The Whelan Wrap: IMARC, the JMM lunch, Rockstars, and a plane ticket to Canada

In briefAt-a-glance3 takeaways

01IMARC drew record critical-minerals crowds.
02Lake’s Kachi lithium project won approval, becoming shovel-ready.
03Argentina’s RIGI investment commitments top $50bn.

If you blinked over the last fortnight you missed a genuinely enormous run of conferences, and I was lucky enough to be at most of them with a microphone in hand.

IMARC wrapped up what's been a brutal month on the circuit, we were proud media partners at the Jane Morgan Management investor lunch, Investability and Tau Media ran their Rockstars event, and we hosted our own lunch for our IR partners to talk about where SmallCaps is heading. Big wrap this week, so let's get into it.

IMARC: The highlight of the conference calendar

IMARC is the big one, and this year was, by a wide margin, the best turnout I've seen in years on the critical minerals side. International delegations everywhere, record numbers through the door, and genuinely good stories being told. Here's who I caught up with.

Lake Resources and Argentina's Man in Canberra

We did something a bit different this time and sat down with David Dickson, chief executive officer of Lake Resources (ASX: LKE), alongside Máximo Gowland, Argentina's Ambassador to Australia, to talk about the Kachi lithium brine project in Catamarca.

Kachi just hit a major milestone, environmental approval locked in, which makes the project officially shovel ready. The conversation that followed was as much about Argentina as it was about Lake.

The Ambassador talked up the RIGI framework, the regime for incentive of large investments, which gives thirty year stability guarantees, zero export duties after year three and a cut to GST for projects over a billion dollars, and said commitments under it have already blown past $50 billion.

Dickson backed that up with his own experience, access to government ministers, two meetings with President Milei in the last month alone, and a genuinely different country to the one he started visiting four years ago.

On the lithium price itself, Dickson was refreshingly grounded. Demand has doubled in the last five years and will double again in the next five, driven less by EVs now and more by grid scale battery storage for AI and data centres, but he's not calling a hockey stick.

Kachi is targeting production in 2030 or 2031, using direct lithium extraction rather than evaporation ponds, which he reckons is where the whole industry is heading on sustainability grounds alone. Worth watching how the RIGI application lands over the coming months.

Myself, Ambassador Gowland and David Dickson of Lake

Austral Resources

Caught up with David Newling, now chair of Austral Resources (ASX: AR1), on day two.

We've told this one a few times now so kept it tight. The point worth repeating is that owning both an oxide plant (Mount Kelly) and a sulphide plant (Rocklands) in the one Queensland copper hub is rare for a company this size, and it changes how the board shops for ore.

As a producer they're chasing grade over raw tonnage now, which is exactly why the Hammer Metals acquisition made sense. There's also a rebrand underway, simplifying the name to just AR to clear up the confusion with Austral Gold and a few similarly named outfits. Expect to see that branding everywhere from here.

Verity Resources

Patrick Volpe, non-executive director and company secretary, talked us through Verity Resources' (ASX: VRL)**** two very different stories.

The flagship Monument Gold Project in WA's Laverton Goldfields hosts a 138,000 ounce resource with gold now confirmed along nine kilometres of a twenty kilometre interpretive corridor, and Volpe was adamant that's just a function of more drilling rather than any limit on the system.

The other half of the story is in eastern Botswana, where Verity holds copper, silver, nickel and PGE ground sitting right in the path of BHP and other majors now pouring capital into the country. Volpe's pitch on jurisdiction was simple, Botswana is routinely ranked in the top seven countries globally for investment risk, which is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in attracting that bigger money.**

Li-FT Power

A Canadian story this time, Francis MacDonald, chief executive officer of Li-FT Power (ASX: LFT) (TSXV:LIFT), on the Adina lithium project in Quebec's James Bay region.

The quirky bit here is the option to acquire the Renard diamond mine, which sits next door. Diamond and spodumene processing both rely on dense media separation, essentially gravity panning at industrial scale, so picking up an already built $900 million processing circuit for roughly a billion less than building fresh gets Li-FT into production by 2030 a lot faster and a lot cheaper.

MacDonald's broader point on lithium was the one worth sitting with, this stopped being an EV story a while ago. Battery storage for data centres and the grid is now the main driver, CATL is projecting twenty to thirty percent annual demand growth for another five years, and by 2030 the lithium market is tipped to be bigger than the entire nickel market. Supply, in his words, simply isn't being dug out of the ground fast enough to keep up.

Impact Minerals

Jim McKerlie, executive chair, on turning Impact Minerals (ASX: IPT)**** into a pure play high purity alumina story.

Impact ran a strategic review, picked the Lake Hope project in WA as the clear priority, and parked everything else including its Broken Hill ground, which is now out looking for farm-in partners.

The numbers behind the call are hard to argue with, a pre-feasibility study NPV of $1.165 billion and a post tax IRR of 47 percent, with HPA demand currently running at roughly double available supply and that gap only widening. The pilot plant is being installed now with commissioning targeted for the end of November, and there's reportedly an offtake agreement pending with an Australian customer already.

Shareholders vote on a proposed name change at the AGM on 30 November, McKerlie wouldn't give up the new name on air, but promised Small Caps gets it first.

Jane Morgan Management Investor Lunch

Small Caps was proud to be media partner for the Jane Morgan Management investor lunch, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art and running a different format this year, a moderated Q&A rather than the usual run of company presentations, with Freddie Cator of Jarden, sponsor on the day, keeping proceedings on track.

The Brilliant JMM Team at a wonderful Sydney setting.

Cator's read on the macro backdrop going in was that the market's had a tougher couple of months, but a sense that rates are peaking, particularly with the RBA decision landing on Cup Day, could be the spark underneath small caps heading into the new year.

Abbey Phillipps of JMM ran through the lineup on the day, Pinnacle Minerals, NMG, Neuroscientific Biopharmaceuticals, Oceana Metals, Iron Road, Greenwing Resources, 6K Additive, Moonlight Resources and Qmines, a genuinely broad cross section of the market all fresh off the back of IMARC.

Good crowd, good energy, and a nice note to close out a long month of conferences on.

Power Minerals

Alistair Stephens, chief executive officer, on why he joined Power Minerals (ASX: PNN)**** after more than two decades in rare earths and niobium.

Short version, the board and the assays. Stephens said the first results out of the Morro do Ferro rare earths project in Minas Gerais, Brazil, were the best tenor and length of mineralisation he'd seen in his career, which is a big call from someone who's been doing this for twenty two years.

A resource statement is targeted for the end of the year, though slower assay turnaround may push that into early next year, with a scoping study to follow. On the Salta Lithium side in Argentina, Power has terminated its non-binding arrangement with Summit Nanotech and is now shopping the project for a new partner.****

Core Energy Minerals

Caught up with Tony Greenaway, managing director of Core Energy (ASX: CR3), on the sidelines of the JMM lunch.

Core's running a rare earths and uranium portfolio split across Brazil and Namibia, and the two sides of the business are at very different stages. In Brazil, which Greenaway calls the company's backyard after years of operating there, drilling and test work at the Tunas project has confirmed ionic clay mineralisation with good magnet rare earth recoveries, and Campo Largo is being pushed forward alongside it.

The bigger near-term catalyst is in Namibia though, where Core has just signed an earn-in joint venture with Deep Yellow across two projects, Gemsbok and Oryx, sitting near some of the world's largest uranium deposits.

Greenaway said the team is mobilising to drill there within a couple of weeks, with more auger drilling at Tunas and Campo Largo running alongside it. Uranium's clearly the sharper near term story, Brazil's the longer term optionality sitting underneath it.

Investability and Tau Media's Rockstars event

Quick mention for the Investability and Tau Media Rockstars event, which by all reports went down a treat. Numerous great companies in a more informal manner making their pitch. Brings out the best in everyone. Credit to the team for putting on a great show for the sector.

Me probably telling Gerard O’Donovan, MD of Kaoko Metals, one of the best performers of 2026, how to run a Namibian Copper Gold Tungsten explorer.

Our Own IR Partners Lunch

We also hosted our own lunch last week for our IR partners to run through what's coming on the website and in how we manage investor relations for the companies we work with.

More detail on that to follow in the coming weeks, but it was a great chance to sit down with the people we work with every day and talk about where we're taking the platform.

Thanks to our friends in this wonderful industry. Big things ahead

On the Road: Vancouver and Calgary

Last one for this week. I'll be travelling to Vancouver and Calgary between 3 and 10 December. If you're a company, investor or anyone else in and around either city who wants to grab a coffee or a beer and talk shop, flick me a message, I'd love to catch up while I'm there.

See you next week.

All the best and stay safe,

James

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James Whelan

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