Oliver Friesen - Guardian Metal Resources Plc

Oliver Friesen has spent over a decade in mineral exploration, working across Canada, the United States, Australia and Africa in both technical and corporate roles. He holds a geology degree from the University of British Columbia and a master's in sedimentology from Simon Fraser University, and cut his teeth as an exploration geologist for Barrick Gold in Nevada before moving into oil and gas at ARC Resources in Calgary. He later founded his own consulting firm in Vancouver and stepped into his first CEO role at a gold explorer with assets in Idaho and British Columbia.

Now he is CEO of Guardian Metal Resources, and the story behind Pilot Mountain is the one worth hearing. The US hasn't mined tungsten in over a decade, and China controls roughly 80% of world supply, squeezing it whenever it sees fit. Friesen built Guardian around that gap, taking the company through dual listings in London and New York and securing a US$6.2 million Defense Production Act investment from the Department of War to advance the Pilot Mountain pre-feasibility study.

In this episode, Oliver covers what it's like being disproportionally younger than the average junior resource director and how he ended up in the role, the thinking behind his recent purchase of 20,000 shares, and whether spotting tungsten's supply problem early was insight or luck. He also breaks down what the DoW award actually changes for Guardian, how far government support extends beyond the check itself, where he wants the company positioned in five years, and what he thinks the US tungsten supply chain looks like a decade from now.

A conversation with a geologist betting early on the metal everyone's about to need. 

#GMET | $GMTL | #Tungsten

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So, I guess by way of background, I'm a geologist. So I've spent my whole career in the mining industry, but typically in more technical roles. So the way that I kind of got into this particular position was, as I mentioned, I've spent most of my career learning how to push projects forward, I would say, from a boots on the ground perspective. So being a geologist, being from Vancouver, Vancouver is, you know, one of the kind of, I'd say, preeminent mining hubs globally. So naturally you kind of get pushed into these things. And I'm, you know, first year summer is a good example as a university student. You know, the industry was hot, you know, hard to find geologists. It's it's certainly an industry that I think a lot of young people have shied away from for one reason or another. But, you know, got effectively got hired uh as a 17-year-old student and flown up to northern Canada uh and spent the whole summer, I think it was 93 days straight, you know, flying around in helicopters and soil sampling on the top of mountains and getting chased by grizzly bears and and moose, and you name it, and uh, you know, bitten by more mosquitoes than you can, than you can, you know, you can ever imagine. So that's kind of how I got into the industry originally and and and got the bug, so to say, because you know, really what I realized very early on was the immense value creation that can happen in this industry, you know, taking a plot of land in the middle of nowhere that's worth, you know, zero effectively. And by doing good exploration and making discoveries and ideally building a mine, you can turn that into something that's worth billions of dollars, right? So there's very few, I would say, industries where you can have those sort of really lob-sided returns from doing good work and and diligent work and and taking risks, right? Which is which is um a really interesting and and fun part of the industry when it pays off. So that's kind of that's kind of how I got the the the bug, so to say. And then, you know, fast forward, call it you know, 13, 14 years, ended up landing in London. Um, and uh, you know, recognize uh pretty early um, you know, that there was no Nevada focused companies here in the UK or very few. Uh and Nevada was always a jurisdiction that, you know, over my career was the best place to work, right? You could get things done. People cared about mining. Um so partnered with the with a company here and um, you know, had some success and you know, the company was sort of entrusted to me and and then kind of continue to push it forward with with some really good people. And um, you know, IPO'd it in London about three years ago, and then you know, China announced the export ban on tungsten, and all of a sudden tungsten became, you know, one of the most important metals globally. And I'd say that's that's still the case to this day. So um, yeah, it's it's been five years now running this business. And um, you know, we IPO'd on the NYSC about four months ago. Um, and now I think the real fun part, um, knock on wood, the real fun part now begins, which is we're actually going to go and and look to build these two mines and and just and you know deliver mine tanks and production on American soil, which is uh a really important, you know, ambition that we have right now because the US and the Western world really needs the metal that we have in the ground in Nevada. So that's kind of how I got here. And it's a fantastic industry and you know, continue to look forward to what we're doing here at Guardian.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Yeah, it's great. You talking about Guardian, you you mentioned how you the first five years have been, I I would argue they've been pretty exciting anyway. And now you're saying now the now it's the exciting part, is it's coming up. You've just bought 20,000 shares today. What's the decision or what's the reasoning behind that?

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yeah, I mean, it's um as everyone knows in this industry there's ups and there's downs, right? Um, it's not always up in a straight line. In fact, it almost never is. Um, you know, there's ebbs and flows on a on a day-to-day basis, on a week-to-week basis, on a month-to-month basis. You know, as a CEO, it's it's my job to sort of look past that and I think focus on the long-term goal, right? You know, where we sit now here, it's, you know, we've been on this journey for call it five years now, it's middle of 2026. You know, our our goal is to deliver two new minds before, you know, the current administration ends. So my viewpoint is if we can successfully do that, there's a lot of value creation going to happen from where we sit now to that point, right? However, uh, as much as I try to not get myself involved in the in kind of the day-to-day or the month-to-month fluctuations, I have to at least be aware of what's going on. So um, you know, we've seen a pullback in the share price. And um, I think a lot of that is just market related, right? I think um, you know, further escalations in the Middle East have sort of led to a a pretty strong leg down in the in the kind of the risk on, I guess you could say, sectors, mining certainly being one of them. So people have gone risk off and said, you know what, I'm not sure what's gonna happen here. I'm gonna kind of just pull my money out. I'm just gonna see what kind of sit on the sidelines for a little bit. But once again, I think, I think everything points to the importance of our story. And as I sit here now, the fundamentals of this business have never been stronger, right? You know, we feel so confident in our assets, we feel confident in the next catalyst upcoming. Um, we feel confident in the tungsten market, right? All the all the data points suggest to what should be a very um important short, medium, and long-term sort of growth in this industry. So all of for all those reasons, I sit here now and the share prices come off quite a bit. And I thought, you know what? The other kind of unique aspect, Michael, is the fact that there's very small open periods where typically directors can trade. Um, and there's there, you know, you might get a few a year where that actually happens. So it just so happened we got into a uh you know, a an open period. Um, and and I saw the share press and thought, I I need to put some more money to this because I I believe in the long-term success of this business effectively. So that's kind of that the decision to do that.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Great. Talking about tungsten generally, uh, the US hasn't mined tungsten in over a decade, I think it is now. Um China controls 80% of the world supply and sort of squeeze tungsten prices whenever they defit or whenever's necessary for their uh geopolitical agendas. I think five years ago it was probably much more difficult to know that tungsten was going to be so crucial. Um obviously now, I think it's fairly obvious now. But making that decision five years ago to sort of direct that way, was it was it of was it kind of insight or was it luck, or how did you end up in this position? Because it's a very fortuitous position to be in.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Yeah, I I think it's a bit of both. I mean, to be completely honest, you have to be lucky in this industry. Um, but I think you also create your own luck at the same time, right? Um, you know, there it's no coincidence that that good management teams typically are the ones who continue to have success in this space. Um, so I think I think you know, a big part of it was, you know, the Nevada focus was was where we started, right? We wanted to build around Nevada, right? So once you do that, um, you know, you effectively what happens is you you you reach out to your network and your network reaches out to their network, and hey, we're trying to build a Nevada company. Let's get access and look at every asset that could be available. Um and and you know, a partner, an important partner in the business brought forward an asset that they had previously been a part of. Um, and um, you know, effectively their viewpoint was, hey, I've I know this asset, I've been involved with this asset, the company, um, and a lot of listeners probably know Paul Johnson. So he said, Hey, you know what? Here's an asset that I know really well. I was the director of this company. And effectively, it was an asset that, in his point of view, had always captivated him, right? It was an asset that, you know, effectively it felt like there was some unfinished business there, right? You know, because obviously when you're a director of a company, you know, you'll have multiple assets and the company might go one way and an asset gets kind of left behind. And that's what happened with this particular asset. And so he sent it to me and I looked at it and and and very quickly went, yeah, this is a this looks fantastic, right? I took more of a an expiration lens actually at the time, like looking at all the different zones. Hey, there's probably a lot more here, right? That was kind of my initial sense. I didn't know much about tungsten. Um, so kind of got comfortable with tungsten and and looked at the the supply-demand. And like, you know, the what you pointed out, Michael, very simply on the supply side, you know, China's north of 80%. You add Russia, North Korea in there, you know, depending on which source you use, you can get upwards of 90% coming from those three countries. So on a supply side, it was very um, I guess, concerning is what you could say, right? Those are three countries that um, you know, I just think I think we need to diversify supply chains away from, right? We need to have Western world supplies of these critical metals. So 90% coming from China, Russia, and North Korea. Demand side was really strong, right? Defense, um, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, technology, chips, you know, uh electric vehicles, solar, wind, nuclear fusion, the list goes on and on and on. And all these segments were growing and needed more and more of this material. So the simple viewpoint was technically it looked really good from a macro metal perspective. Hey, you know what? This is interesting. You know, maybe at some point in the future we won't be in a position where we want to buy tungsten from China, right? There's right now at the time we we acquired the asset, that was fine, right? The US was a was a big uh importer of tungsten from China. But as we know, we talked about the ups and downs and the fluctuations in the industry. Well, that also happens politically. And therefore, at some point there may be a you know a change in government, and all of a sudden we're gonna want to diversify supply chains away from. So that was sort of the risk. Um, and certainly I'd say for the first three and a half years, it was it was a tough slog. Like it was, it was it was hard work to get people to sort of believe in that narrative. Um, and you know, we we we IPO'd as a very small business and and raised very small amounts of money at the start, right? Which is how you do it, right? You bootstrap it, you kind of start small, and then you have success and you grow and then you continue to scale, right? Um, so we just did that and and and continue to grow and continue to get the story out and and get good investors to really believe in what we were doing. And then obviously, you know, February of last year, that's when the export ban was announced. And people went, oh, wait a second, like what you've been saying, you're not some crazy person. Actually, it's come true. Um, and now we really understand. So that was, I think, a really important inflection point for us. And and now, as we sit here now, you know, I a new executive order came out just yesterday, late yesterday, actually, um, and talking about effectively defense metal supply chains in the US have to diversify. They're they're they're canceling waivers, which means you need to now find and have domestic sources of of critical metals to support defense. And defense is a massive growing segment for for metals like tungsten. So it was, it was, it started small and it's you know, took a bit of a chance and obviously took a bit of luck, right? You know, for that thesis to kind of play true. But that's how that's how success stories happen. And, you know, like I said, we have a long way to go here. Our our our real goal now and and really the the road ahead is is building two new minds, which is no small effort, but we have the tailwinds, we have the team, we have, I would say, the shareholders and the the government support as a whole, we think to be able to make that a huge success and get that done.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yeah, that's great. Uh that's quite good because it it it pushes me on to the next question, actually, talking of government support. You've got this Department of War award for uh $6.2 million. Um, how will that be used? And how does it change the way that Guardian operates out of business? Because it's a lot of money, but it can go very quickly.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

So how does how does that yeah, yeah. So so the the way that money is structured is the the investment that we received was um earmarked for the PFS, right? So effectively we were we received an investment into our US subs uh operating company, and the mandate was use these funds to complete the PFS, right? So we had we had pre-approved costs and um contractors that could be allocated towards this this investment. Um and so effectively that's what we did. So what we did is we we we we hired more people, we brought on more drill rigs, knowing that we had additional financial firepower to move this study forward. Um, so we we completed the PFS. We we we signaled, I would say pretty early that we were gonna have it done end of Q2. That is a bit of a bit of a risk, right? A lot of companies won't do that, or they'll do that and they won't hit it. Um so we signaled early that the end of Q2 would be when we'd have that study done. It's a very involved study, and especially one of this nature, which is you know what we classify as a PFS plus. So it's not a typical PFS. It's actually a lot, I would say a lot more robust than a typical PFS. So it was it was quite an involved study, a lot of different parties involved with that to make that a reality. But um, yeah, so the funding was used to complete the study. So effectively, those funds have have been have been spent to to complete the study that we uh put out to the market about three weeks ago. Um, and so where do we go from here is the natural question. Um, you know, we are we're very active on Capitol Hill. Um, I'm actually off to um DC with my chairman um later today um for for uh some pretty pretty important meetings. Um, you know, I think the US government understands the importance of this metal. Actually, I I know they do. Uh they understand the importance of of doing it and mining it on American soil. We offer, I think, a pretty meaningful solution to that predicament. Um, so where we go from here is we haven't been shy about the fact that you know we're looking to to to you know continue to work alongside the government to push forward both of these projects. So uh many active work streams there. Um and certainly as as and when we know more, we'll we'll make sure to communicate that that to the market. But like I said, we've been we've not been shy. Um, you know, we want to work with the government because the the government can allow us to go quicker and have a much better chance of success. So we're very active and continue to be, and and hopefully a lot more to come on that in the in the future here as we push these projects forward.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Great. Uh in five years' time, how would you like Guardian Metals to be positioned?

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yeah, it's funny. Someone asked me that the other day. Where do you see yourself in five years? Uh, it's a great question. Um, so I think where we see ourselves is, you know, our our goal right now is building these two mines. And as it stands now, we we our our goal is to have them both built before the end of 2028, um which is when the current um Trump administration comes to an end. So that takes us out, what are we, middle of middle of 2026? So so less than two and a half years from now, effectively, you know, our our our our goal, and we think it is doable. Um, otherwise we wouldn't say it, is to have both of these mines built. So where do we then go two and a half years from there? I don't know what the future looks like post that. You know, I want to say we are focused on that goal, right? Because if we die, if we you know chase this or chase that or add this into the full. Now we are commercial, we look at everything, but you know, we are very focused on that particular goal. Um, so I think two and a half years from now, we see ourselves as a very important global and US miner of tungsten, supporting the defense industrial base, supporting nuclear fusion, supporting, you know, chip manufacturing for AI, supporting companies in the aerospace sector. So we want to become, I think, a cornerstone of tungsten mine production in America. I think we're seeing champions emerge in other critical metals. You know, I think Perpetua in the antimony space, I think MP in the in the rare space. And the tungsten champion, I don't think, has been crowned yet, right? You know, I think that we are um leading the charge, but we need to get further, right? We need to continue to show that we can work alongside the government. We want to continue to show that we can, you know, sign off takes with key partners in the US, all of things that we are working on right now. But we just completed the PFS. That's an important step that unlocks and opens a lot of doors that we are now, you know, knocking on and looking to go through. So where I see ourselves and and our ultimate goal is here to to in five years' time be the champion of tungsten in the United States of America. That that's what I want us to be, effectively.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Yeah, that's great. Obviously, the the tongue, the US tungsten supply chain is rebuilding. Yeah. Uh after kind of a 10-year lag. In 10 years' time, how do you think, how do you imagine the US tungsten supply chain will look domestically?

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yeah, it's a good question. Um I mean, I think in 10 years' time, certainly if if we have success, which I think we will, that reshapes it right there, right? You know, our goal is to deliver about 4,000 tons of of tungsten a year, WO3 a year in in full rate production from both assets. So, you know, if if if we're if we're successful in doing that, already that's a very material amount of of tungsten that's being mined domestically for domestic use, right? That completely changes the whole shape of the industry. So, where do I see it in 10 years' time? I think, I think with the government support, the tailwinds we're seeing now, um, you know, I think it's certainly important that we're doing this during the current administration, where we're seeing, you know, tremendous amount of support for companies looking to do this on American soil. I think um, so you know, the fact that I think our timing is important here because if the administration changes, that can obviously affect the way that um, you know, industry is viewed. But that being said, I'd say it's quite bipartisan now. I think everyone can argue that anyone in the United States right now understands the importance of domestic supply chains, right? Especially given the fact that they've been weaponized um against the Western world as a whole. So where I see it in 10 years' time is I think the tailwinds will persist. I think, like I said, it's bipartisan. So regardless of who gets into power during the next administration, I think we're gonna continue to see strong tailwinds for companies like Guardian. And for that reason, there's other companies pushing forward assets in the US. Um we don't look at them as competitors, we look at them as as allies, right? You know, we look at the demand signals, right? Where we're at now. I think it's hard to get straight numbers, but I think the US is around 12,000 tons of demand a year of WO3. Um, you know, we're hearing that defense, direct defense demand alone could be 12,000 tons in three years' time, right? By 2030. So we're gonna see, I think, demand for tungsten in the US continue to scale up here, and I think quite rapidly once the direct defense demand really starts to take off, which is, I think, gonna start in in early 2027. So we're gonna see the demand grow substantially, but we're also gonna see, I think, a lot of material being mined from and supplied by American mines. Um, we think we'll be the leader in that, but there's gonna be other companies who have success, and we hope they do. Um, and we'll and and you know, with us and other companies involved, I think the US can be in a position where all of a sudden, you know, half of the domestic demand is being sourced domestically, or even more, right? There's no reason why the US can't mine 100% of their needs on American soil. And we obviously see ourselves as being uh a key part of that and leading player to make that a uh a reality.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yes. Uh one final question, and it's personal for you. What does success look like for you in the long term?

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Oh, that's a good one. Um, you know, I I'm uh I'm a younger guy. Um as as as you pointed out when we first got on the call, I'm a younger guy. Um so I I you know this is certainly in the in the in in the UK, which is which is you know home for for for us now. Um you know, I want to continue to show investors here that, you know, as a young CEO, I do what I say I'm going to do, and the company does what we say we're going to do. I think, I think in this industry that is becoming too much of a of a rarity, right? I think a lot of people sort of are willing to say things and not really follow through. So what I ultimately want to define as success for us is obviously commercially delivering these two minds. Um, but ultimately, I think as as more broadly speaking, I want to continue to show that this is a company that does things right. Um and ultimately, you know, our our the reason we're here is to deliver to shareholders, right? We can have all of our own vain ambitions and hey, I really want to hold, you know, a tungsten in my hands on American soil. But you know, my job here as a CEO and our job as a board is to ultimately look out for shareholders, right? And and we're shareholders as well, right? That's the important thing, is by looking out for my general shareholder, I'm looking out for myself as well. So selfishly, we want to deliver value for shareholders. And we think we do that by continuing to deliver on what we say we're gonna do, by continuing to push these projects forward. And we think that, you know, delivering these two mines and supporting the defense industrial base and all the key industries in the US with mines in America Tonks. And we think there's a huge amount of value creation that can happen as we move from that to that goal. So that's kind of a wishy-washy way of saying we want to continue to just be a leader, right? Show investors that they can invest and feel confident about mining again, right? I think a lot of companies and the industry has just been a challenging place to invest, right? But we want to show investors that if you you you put money into companies and you you're patient and you follow good management teams who have good assets and good jurisdictions, that there can be immense value creation. And we want to be, you know, a leader in that, especially in the UK here, where we've had a lot of success. We have a lot of great shareholders here. Um, you know, obviously the US market is becoming more and more important for the business. Um, but you know, we don't we don't ever forget the fact that the UK market has has nurtured us, has allowed us to have success, allowed us to get to this point, and and the UK will continue to be an important part of this business as we move towards the ultimate goal of delivering tanks and to support the Western world with uh a metal that's desperately needed for a ton of really key industries.