VRIC: After Action Part 2

After Cornish Minerals’ excellent lunch it was time to plunge back onto the floor of the Conference. Compared to pre-COVID conferences, this years was a bit sparse with only around 300 exhibitors of which a fair number were, in fact, media. But 250 companies is still a lot. I like to walk the floor and listen in on the pitches without spending too much time at any one booth.

I have been tracking Defence Metals for a while and it was interesting to hear about their project near Prince George. Rare earths are vital for the Green Revolution everyone at the Conference was convinced will drive the market. DEFN.V is defining a deposit which is road accessible and relatively near power. It has a 5 million tonne indicated resource. But, perhaps most importantly, it is a rare earth resource in North America. Rare earths play an increasing role in strategically important industries so security of supply is a big issue.

It was interesting to see the very tall Keith Neumeyer of First Majestic Silver standing in the FR.T booth flogging the company’s own silver bars and rounds. As Neumeyer tirelessly pointed out, First Majestic can sell its own silver at a lower premium than is charged by the bullion dealers. And the company is working to lower costs still further by bring more of its coin and bar production in house. The scale of First Majestic’s operations is reflected in its 2022 Summary Press Release on January 19th. First Majestic had something of a mixed year but if you, like me, think silver is going to see a significant upward revision in 2023, FR.T is a very attractive producer.

I stopped in at several other booths, tracked down Equity Guru, Chris Perry, said a lot of hellos and generally tried to catch the “mood”. In a word, upbeat. While everyone would have liked more people - it was pretty sparse by about 2 - there were more than enough attendees to make the conference worthwhile.

A couple of observations: it was interesting to see which companies were at VRIC, it was just as interesting to see which were not. Right at the moment a lot of very solid companies which I hold did not make the trek: Orezone - usually the life of the party with the lovely and talented Vanessa Pickering drawing a crowd - was not there. Nor was Eloro with its monster Bolivian silver/tin deposit. Nor were Tocvan or Grid or Clean Air Metals. To be fair, these companies, with the exception of Orezone, are not based in Vancouver.

There were plenty of newsletter writers, Micky Fulp in full COVID beard, Brent Cook, Ellis Martin and Rick Rule was wondering the floor giving rather sensible advice to newbie junior resource investors. But the larger than life headshots of the celebrities were absent this year.

It was left to Yukon to host the “Wine Down” at four. New Premier and former Mines Minister Ranj Pillai was tied up with Premier things but new Mines Minister John Steicker took the stage with the wonderful line, “So my speech is the only thing between you and the drinks.” Wisely, he was brief, but he touched on the fact Yukon was actively open for mining, that infrastructure was being planned and built and that Yukon, uniquely in Canada, is twenty five years into a settled reconciliation with its First Nations.

The Minister concluded and Anne Lewis gave the high sign. Unlike a lot of business receptions, most of the people in the Yukon room knew and liked each other. As I have said, I mainly go to VRIC to see old friends and there were a lot of them.

While the mood at VRIC was very positive for the junior resource sector, I am not sure that the format itself is going to survive in its present form. Here’s the thing. COVID gave everyone a chance to rethink what they had been doing more or less by rote for years. People were talking about the ROI on Conferences in general.

My sense is that in a booming market companies and investors will be back in droves. But I suspect that many companies will go with the Cornish Metals idea of an investors side event rather than laying out the money for a booth. VRIC is a very good fit for companies at a certain stage of development, less so for others.

Jay Martin is to be congradulated for keeping VRIC going and expanding from last year. He obviously knows what he is doing.

I will write about the Metallic Minerals lunch in Part III tomorrow.