. So really excited about the work we're doing here. I've been with the company for about a year now and over that time we were able to push things forward relatively quickly, both because of the jurisdiction that we're in and because of the advanced stage these assets truly sit in. So, yeah, excited to share a little bit more about the company today with you and kind of where we're going over the next six to 12 months. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and looking at the project Beecher’s Longview pegmatite just delivered an impressive MRE. So, what does this resource mean for your near-term production ambitions and how quickly could we see the Longview mine back in operation? 

Matt Hartmann Guest

Yeah, so at the Beecher project we actually have three separate spodumene-bearing pegmatites, the Longview pegmatite, the Black Diamond pegmatite and the Beecher Pegmatite itself. At the end of Q1 of this year so in March of this year, we released an initial mineral resource estimate that solely covered the Longview Pegmatite for what we had drilled out there already. That was 2.2 million tons at just a little over 1% Li2O. This was kind of the starting point for us. As noted before, we do have a mining permit in place that covers not only the Longview pegmatite, which we released the MRE on, but also the Beecher and the Black Diamond pegmatites. We had an objective to do some trial mining this year at Longview. We completed that a few weeks ago. I believe we had an announcement out in the last 10 days or so to the ASX in regards to that work and what we completed there. 

We have outcropping high-grade spodumene-bearing pegmatites at Longview. It's in a historical mining pit already in place, so we were able to go out and do some test mining. We collected a bulk sample from that, so it's really an advanced stage asset. This is something that supported production going back into, you know, 1950s, 1960s. Sat there did not have any exploitation or any work done over it until we came back and do it in 2022. So, it's something that we can push forward relatively quickly. As we work forward and continue to drill on the property at the Black Diamond Pegmatite, at the Beecher Pegmatite, we'll be looking to add on additional resources at that project and it, for us, is really the near-term asset for us from a production standpoint and everything else we'll. We'll bolt on outside of that across the Black Hills to increase our overall production going forward. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, and just looking at Tin Mountain, it continues to surprise with high-grade hits. So, what's your read on the scale and the potential of this pegmatite system? 

Matt Hartmann Guest

Tin Mountain's a really unique project. So that is a privately held piece of ground that we have an option over. It is a kind of a multi-element megachristic pegmatite. We have spodumene crystals within that pegmatite that look like tree trunks. So very unique property. Also has a really interesting history when it comes to the multi-element aspect of that pegmatite with noted polyusite, which is a caesium barium mineral, significant tantalum, beryllium. It's really a unique pegmatite. 

We started drilling that late last year. 

We completed a relatively small drill program around 23 drill holes, I want to say around 1200 meters, something like that on that last year. It really teased us as far as the potential of what that is and looking to expand upon that. So, we currently have a drill rig turning right now at Tin Mountain. I think just this summer we've done another, say 650 meters as of today and growing as we speak and really excited for what we're moving forward there. Enough so that last week maybe it was the week before we announced the acquisition of some adjoining claims roughly 750 hectares from Rapid Critical Minerals to add that onto our property and be able to explore further down dip of that mineralization. So, you know our current plan now is to finish out our drill program this year and then we'll progress through what will probably be a fairly complex resource modeling exercise, given the large crystal sizes within that pegmatite, pushing towards a mineral resource later this year on that project. But it's, you know, a key piece to our portfolio here in the Black Hills and something that will feed you know this hub and spoke model that we have envisioned for the region. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And with that current drilling, how are you approaching the metallurgical evaluation and recovery of these critical minerals? 

Matt Hartmann Guest

I think it's going to be, you know, a little bit to work through that. 

We've obviously already completed some pretty significant test work over the Longview pegmatite. We achieved, you know, really nice recoveries. We were looking at about 80%. Looking at a DMS and flotation flow sheet, we think there's a lot of optimization that can be done there, whether we can run a DMS only or whether we do kind of a whole rock flotation. We've got some things to work out from that standpoint and then this year we'll be going through and doing this similar type of metallurgical study at our other projects, both the additional pegmatites at Beecher the Black Diamond and the Beecher pegmatites, and then pulling Tin Mountain and also our Edison project into that as well. Basically, looking at the you know diverse chemistries that we may have across those pegmatites and how we can optimize our flow sheet to be able to capitalize on our ability to have multiple production phases operating at one time. So, I think that's something that you know we're really going to dive deep on this year because I think it's something that we're going to need the results from sooner rather than later. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And the company is advancing a hub and spoke model for lithium production in the Black Hills. So how does this model improve scalability and cost efficiency? 

Matt Hartmann Guest

Yeah, I think for us here in the Black Hills these are not the largest pegmatites you'll ever find, but what they are they're high grade, they're very close to infrastructure and the relative ease of mining without cropping mineralization makes it so that we can operate multiple mine sites simultaneously to feed that centralized processing facility. We obviously have mines that are ready to roll right now permitted. We already have all of our safety programs in place. We can go pull DSO out of Longview today if we wanted to. We've already demonstrated that ability. 

So, as we move forward we'll be bringing additional pegmatites online as we drill out the resources and then permit those additional properties. And having that centralized plant that then we can move that material towards is going to be really beneficial to us and, I think, a real cornerstone to economic development just here in the Black Hills. Being able to pull from two, three mines simultaneously will allow us to work within the communities, allow us to say mine at one mine and manage traffic flow mine at a different mine during tourist season. I think there's a lot of potential for us to really have a development here in the Black Hills that works well with the community because it's going to be so multifaceted. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And what kind of infrastructure, logistics and processing advantages do you see in the Black Hills that support this production model? 

Matt Hartmann Guest

There's a long history of mining here in the Black Hills. There are some significant gold mines to the north of us. There’s a workforce that’s willing and really interested in coming into the fold with IRIS Metals and other operators within the area. For our projects in particular, due to the history of mining around here, there’s brownfield locations, there’s greenfield locations, there's power readily available. We are roughly, I want to say, around 25 miles I can't do the quick conversion, I'm an American, I'm sorry, to kilometers on that but relatively close to rail that's a transcontinental rail. So, we have access to really everything that we need and right now it's just a matter of going through the process to be able to develop it. We're getting the resources in place right now. We hope to have a processing facility location picked out by the end of this calendar year and then we'll be pushing to get some economics analysis out on the project as a whole so that we can go ahead and get this thing going. But it does take a little bit of time to get that done. But we're moving as fast as we can to check all those boxes. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

 

And the US government has shown increasing support for domestic lithium supply chains so how is the company positioning itself to take advantage of potential grants or non-dilutive funding?

Matt Hartmann Guest

Yeah, I think you know, and I don't know how much news flow shows up in the Australian markets with this, but it's definitely been very dynamic within the Trump administration to date. It's something that we monitor pretty closely as far as the changes just on a week-to-week basis with what's coming out and the opportunities presented to companies in the critical mineral space as a whole. We’ve definitely had some conversations at the Federal level looking at those opportunities. We’ve also had some conversations with potential partners here in the US so that we can demonstrate a complete say mine-to-battery type of workflow. We think that's going to be necessary to really capture a lot of the monetary benefit that's being presented by the current administration. But it's definitely something that we're pursuing, and I think, as things unfold within the current administration and as those projects and programs are actually funded by Congress, we're going to be well positioned to take advantage of those. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

And finally, what are some of the key deliverables investors should look for over the next six to 12 months, as you grow out the portfolio. 

Matt Hartmann Guest

Yeah, so I think we've got a pretty exciting six to 12 months planned for IRIS. Obviously, we're drilling right now. So, there's drill results coming out. We had initial drill results from Edison come out in June and those looked really interesting. It's something that there's additional results that'll be coming forward on those, as well as additional drill holes at Tin Mountain and in the Beecher project. Subsequent to that we'll have MRE work at Tin Mountain. We'll have an updated MRE at Beecher that'll encompass additional pegmatites of that project. We'll have work on our metallurgical studies, not just from our permitted facilities but also from Tin Mountain and Edison, looking to provide that or develop that holistic flow sheet for a centralized processing facility. 

We've also been looking at additional accretive acquisitions. We think it's an interesting market right now with the depressed lithium pricing. We've already demonstrated our ability to do one of those deals here recently and looking to see what else might be out there that we can acquire that would be of interest for us moving forward. And then obviously, as we get into early next year probably about the end of Q1 to early Q2, we hope to put out an economic analysis that covers our South Dakota operations or at least the first view of those operations. Centralized processing facility, multiple mines and give investors a true look at what this is in South Dakota and the potential that we have here to really develop a US-based lithium production. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

Okay, Matt. Well, thanks for your time today. It's been great to chat, to get an update on where the company is at, and we look forward to further updates from IRIS Metals in the upcoming months. 

Matt Hartmann Guest

Thanks, Andrew, really appreciate your time. 

Andrew Musgrave Host

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.