All right. Welcome back inside our proactive newsroom and joining me now is the Senior Vice President of External Affairs for Nano One Materials Corp. Adam Johnson and Adam. Good to see you. How are you? Great. Steve, nice to be here. Yeah. So exciting news out of the company last week. $12.9 million US in funding from the US Department of Defense. It was a huge announcement and just want to get some thoughts from you a little bit on this particular funding and what it's really going to be doing. Sure. No, happy to. Yeah. It was a big day for us. This really puts us in a much stronger financial position between the DoD funding. We've got other governance support as well as some of the sales around our unused land and some of the tough costs reduction measures we had to take. But overall, it puts us in a really stale position to meet our objectives of commercialization and heading into production of LFP licensing and an option distribution. Yeah. There is some inquiries about the DoD but also Department of Energy and State or Inflation Reduction Act. There's a lot of things that are going on here and a lot of grants that are available. It's kind of making people's head spins kind of these days. Yeah. It makes my head spin quite often and I do this for a living. So yeah, no good stuff. So maybe I'll walk you through a few of them. So we were able to secure funding through one of the US tax measures. The US Department of Defense, what they call Defense Production Act Title III. So DPA Title III. This is the only program that I was able to fund things outside of the United States and Canada was deemed as a domestic source actually about 35 years ago. They put this program in place to really meet strategic objectives of what they're trying to hit. Department of Energy programs, like the loan program that a lot of people talk about and see, those funds have to be spent on projects in America. So if we were when we are moving to the United States to grow there, we'd be having the opportunity to get access to those funds. And then last but not least, there's something called the MSP, which is the Mineral Security Partnerships. And that's some of the US State Department's running. Canada is very active along with 17 other countries, but that's really focusing in on the upstream and unlocking mines in places like Africa and South America. And really, it's kind of like over the last two years about a lot of conversations with government officials around the world, a lot of the United States, a lot in Canada, talking about kind of the broader opportunity that the mid-street brings, kind of through a lot of stress testing on due diligence with auto OEMs and other energy storage companies. It was good to see the US Department of Defense realized the importance of what Canada wants doing and how we unlock this broader potential. Yeah. And about that, what is it they told you about what the company is doing that they thought this was a really good investment to make for the future, so to speak? Sure. Yeah. And I think we'll take one step back. I mean, I think what we need to recognize is there was a size like SHIFT, two big ones in the world over the last kind of five to seven years. One is COVID, the access to PPE and what that overall supply chain looked like, but also Russia's illegal evasion of Ukraine and what the supply chain did for that. So Congressbook funds into the DPA Title III to help create a new industrial base. They're looking to strengthen national security through better access to materials, things like critical minerals are extremely important and the processing of that. And they have heard, we've been told that some auto OEMs and others are saying that it's impossible to make LFP in North America. And so this is a great boost to the ability to unlock that broader opportunity first in Canada than later in the United States on their places. Yeah. So obviously that's the United States. What about the feds in Canada? What's sort of in the response from them and supporting companies like Nano One and really trying to stop sort of the influx of products from China? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I think, number one, Canada is trying to be in line with what the United States and the EU are doing. I think we saw obviously a lot of big investments into kind of the downstream or the auto EV production in Canada. But now the government of Canada and others are thinking about how do they get that midstream dollar lock and grow? And so there are consultations going on right now. One closes it off to over 10. Looking at if there should be terrorists or other measures put in place on the battery supply chain from China. So Canada is looking at that. And you'll probably recall that Canada also put 100% duty on Chinese EVs. But really, this is about unlocking domestic supply. And they think that LFP is a key part of that. And we've got a solution that really helps unlock that opportunity here. Yeah, obviously it's a substantial amount of money when you talk about $12.9 million US. I'm sure you're getting lots of reaction from not only shareholders, but also people that you deal with on a regular basis that are a part of the process that you're trying to do this one-pot process. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, I think our potential off-takers of partners, this is a huge shot of confidence towards what we're doing. It's obviously not easy to secure the DOD funds. So that process went through. We're also honored to get John Molnar, who's a Republican chair of a House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party issued a statement on Friday commending the Democrats' run government on these measures. So as I see a bit of bipartisan support for what we're doing and especially being north of the border. So we'll just keep trucking on and getting these battery materials into American and Canadian vehicles and other energy storage systems. Well, certainly is a big time for the company and a big announcement last week of this funding. So congratulations to you and the team. Adam, good to see you. And thanks for being with us today. Thanks to Yok Jadi, talk soon. All right, there's Adam Johnson. He's Senior Vice President of External Affairs for Nano One Materials Corp.
