American Resources Corp (NASDAQ:AREC) CEO Mark Jensen talked with Proactive about the company’s latest strategic step forward through its subsidiary, ReElement Technologies.
He outlined a new agreement stemming from its existing partnership with Impossible Metals, with plans now underway to deploy refining technology in American Samoa.
Proactive: All right. Welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom. Joining me now is Mark Jensen. He is the CEO of American Resources. Mark, great to see you again. How are you?
Mark Jensen: I'm doing great.
Good. More news out from your subsidiary ReElement Technologies. And the partnership that you had, originally announced, with Impossible Metals is already showing dividends by this agreement today. So why don't you update everyone (on) where you're at?
At the heart of ReElement Technologies is the ability to deploy locally in all these different regions of the world. We don't have a lot of rare earth elements or critical minerals in the United States that are being mined today. So we have to go to these external partners. American Samoa is right in the heart of the nodule region of the world, where these products are extracted. The ability to deploy our technology locally enables us to get a strategic foothold within this part of the world.
These products, and our partnership with Impossible Metals, help to unlock this — where we can deploy our technology on island and help bring jobs to the local community, but also fortify our strategic stockpile.
And at the heart of this deal is the technology that Impossible Metals has — the ability to go down and literally pick those nodules up off the seabed, and then have the ability to have your technology on land. It really is sort of a match made in heaven, and it's already paying dividends for you.
100%. I'm going to have to ask Oliver to let me actually go on one of the boats to watch them do it. But yeah, they have a really unique technology — the ability to environmentally extract these materials. We have a technology that can environmentally refine them, separate and purify all these different elements to 99.5%, upwards of five nines purity.
We’re able to use these materials but also create jobs. You can’t go to these local areas and say, "Hey, we're going to take your resources and bring them back to us." They want job creation there. Most refining technologies wouldn’t be able to operate in this region of the world. We can.
Tell me a bit about the American Samoa Economic Development Group that you're working with, because, as you mentioned, you wouldn't put them at the top of the list when you're looking for something like this. But they do have what you're looking for right off the coast.
Oh, 100%. John, who I've been working with there, is excellent. His team saw in us the ability to use our technology locally because it's environmentally sensitive. American Samoa is an absolutely gorgeous place, and you're not going to bring a chemically invasive technology there.
What John recognised was our ability to do it without polluting the environment, without hurting their water stream, and most importantly, creating jobs — unlocking value in their territory. That’s why this partnership and MoU were signed so quickly — because of the uniqueness of ReElement technology and our process to do this without hurting the environment, and at the same time helping the local economy.
And lastly, how does this all get set up? Is it a fairly quick process to put into place? Give me some timelines here, Mark.
Yeah. If you look at the natural world, it's going to take a little bit of time — most importantly, on their side — to get the ramp-up of extraction done, to be able to pick these nodules and build the ships and everything they're doing. We’re excited to be on the front end of that. We can build and operate very quickly.
Our technology only needs a warehouse with water access and minimal power. We recycle all that water, so we don’t use a lot of it. We're not a burden to their infrastructure or utilities. So it can come together quickly. It takes us about six months to a year to build our facilities.
From our perspective, we’ll probably be able to move a lot faster than them. But we're setting it up to work into the partnership, so hopefully, I can go to American Samoa one of these days and actually spend some time there, which looks amazing. We’ll make sure we’re able to move as quickly as they can, to be ready to refine as they’re ready to commercially extract.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style