Alex Fuentes Today we’ll be exploring the relationship between the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources and other mineral reporting codes. In this case, the CRIRSCO family of codes. CRIRSCO similar to UNFC was created in the 1990s and comprises a list of standardized codes suitable for public reporting purposes such as Canada’s NI 43-101, or Australasia’s JORC.

Matthew Grimshaw We’re delighted to be joined by Dr. Ed Sides and the podcast this week. Ed’s been a member of PERC (Pan-European Reserves and Resources Reporting Committee) since 2014, and he served as its chairperson from 2021 until earlier this year. He’s represented PERC on the International Reporting Body CRIRSCO since 2020 and is currently is Deputy Chair and Chairperson Elect. He also is a founder and director of Orebody Risks Limited and runs a number of training courses to upskill various individuals. So welcome Ed.

Ed Sides Can I ask suppose for background, it’s useful to know that I’m a geologist a resource geologist. Started my career in Ireland. I spent much of it in Ireland and I have my mascot leprechaun just to remind people I’m from Ireland. I started working my career, spanned exploration in Ireland, and then working on projects Central, in central America and Spain and Portugal. And then I spent the time in training and then the latter part of my career in consulting. And the last couple of years I’ve become involved in the professional organizations, both CRIRSCO and UNFC I think it’s useful to know where they came from and most people just go back 50 years with the CRIRSCO but I prefer to go back, more than a hundred years because some of the terms we use today, like proved reserves and probable reserves actually originated over a hundred years ago. In the 1950s, there were lots of discussions, different terms when people were using the same term and different terms to mean the same thing and the same terms to mean different things. And then this all came to head with the Poseidon bubble in around 1969 1970 in Australia, where investors lost a lot of money and a speculative, shares on, a company Poseidon Nickel. This was the time of a spike in nickel prices. And anyway, the outcome, all that was ’cause investors lost money. The Australian regulators, are at the at the request of the Australian regulators, some of the professional bodies set up the joint Ore reserves committee, which that’s spent for JORC which is the predecessor of the JORC code that people have heard of today. And anyway, published a series of reports, I think 1972. and 1981 and 1985, but then in 1989 it published what was the first version of the JORC codes, which was actually called, a code. And then sort in parallel with that, there was also discussions in other professional organizations around the world. And then, a group called the Combined Mining and Metallurgical Institutions, which were the institutions from Australia, UK, Canada, South Africa, and the US. They came together and formed a group, which was the predecessor of, CRIRSCO And it was their working group became known as the Combined Resources International Reserves Reporting standards, I think, no. Anyway, it was the original CRIRSCO acronym. I probably got it wrong because it always, combined Mineral Reserves International Reporting Committee, that’s where the acronym came from. But then in 2006, they actually changed the name to the to the international Mineral Reserves it, reporting committee. I got the name wrong myself anyway, because CRIRSCO the acronym stuck. So we come from CRIRSCO but it’s evolved over the years. Then it’s grown since it was settled in 2006, grown for 5 to 15 members, and one of those members is PERC, the Pan-European Reserves and Resources Reporting Committee. And I, that’s how I became involved. And then I represent. Institute, of geologists of Ireland on PERC which, that’s the professional body for geologists in Ireland, but the others are the Geology Society in London, Institute of Mining and Metallurgy

Matthew Grimshaw There’s quite a complex mix of pressure over the years of people needing to hold themselves more accountable to what they’re saying is in the ground. Is that correct today?

Ed Sides It’s important to realize it’s sort aimed at ensuring that the information disclosed to investors. That’s what, like in stock market jargon, you refer to issuers. Those are companies that issue shares. And then you refer to disclosure, which is the information that is disclosed to investors and what the regulators fear are the market abuse. And there are two key types of market abuse. One is Insider information, so people, like a director of a company knows there’s a good drill hole in tells all his family to buy shares before the investors are told of the market and the others manipulating the market by, say pretending, using a artificially high price to say your deposit is more valuable than it really is. So that’s that’s, that’s the underlying reason behind it. The regulators, either in the listing rules or the securities legislation will have these rules so that they protect investors and look at the scandal in Canada, Bre-X I found a very interesting video online, which showed a Canadian pensioner and her pension fund, I think was the teacher’s pension fund in Canada, had invested at this small mining company, which everyone was. singing the Praise that had deposit in Indonesia and everyone was saying it was the biggest gold deposit in the world, and that was found out to be hugely inflated due to fraudulent behavior and. But just hearing an actual pensioner telling the story of how they lost money. It’s not necessarily someone who’s invested in money themselves, but, investment funds, people’s pension may be invested in these things.

Matthew Grimshaw Bre-X is one, is the is the classic and there’s lots of stuff out there. It’s, it’s, it’s really interesting. It’s really interesting there. So from that perspective, we are here talking about the UNFC. From your perspective, how does that relate to this plethora of different, reporting systems or codes? Where does the UNFC fit into that? Does it fit under the umbrella or is it a different, a different beast in essence?

Ed Sides: it’s really a different system and you need different systems for different purposes, and that’s what I’ve been trying to think of analogies to explain this. And both CRIRSCO could, well, in the context we’re talking or I’m involved as were related to mineral deposits, but it may not be specific to that, but like, if you took a hypothetical example that a government wanted to, assess different. Or a council want to assess different modes of transport and they want to know things like the cost, the environmental effects, and the health benefits. So you might have, you might want to consider walking, cycling on a bike, an electric bike, a car, train, bus, airplane,? But all of those are obviously very different modes of transport. And to calculate the health effects for one of them. It would be totally different. But you could imagine a high level summary information, which said, this, these are the health rankings, these are the environmental impact rankings. These are the cost rankings of the different modes of transport. And you’d then have a high level aggregation system to combine them. And that’s really where I see the UNFC fits in that you still need. To give the analogy, you still need a system that deals with airplanes and their jet engines and stuff, or a different system to, analyze electric scooters and stuff and so forth. So, but you could imagine compiling in information to high level, so UNFC is a high level aggregator and then. It’s not only because it’s now, it started off in minerals, but it’s then applied to petroleum and now geothermal. So it’s been applied in lots of different sectors and they obviously, you, I would not be able to work in the oil industry or geothermal industry. I don’t have the expertise. So, there’s the people who are experts in mine in can’t transfer their skills to lots of these other sectors. But the at a high level, and in this, in the case of Europe, it’s. At the European Commission level, they want to aggregate information from a whole load of different sources and get, if you like, a dashboard type type view of it.

Matthew Grimshaw There’s a lot of different systems and standards within the that fall underneath CRIRSCO And it’s the question is, do you think we need so many different systems? JORC PERC NI 43-101 Does those plethora of STA systems and standards make it more complicated to then understand how UNFC fits into that? Because from a lot of the communication, I feel is that, oh, UNFC is just another one of these is do. From your perspective, what do you think about the variety of different systems?

Ed Sides Well, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit, a little bit in a way that CRIRSCO itself is the high level aggregator and what CRIRSCO the key thing is CRIRSCO tries to ensure is that their common definitions used by all those systems. So if we accept one of the codes or standards as being CRIRSCO as the member of CRIRSCO they have to have a CRIRSCO aligned code. Which uses definitions of the terms, which are not significantly different. So they’ll all, obviously some of the countries have different languages and their language issues, but then they also have different legislation the way they manage their professionals. And you’re never going to get. Universal consensus on that. ’cause, in Canada each province has their own regulations on engineers and geologists. And within Europe, the every country has slightly different regulations. I know they try and, the European Commission for instance, trying to get, transferability of qualifications and stuff. But you’re always gonna have those national and local issues. But what. CRIRSCO and UNFC tried to do is, provide a higher level, basis where there’s a you can get a common summary for the information from all the different places and that, like for investors, what should be the case is that Any Any company reporting on a CRIRSCO aligned system should be using the same terminology. Everyone, people need to use different methods, different commodities and things as well. But it’s like I say it, if you, there’s a lot of written discussion in the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy transactions from the 1950s, and you can see people are struggling with, As to what resources reserves meant, and they were using them for the same thing. But now we have a fairly clear idea in CRIRSCO and definition of what mineral resources and mineral reserves are and the distinction between them.

Alex Fuentes Common definitions. Now, CRIRSCO obviously has them. UNFC basically has them. In fact, UNFC is trying to make common definitions for multiple resources. I feel the trick here is. Connecting these two systems, mapping them across. And you are a member of the CRIRSCO Task Group, which has been attempted, attempting to challenge these, map these, challenging variables, values across. Can you tell me a bit about the UNFC-CRIRSCO Task Group and what challenges you’ve had in, making sure that everything is aligned as best as possible?

Ed Sides Here again, some history is useful because if you look at the first version of UNFC from 1997, it’s only applicable to solid fuels and mineral commodities, and it includes terms like mineral resources and reserves. So actually the two systems started off being very similar, and in fact, in 1999. There was a joint meeting between UNECE and the body, the CMMI working group, which was a precursor to CRIRSCO They met jointly and agreed on common definitions in 1999, which were published in documents UNFC document from 2000. So at that point, the they were both working, covering just the same sector. But then 2004, the petroleum sector became involved with UNFC and then obviously. Things relate to minerals, were no longer applicable. For a time there was a an appendix with two sets of terminology. One for, minerals and one for petroleum. And then in the petroleum industry they use the petroleum resource management system, which is more project focused. And that’s to do with the structure of the industry. And, again, perhaps is more useful for government, but it’s changed from. More an inventory type system to project based system. And I still regard it as a hybrid ’cause because of the way it’s evolved, it’s really a bit of a hybrid system and, people, aren’t, aren’t always clear which way they’re really wanting to apply it. For instance, you could say, are you looking for a system that’s just an inventory of mineral assets? Are you looking for a system that’s an inventory of mineral projects? Or is it really a system that’s an inventory of the inventories of mineral projects? So that’s, that’s the challenging question I said myself when you’d pose that to people and it maybe gets them thinking, well, what actually are we looking for? Oh, yeah. But going back to the working group, but I didn’t really, yeah. So that was the state, there was, there was, there were common definitions back in 2000, but then because of UNFC expanded into different sectors. They developed the framework of aligned systems and bridging documents. So something would be recognized as an aligned system if you had a bridging document, which allowed you to map that system into UNFC And that essentially is what the CRIRSCO UNECE working group is about. It’s to bridge the CRIRSCO template, which is the high level common framework for all the CRIRSCO members. It’s bridging that up to the UNFC .So if you like, we have all the different CRIRSCO codes there. You can summarize in the CRIRSCO template level in the through the common definitions. And then there’s a mapping of those for the UNFC. So you’re as you if you like, it’s a hierarchical thing, but as you go towards the top, you’re aggregating information more and more than the UNFC is providing the highest level aggregation. Again, another thing people don’t understand or well don’t fully appreciate that say with the UNFC is again where it came from, but I said it came, first version was 1997, but that was based on an earlier system developed by the German Geological Survey in 1991, 1994. That was post German reunification when obviously the German geological survey was having to provide information for the new, combined German government. Of the resources in particular was coal resources from East Ger-, former East Germany and the West Germany. And that’s, that was really where UNFC originated. Trying to combine the information from two fundamentally different geopolitical systems. And then If you look at the EU now, you have a lot of East European countries which are still using systems in inherit from Soviet times, whereas others are familiar with the more, investor markets. So it is quite a logical choice to say, well, UNFC is something that, serves the tool of report to the European Union the use of UNFC in the Critical Raw Materials Act is mostly to do with obligations to the national governments to report, so that that allows, you’re not trying to force say, Slovakia or Bulgaria. Or you have to use, PERC or you have to use whatever. You could combine it in here. And another complexity in Europe is you have, Australian, Canadian companies that are working on projects in Europe. They’re obviously pulling in investments from Australia and Canada, but they’re obligated to follow certain rules for their stock exchanges. So it is all quite convoluted and again, given the global nature of mining, it does get very. It can get very complex. Like I say, you can’t physically move the deposit, so, a copper deposit will be in Spain or Sweden or whatever. And whatever you’re doing there, you’ll have to comply with the national regulation. But then if you’re getting money from investors in the United States or UK or wherever, you may have to comply with the securities legislation and those, and then, again, there may be overriding EU legislation as we have now with the Critical Raw Materials Act, which has put in other obligations. So, I dunno, it probably makes it sound much more complicated, but it’s a complicated issue.

Matthew Grimshaw We wanted to talk briefly about the modifying factors conversation because we’ve, we are seeing that come through, in the code, which is currently in review, still going under review. I think the last draft came out a few weeks back and NI 43-101 is asking for consultation and so that we’re seeing that those more, sustainability aspects coming into those questions, the UNFC has that as one of its embedded already in it. Is that something that you see is maybe some in, something that maybe the CRIRSCO stands can learn from? Or is it something you think they’re just wholly unsuitable to try and join in it?

Ed Sides It’s always been there. It just depends. It’s been more presented a different way is what I would say? In the under the CRIRSCO systems, the basic idea that you have mineral resources, which are material in the ground that’s of potential economic interest. But then when you apply all the all the factors that have to fall in line to actually start exploiting it. That’s like the market price, the commodities, the cost of extracting it, the obtaining a mining permit. It’s community issues. Do you have to, relocate roads and stuff, could be getting environmental permits for the mining operation and all? So there has always been those needs there. It’s just in recent years since the principles responsible investment came in and the push on ESG – Environmental Social Governance there’s, that’s tends to be highlighted. But, I think one of the problems with that is a little bit that economics has gotten forgotten. ’cause again, going back to the 1997 version of UNFC, the three axes were the Geological axis, the. Economic access and the Feasibility access. And there was no specific mention of environmental and social and I’m not totally sure when that came in, but that presumably, again, came in because of the demands, the principles of responsible investments. So, it’s questionable whether it’s been tagged onto the right place. It’s probably there already in the technical feasibility. It’s something that you should be considering all along if you’re developing a project. And I think responsible companies, obviously them. Say the desires and expectations of society have changed. And, but in some ways it’s a little bit ironic. There’s much higher – you go to places like Derbyshire and some of the old mining districts in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and they’re now tourist sites. But if you try developing a new mine there’d be no way. But, there is mining maybe not happening to the what I think mostly international companies that are on stock markets, there’s gonna be more awareness of, what they’re doing, even if it’s around the same country. So I think it’s just societal expectations that all have changed. the CRIRSCO codes haven’t fundamentally altered ’cause of this, but we’ve given, like CRIRSCO produced a an ESG definitions guide to make it clearer what aspects people working on mineral deposits should adhere to. And, again, there’s, there’s lots of discussion as to, what, should it be a geologist or engineer or, what’s the responsibilities at the board level? And, there’s a lot of, there are many companies. Legislation on corporate governance, and you, again, in the in the states, the Sarbanes–Oxley which, again, you have now sustainability reporting requirements at corporate level. Once again, people working on a project level have to feed into some higher level reporting. So it’s always trying to position things at the right level that, you don’t necessarily want, me as a geologist trying to do something that it should be, some board director’s responsibility. Yeah.

Matthew Grimshaw Yeah, it’s a challenge and so some of the points you touched on there as well, bring back to one of the reasons why like a lot of US, and like myself as well, came across the UNFC and that’s the Critical Raw Materials Act in the EU. The decision for them to embed UNFC into that is one of the reasons why we do that. And we were keen to ask about your opinion on the Strategic Projects because a lot of those have been selected. By aligning with the UNFC code, we just wondered if you had any thoughts on that process and how suitable it is, in the EU as a system to adhere to?

Ed Sides Well, yeah, this, it’s an interesting question, this because that the use that terms strategic, it totally depends on the context of, if you look at the list of critical minerals or critical raw materials for, the EU, for the UK, for Canada, the US. They’re different. There will be quite a bit of overlap, but they’re not always that. It’s really one may depend on, what, local supply there is for, into supporting industry. And they’re usually, in the in this policy sense, they’re determined by, let’s say it’s governmental or whatever. Strategies on industry and, which industries, what products do industries rely on? And I guess a lot of it comes from, obviously with COVID, the Global Pandemic, everyone found out how dependent on, efficient supply chains. Then that was exacerbated in 2022 with the Russian invasion Ukraine. So those all have made the policymakers much more aware. “Hang on, we should, we should be a bit more aware of how vulnerable we are.” That’s basically, if you’re calling something critical or strategic, it’s saying, you would be very vulnerable if you can’t get supplies of that material or mineral, then your industries may suffer. So, yeah, so that that’s the first instant, again, you’re some country who will be endowed with, it may be critical for them because it’s their main export product, or something that’s a country that has a whole lot of resources where like Australia and iron ore, or whatever. So they may be, they may be important to them in the terms of that’s, that’s their export rather than their import reliance. And, but, then being recognized as Strategic Project, I think it’s mixed with industry, but I’d say, if I had a mineral deposit myself, it’s obviously, because the intention is, if it’s recognized as strategic, it will, get more attention and hopefully get speeded up. Well, the idea is it will get more faster, more efficient permitting. But maybe we should have that anyway. I think it should have better access to finance. So it’s really that it will be, an added tick point or, like you get a little star for being good in class. It’ll be an add, an added point and that that would make, obviously make it more attractive to investors and stuff, but it won’t, it won’t necessarily change the fundamentals of the evaluation. And I think it is very important to, be using the recommended good practices of the CRIRSCO Professional Members because they’re the bodies, they have the mining geologists and professionals who know, that the recommended ways to do things and, ensuring, just for instance, you’d be familiar yourself with quality control and sampling, and then the chain of custody with samples to present fraudulent behavior.

Matthew Grimshaw It’s almost as if that we shouldn’t be relying on the Strategic Project stamp of approval to allow you to do things quickly. You should just be being responsible and operating. The better you operate the quicker, and we should be rewarding that rather than just having a fast track stamp in essence. I guess.

Ed Sides Yeah, to an extent. But there’s also like, because I spent part of my career in the Iberian- working in Spain, in the Iberian Pyrite Belt. There was interesting that there’d been a government who strategy to you had the pyrite mines in southern Spain were obviously producing. pyrite which was for sulphuric acid. And then at that time, Spain had the colonies in North Africa where they had phosphate production. And so on the coast at Huelva they set up copper smelter byproduct, which was sulphuric acid. They set up a fertiliser plant, which was using the sulphuric acid and the phosphate to produce fertilizer, so they had an integrated strategy, which was making use of the raw materials they had to, benefit or well “had access to”, let’s say, rather than “had” being maybe contentious on that. But, so I think, that there would be scope, I think. Yeah. Well, we’re probably jumping ahead now to the future, but I think one of the things that people aren’t tackling is, one of the motivations is the supply chains and the whole thing of tracking materials through the supply chains and linking that with industrial policy is is a whole area where I see there’ll be a lot of tension in the future ’cause it’s very difficult to deal with. And, yeah, it is, but in that, in that sense, I guess what I’m saying, there really, there are mineral projects, there are quite a lot of known mineral projects in Europe and then in some countries and regions, people just have a moratorium on mining. But, then, people will want to be environmentally friendly, but they’re not realizing that the materials for their mobile phones, their cars and everything may comes from some mine in Africa, which has not been run on very good standards.

Matthew Grimshaw I get that. Yeah. And that’s one of the last things we wanted to cover on was the future where you see the UNFC going. And as you said, like these conversations have all been consistently had for what would you say, since the 1950s? It’s just under different context and different premises. These where the line should sit on how we should analyze and measure and define these things is constantly changing. And I guess, yeah, from from the context, you briefly touched on that geopolitical pressure and other things. Where do you see this, the next real progress or steps within using UNFC or CRIRSCO to more responsibly extract and access these mineral resources of the future?

Ed Sides Well, obviously, I touched on, they’ve all evolved over time and I think no doubt they’ll continue to evolve and I suppose it’s, what? One shouldn’t forget that the objective of both systems is to compile and present information to decision makers, and that might be. Company management that might be investors investment in investment fund managers, or it might be, government policy makers and so forth. So, I just see, they’re going to have to react to trends, but I think, that points possibly haven’t made strongly enough is, that UNFC and the CRIRSCO systems are complimentary. You couldn’t use the UNFC, its use in the Critical Raw Materials Act, it will work much better if you see, use of CRIRSCO systems as being a facilitator to make it work effectively rather than the potential competitor. And likewise I don’t think people using CRIRSCO code to say, “oh, now the UNFC exists. We don’t need to use all the CRIRSCO stuff because it’s mineral specific.” Whereas UNFC, is the high level aggregator, there are obviously the mineral specifications for, different systems. But in a way, the, I think a lot of the people who are on the Expert Group of Resource Management working group of Minerals are also on some of the CRIRSCO member committees, so there’s a lot of overlap there. And actually that’s a lot with the same professionals, I think. I think the one, that one, yeah. But then, as I said, the Eastern European countries are probably more used to state mining enterprises. Now we see in the US. Government taking more direct interest. So I think there will be, the geopolitical changes, probably more direct government involvement in things of the future, which I’ll probably have, yeah, we’ll probably have implications for both systems and spent. And then in terms of implementing the Critical Raw Materials Act, well, countries in Europe might decide to change their minimum legislation and again, there’ll probably be discussions of what systems to use and. And then the obviously everyone’s mentioning artificial intelligence, these days so it’ll probably be coming into play in terms of assessment and reporting. But, there are concerns there because of the underlying algorithms that you don’t have any control on. And you can see it with social media, people being forced a particular direction by an algorithm and you’d want to avoid that creating, for or giving rise to misleading or, inappropriate decisions, shall we say, because of the way, the way things are being generated by AI. And then, I touched on the there’s another aspect which I think isn’t really, the Critical Raw Materials Act is very focused on targets for 2030 but then the systems aren’t specifically reporting stuff on a year by year basis. You have to you, if you have a detailed feasibility study, when you will have a production schedule and all, which will be based on a particular project concept. But I think, there’ll probably be more demand by governments to actually capture some of that. But some of that information, companies may. Consider proprietary. So there they’ll be a balance there. But they probably, if you, they either have to make realistic assumptions of how long it’s going to take a deposit to actually start operating, and then how long it’ll take it to get to production capacity and so forth.

Matthew Grimshaw And yeah, it’s 18 Years I think at the moment is the discovery to production. And that’s just discovery. Yeah, so it’s long and touching on the AI point I have seen people actually discussing because the a lot of these crystal reports, whether it’s NI 43 and PERC or JORC, they’re consistently done. So you can train an algorithm or a system to ingest a lots of them so you understand the formats and what you may be looking for to put information in and come out. But then you get the whole discussion about governance and again, like who would, can you hold an algorithm to account who’s gonna sign off at the end of that, at the end of the day, if it’s just a yeah, it’s a it’s a real tricky thing. And again, does the whole CRIRSCO JORC system or NI 43-101 need to evolve with that changing demands of projects for the future, I guess.

Ed Sides I think it’s a balance. I think that one of the philosophies at the start was that the reports, public reports should really be more summary for a non-technical investor. But what’s tend to end up is people are dumping large technical reports. So any, investor who hasn’t a great deal of familiarity would need someone else to interpret it for them. And I think, there we’d potentially be in our own worst enemy that we’re producing volumetric things rather than as the CPs summarizing and pulling the critical bits and, I think I would tell cps who are worried about it. Well, if you do your job properly, there might not be that need, and again, I have seen lots of reports where someone, different consulting groups that worked in the same project. You just see mass, the content is just copied and pasted from one report to the other. Well, I don’t think that’s really – AI can obviously do that much quicker and cheaper than a consulting group, but so I think there will always be, I just see it as another tool. I think, when I first got involved with computers, I just called it my electronic hammer. Again, if you just apply it incorrectly, you might get a chip in your eye or whatever. It may backfire on you. The same with AI, I think, I think there will be provided it’s used properly. But I suppose the one concern I would have is that you don’t really have any control of the underlying algorithms and who is a competent person for deciding on the choices to do with the algorithms.

Matthew Grimshaw I particularly value your input from that. Trying to reiterate that the UNFC is a complimentary to CRIRSCO and a lot of people want to crowbar it in there as use this or that. And it’s like ultimately they go together, they’re side by side. They have a purpose for various from, depending on the context, and I think in various parts of the world we talk about, everything comes back to context. So I think that’s one of the real valuable takes I’ve taken from what you’ve said. So appreciate it.

Ed Sides No, I suppose it’s just like that, just what you said is definitely the points that I really keen to get get over because I think, in the past there’s been a lot of, there’d be misunderstanding, I think between two. I do you think the other aspect I feel, where more interaction and communication is needed is between the my professionals working in industry and those in government. ’cause I think I do get the impression some of the training I do that, people working in government departments don’t necessarily properly understand. Exactly the process we’re going through in taking a project from exploration evaluation through, and again, the same with academics, that they’ll think, “oh, you’ve got a nice bit of shiny rock and or bit of rock with some rarer elements in it”. They have, maybe under a misimpression under standard, of how easy it would be to make that economic and again. Well, particularly with rare-earths I always tell people they’re rare in the sense of being strange. Not rare in the sense of being scarce because, ’cause there are actually lots of them around. But, no, it does say just that as say the CRIRSCO systems, they’re designed really to make sure that the information going to company management and investors with greater emphasis on the financial, economic aspects are, based on a reliable data and have interpretations and assumptions that are, realistic and supportable and and then whereas, the UNFC as I said, has sort evolved more into being, well, I think it really started off, as they said in Germany. As an aggregation tool to compile information from different sources that present to government. And so, and I think, I think there are people who say, oh no, you should, they should have used CRIRSCO. And I perhaps I perhaps would’ve liked a reference in the Strategic Projects to the CRIRSCO aligned systems in the Critical Raw Materials Act, but I can fully understand why it’s more the logical thing for the high level. Essentially the Critical Raw Materials Act is to ensure that the European Commission at the central level has a good overall perspective of what the situation is across Europe per se, copper or, whatever other metal you’re, you’re interested in.

Matthew Grimshaw That was a great insight from Ed, really reiterating how UNFC is complimentary to CRIRSCO and reporting standards, highlighting the need for context when deciding on how to report. Next week, we’re joined by Tom Bide, who gives us a perspective from the geological surveys.

Chris Stockey The views, thoughts and opinions expressed by guests or contributors on this podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the hosts Satarla and Critical Productions. Any statements made should not be interpreted as endorsements or official positions. Listener discretion is advised.