Mark Jensen is CEO and co-founder of ReElement Technologies Corporation, American Resources Corporation, and Chairman at Land Betterment Corporation, based in Fishers, Indiana. ReElement is a leading refiner of high-performance critical battery and rare earth elements required in energy, transportation, defense and other technologies. His experience integrates nearly two decades on Wall Street with hands-on knowledge of the minerals industry.

John Shegerian:  Get the latest Impact Podcast right into your inbox each week. Subscribe by entering your email address at impactpodcast.com to make sure you never miss an interview. This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet and your privacy. And is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com. This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts and impact partners. Closed loops platform spans the arc of capital from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact Podcast. This is a very, very special edition because we’re going to be breaking some news, but I’ve got on with us today, Mark Jensen. He’s the CEO of ReElement and American Resources. Welcome to the Impact Podcast Mark.

Mark Jensen: John couldn’t be more thankful to be on.

John: Well, thank you for being here. Mark, before we get going on all the visionary and breakthrough technologies you’ve been working on at ReElement and American Resources, I’d love for you to share with our listeners and our viewers a little bit about your backstory. Where’d you grow up, and how did you get on this fascinating and very, very important journey that you’re on right now.

Mark: Absolutely. So I’m born and raised in a small town in northern Indiana. Grew up in a 1100 square foot house with seven brothers and sisters and had amazing parents and stepparents. That my mom’s a kindergarten teacher and my dad was an entrepreneur. He ran his own small business. We maybe didn’t have the most financial wealth, but we had a lot of wealth within the family. We’re all athletes and played sports my entire life. Still play sports today to MACL[?] doing it just recently which is awful fun. But we grew up in a very competitive environment. Every day you wake up and you’re either playing sports against your brothers sisters and doing all the things you do. We’ve continued that path our entire lives. We’re still a very close family. Went to school at IU at Indiana University a great program.

John: Who’s here?[?]

Mark: Absolutely. We have a phenomenal football team right now too.

John: That’s right. Nice to celebrate that. Great school. Didn’t have a lot of recruiting out of the investment banking world, which is what I wanted to go into. When I graduated, I was going to go into finance and really wanted to live in New York and so I ended up having to do a lot of the interviews by just traveling. Just buying plane tickets when I had no money flying out to different platforms and getting the interviews that I wanted to get and ended up getting a job in New York. Ultimately where I met my business partner, Tom Sve, met my CFO in college. Our team is built from [inaudible] team for over half our lives now today.

John: That’s wonderful.

Mark: Makes it real easy because one thing as any entrepreneur can say is success is definitely not a straight line. You need people in your corner, you need a team that you want to endure with and you want to push through the challenges. I would say that one thing that our team has is we don’t have a lot of quit in us. When times are tough you work harder. Then when times are good, you work harder. You continue to drive that through. But spent about four years on Wall Street and I liked it but what we saw we liked more was operating businesses. We started investing. We made a little bit of money, paid off student loans and started investing our own money into different businesses and weirdly went from living in New York to investing in a coal mining in Kentucky. It was not the intent of running it, but it wasn’t going very well. So we had to go down there and turn it around. And we did. We moved into a double wide trailer in from Manhattan and spent about six months down there turning this thing around and did in 2007. Then sold it in 2009 before the financial crisis because we wanted to invest into more operations and continue to build it when we thought the whole world was going to fall apart and be opportunistic in it and ended up doing some fun consulting projects. But really that was almost the start of the formation of American Resources and ReElement of how we got into mining. It was buying distressed assets.

John: Understood.

Mark: And looking at how do you clean them up.

John: Got it. Back then, 2007, 2009, there was no longer short-term play in call that you saw. It was just that, that was a turnaround play that you knew you and your partners could turn around and take it from negative to positive.

Mark: Absolutely. I knew nothing about mining. It was not our expertise by any stretch of the imagination, but we saw it was a great opportunity to turn something around that was really broken and we invested in it already. So we had our money. We are knee deep into it from a capital perspective, and I didn’t have a lot of money to lose. So what money I had, I didn’t want to lose. And so we just grind it out to fix it and turned it around.

John: You turn that around. Let’s go back to your childhood. So seven children in the house. Where were you in the pecking order? Were you first, last, or somewhere in the middle?

Mark: I was the youngest boy but I had a younger sister. There was a crew of us.

John: There was a crew. So you had a lot of older siblings for a little you had a little bit of protection.

Mark: I don’t want to protection. I think I needed it. I was the young fiery kid. So having older brothers to protect me definitely didn’t hurt.

John: My wife grew up in an entrepreneurial family, so did I. When you were a little guy your dad as an entrepreneur, was your dream always somewhere in the back of your head, one day, I want to be like him. I want to sit in his chair and I want to run my own business and have my own employees. Was that part of your upbringing? Did those thoughts cross your mind then or since then?

Mark: Growing up, one, my mom’s an amazing leader of our family. But my father, it was, I spent every weekend in his facilities.

John: That’s good.

Mark: He would give me the odd jobs and I was like five or six counting nuts and bolts that I was putting into a package that already said there was a hundred in there. But that was to entertain me while he was trying to get work done. But I also gotta see how hard he worked and see how he treated his people and how much his people respected him and how he took care of him. It wasn’t an overly lucrative business but he had so much passion for it and the ability one, you had the right to say, you can work whenever you want and it’s your own company and stuff that extent. But he worked really hard. The fruits of his labor enabled us to go to college and do a lot of different things that gave us opportunity. But most importantly, I gotta see it. What I think was probably one of the best lessons was none of my brothers took over the business. When my father passed away, he gave it to his employees. The reason why was he said, if you want it, you have to earn it. You have to work here and you have to do that. Well, when we were growing up, he gave us the worst jobs ever. We were taring a blacktop roof on the summers and cleaning out old nasty pipes. He gave us these really tough jobs that I think forced us to go out on our own and do our own things. But it was a great learning lesson.

John: Good for you. Now you guys turn around successfully. You go from New York City living, if this is a Netflix show to a double wide in Kentucky you turn it around successfully 2007 to nine, what’s the bridge that took you into such a visionary and important business that we’re going to talk about today which is ReElement and of course American Resources. How did that evolution go from coal mining in Kentucky and where did you and your partners, your partner, your CFO, where did you guys have that Aha moment?

Mark: 2015 we started putting together American Resource. We bought eight companies, five of them out of 363 bankruptcy sale. What I learned in the first business when we were in the mining side was asking the question, why. Why do you do it this way? And most of the time it was always saying, it was people just saying because that’s how it’s always been done. Nobody ever thought about innovation. People were still at that time faxing papers or handing printing papers off and handing them next door and then scanning them again and everything else, which you didn’t need to do. There’s much more efficient way to do it today. Asking of questions, most people think people just walk in and give people answers, but asking the question. Asking people why they do things the way they do them, and is there a better way to do it? Is there a more thoughtful way of doing it? That really, I think, came to the heart of one, how we created ReElement and how we turned around our mining businesses to survive the economic challenges and being in a commodity based world. Is we always ask that question, why? Why do you do it that way? Oftentimes it came with a different result. More importantly, it also spurred people to think. Most people were just always told what to do and they never empowered their people to actually learn about better ways or more efficient ways or listen to ideas that they had. We ended up streamlining our businesses significantly restructuring cleaning up a ton of environmental liability. But ReElement was started under the platform of our mining business. We were actually not trying to recycle materials. We weren’t working with end of life products. We were trying to clean up environmental waste streams. We realized we could concentrate metals from water, but we couldn’t refine it we would have to send it to China. And China was doing an old process called solvent extraction, which is a toxic chemically invasive process that we didn’t want to do. And so we’re like, well, is there a better way to do it? We keep asking other people the questions. Now we’re going to ask ourselves that question of, why? Why would we do it this way? That was our journey.

John: What point in that journey was your, we got, this is something that we could do here domestically that will achieve our goals, but not as you say liquidate, destroy the environment, which of course then just creates a balancing act of why did we even do this to start with. When did you have that aha moment of we don’t have to send it to China anymore, we can do this ourselves here and do it better.

Mark: We went on a four year journey from 2015 to 2019 of looking at technology and looking at methods. We worked with universities and we were part of Core CM programs, the DOE. We were working with national abs and everybody kept pitching different versions of solvent extraction. And the one question we kept asking is, is it economic? And every time it was like, no, but you can get grants for it and you get it funded. I’m like, well, that doesn’t make any sense. If it doesn’t make money I’m not going to subsidize it myself. I have to make money. We were actually working with Penn State University and they had a scientist there, but they weren’t experts in it. And they said, have you ever looked at chromatography? And I’m like, I’m not a chemical engineer, so I was like I don’t even know what it means at the time but let me go do some research. So what do geeks do, they lay in bed at night reading every white paper they could find and every research paper. I was laying there one night reading a white paper written by Dr. Linda Wang about producing rare oxides from COS material. She’s at Purdue University an hour north of me. I’ve been driving all over the country, all over the world trying to figure this out. I called her up the next day. I said, Dr. Wang, I would love to talk to you. I go, your white paper is phenomenal, it looks really interesting, and I would love to explore this together. She took my call. She’s like, can you come up to the university and we can meet. She did. She set up an entire day. Every student there walked through what they were working on. Every single one of them started with the economics. I was blown away. I was like this is not a university. This is like you’re teaching real world things to these scientific students that was a game changer for us.

John: Leading with economics is also very rare to teach that part because they’re always usually leading with some feces or some ideology or some high fluent concept and they don’t talk numbers. The fact they live with numbers that’s impressive. That’s a very disciplined approach to this. It’s so funny, but it also talks about the greatness of why some entrepreneurs are great, some are good, and maybe some aren’t that good. Your greatness lied in the fact that you and your partners remain open to all suggestions. We’re going to chase down all the opportunities and suggestions because you put your hands up early and said, we don’t know. We want to remain open to all opportunities. So that just shows that you just chased up. This is before chatGPT and [inaudible] and everything else. You were doing it the old school way.

Mark: I wish we had that then, because I will say that we kicked down a lot of doors and listened to a lot of people and brought up a lot of ideas that would’ve made it a lot easier if we had that back then. But you had to. We had to figure it out.

John: But if you look back now in retrospect, which is of course always fun and a little bit of better vision than of course prospective forecasting. Was it that day at Purdue with these students and with Dr. Linda Wang that you said we might have something here and it might be really big.

Mark: It really was because Dr. Wang, she’s such a brilliant person, but she knew we were trying to create a business. She knew this was not a science project. What was awesome about it, I was approaching her because I wanted to clean up environmental liability that we inherited from the companies we bought. She said, Mark, if you license this you should also recycle magnets. And I’m like, I don’t know anything about recycling magnets. And she goes, trust me. It’s going to be interesting. She’s brilliant. I do think one of my goals in life is to get her a Nobel Prize if we can showcase her technology is that impressive. Which we are confident we can’t. But the first product I ever produced using the technology was not from Coist. It was actually from recycled magnets.

John: I see.

Mark: That night I had spent a lot of money and we’d spent a lot of money personally and through the business. I was talking to my wife and I said, the day before we were doing our first production run, I said, I’m stressed out. Like this is nerve wracking. If this doesn’t work I gotta restart everything again. On the whole technology landscape. I got to the facility at like 7:00 AM that morning and we fired up at like 10 o’clock and it worked. That was the moment I could breathe again and I was like, that’s just phenomenal.

John: What year was that?

Mark: That was probably about four and a half to five years ago. So roughly 2020.

John: In terms of reflective moments that was one of those all in moments where like, this is a make or break day for your vision to make this work.

Mark: We’d invested millions of dollars and had this facility, we signed a 10 year lease on it. I’m like, this doesn’t work. I gotta go. This facility would not work for solvent extraction because we use about a 10th of the square footage and so if chromatography didn’t work, we were in trouble.

John: Tell me about the phone call. The phone call to your wife that day and tell me about the phone call to Dr. Wang that day.

Mark: Dr. Wang actually joined us. She was in the room. I gave her a big hug that day. Phone call to my wife she pretty happy. I think she was quite relieved for me because I was pretty stressed out. But she’s like, so you really have something? This is really going to work. She goes, this can disrupt a whole lot of things. You’re going to be pretty busy for the next few years. I said, yeah, I think my whole team will be. We do have a phenomenal team.

John: We’re going to go back and I want to cover those five years from 2020 to today. But I want to talk about where we are today in terms of, when you moved from New York to Kentucky, let’s just go back to 2007. I remember 2007 quite well. It’s actually when I started this podcast. There was no Chief Sustainability officers. By the way, that was the year the iPhone came out.
If we look back to 2007. These were the beginnings of times of sustainability becoming something. But the word sustainability wasn’t really big. Circular economy, of course, wasn’t part of our vernacular. Recycling wasn’t really big. The EV revolution wasn’t upon us in a big way yet. Tesla hadn’t become ubiquitous and nor had Elon Musk besides his experience, that part of the PayPal Mafia. Talk a little bit about sustainability today, the energy transition, mining recycling, and the shift from the linear to circular economy. How is this all coming together now and how much wind at the back do you have today compared to originally starting on this journey till you found Dr. Wang and launching in 2020, the wind at your back I assume is much greater than the wind in your front, comparatively speaking.

Mark: For sure. If you look back in 2007 timeframe, we were cleaning up environmental liabilities because we were trying to lower our cost structure. Nobody cared about it back then. I come from the dirty word of coal. I started my entrepreneurship background essentially in that. But doing it in a way to clean up these environmental liabilities to lower our cost structure. Then sustainability and environmentalism really exploded in a big way. Most importantly then looking at ways of how do you tie economic sustainability with environmental sustainability. And do it both in a positive way. I will say that’s been an amazing journey over the last three to five years that you start seeing real applications unfold and collaboration of how people work together to solve complex problems without impacting additional land. Most of my facilities I don’t build a lot of new things. I go in and take over Brownfield properties and then I renovate them and fix them or clean them up or reclaim them. That’s been our background.

John: That’s your secret sauce. That’s your genius. Hey, listen, everyone can’t shoot threes some are great on defense, some are great from the line, that’s your secret sauce. You gotta lean into it when it’s your secret sauce.

Mark: Absolutely. We’re a layup type of guy. They’re not putting me on three point line.

John: That’s awesome. Talk about a little bit about now that works. And your CFO who’s been with you now for most of your career and your partner, who’s also been a long time partner. Now the three of you realize it’s 2020 you’ve got something, the technology works. Dr. Wang was ripe. Talk about the journey from 2020 to today.

Mark: It’s been a whirlwind. I’ll actually say, I’ve been talking to a couple of my guys and a couple of them businesses obviously 5, 6, 7 years now. It feels like I’ve known them for half my life because of the hours and dedication that they’ve all put forth too. But once we realized it worked for separation and purification of these critical minerals from waste materials as well as from mine material was how do you expand fast enough without giving away the company? It’s like we didn’t want to go out and do the traditional venture capital rounds and all that stuff. So we put a lot of our own money to work. We wanted to invest our own capital into the business so that we could still control it and drive the direction of the company and what we believed was the most positive way for our shareholders as well as for the growth of the business to disrupt this industry. But we started and we went down the entire landscape. So today we started off on recycling rare earth oxides actually from wind turbine was the first rare earth magnet we’ve ever recycled. It was from one of BP’s wind turbines in Indiana. We started taking these nay cells and breaking them down and figuring out how to get to the magnets quickly, dissolving them, and recycling and producing these separated purified oxides. Then we went to the motor companies, the automotive, we went to power tool manufacturers and then got into, back into the ore side and started processing ores from our content material. Then the battery industry exploded. So we started processing lithium from LFP batteries and NMC batteries for the lithium ion batteries to go into all the different applications from your phone to the automotive. What was really fun about the five years is having a team that could understand how to pivot. It wasn’t just develop this and only focus on that. It was we need to unlock and figure out who we are as a company. That’s really what we defined ReElement during that period of time is we’re a midstream refiner that is really good at separation and purification. Then we work the heart of where we’re at, and then you work upstream and downstream of that to optimize those process flows. But we needed to have an entrepreneurial team. Jeff Peterson, who is now our president started off, he literally built the first columns in our facility with his own hands. Yi Ding who’s our chief technology officer spent seven years under Dr. Wang. When we said we were going to build this into a business, Dr. Wang said, you need to hire this guy. She’s like he’s the best. He’s been my best student ever. And he is, he’s amazing.

John: She not only gave you the idea, she also gave you great people. This is amazing. Dr. Wang is a rock star. I hope shes [inaudible] a Nobel Prize.

Mark: She is a rock star, and she does. She is the most passionate person. We still talk once a week. I’ve tried to get her to come join our team, but she loves Purdue University for good reason. We need her training the next generation [crosstalk].

John: Next generation. But you’re bringing up a great point. You brought it up earlier on. Want you to lean into this point though. Mark, there’s not a lot of entrepreneurs are as humble and as open as you are in terms of sharing the credit. But you built a team over a career that the team evolved and went from business to business, and you evolved your ideas and your thinking, and also your visions and your dreams together. The fact that you built a team and you trust it and the team trusts you means that for most young people who are always asked, how do I know who the right partners are and how do I know how to build a team. The truth of the matter is you’ve mastered that. I say that’s a big part of your success because people who have mastered that, they don’t have to look right, left, or worry about their partners. Every day they get to look forward and build your dream together and that’s the beauty of having low turnover among your leadership. I assume you believe the same thing?

Mark: Trust is imperative. If you’re sitting in the foxhole with somebody, if you’re working with these team members, and John there’s fun days and there’s really, really tough days. If you don’t have a team you trust each other to make the right decisions in that, that are making the decisions for the best of all parties involved that’s really tough. I will say that the team we have, the partners we have, the group these are people that we’ve spent so much time together over the years that you just fully trust. Sometimes you trust people that don’t always perform. At the end of the day, it’s not always perfect. Sometimes end up people parting ways, but I would say most of the team members that joined our company have been with us since day one. We have very low turnover at the executive level of our company for that reason. Because we want people that are passionate. We want people that do give different opinions, but also that understand that you have to collectively drive in the same direction. That’s super important to trust one another. Otherwise, you’re constantly thinking in the back of your head, is this going to work out? And if you don’t have that reassurance from the rest of your team, that’s a scary day.

John: Got it. For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we have got Mark Jensen with us today. He’s a CEO of ReElement and American Resources. To find Mark and his colleagues please go to www.reelementtech.com. Mark, at some point you went public, did you go public closer to 2020 or closer to 2025, or when did you take your company public and has that been a good experience and are you happy you did that?

Mark: We actually took American Resource Public in 2017. It was a couple years after buying most of the operations and the assets and our goal was to continue to grow and continue to expand it and diversify especially as we were looking at the technology landscape of where we’re at. Because a traditional mining company doesn’t trade at grade multiples. It wasn’t a realization event. We didn’t do it to exit the business. We did it to expand the business. In fact, I don’t think any of our senior management’s ever sold a share over a stock since we’ve been public. It wasn’t really the objective. The objective is we wanted to build something. It’s not about the money. Obviously yes, everybody wants to do well financially. We want to make money for our investors and we’re investors in it, but we want to bet on ourselves. But it was a good experience. Being public has its positives and negatives but it was good for us. Then we actually then last year took ReElement back private dividend it out to our underlying shareholders just because the ReElement became bigger than the parent. Through our last equity raise a ReElement that showcased. It was good that we created value for both entities and we have a new CEO dropping in American resources and I’ll be the executive chairman. So it’s kind of bringing a new guy in to run my baby. But we’re excited about that. He’s a really a good partner. He is been on our board for a long time and I think it’ll be good for all of our investors.

John: That’s great. That’s awesome. Talk about where we are today. You are now a very hot brand and it’s only going to grow. We’re going to break some news in a little while. I’m going to have you break that. This is a very specialized industry, what you do. By the way, the average citizen of any country you bring your great technology to should be excited about what you do, the benefits of what you do for their local domestic economy and for the safety and security of their countries. We’ll start with the United States. And then we’ll talk about other opportunities that you’re working on as well.

Mark: Absolutely. If you look at the critical mineral or rarest supply chain, it’s dominated by one area, China. 30 years ago, they made a big bet that this was going to be an important industry. They build out massive capacity of solvent extraction using an old school technology. Today we’re shifting that narrative and we’re going to break that monopoly very aggressively. We’re doing it. We have a 400,000 square foot facility in Marion, Indiana that we’re buying equipment with the goal of being up and running first quarter of next year, that will displace China within the marketplace and offer diversification. These critical minerals are used in anything from your iPhone to missile defense systems, to your cars. You don’t realize how many magnets are in you’re automotive. From your seat belts to everything use these magnets. They cut the world off this year. We had the opportunity to step up. Our team did that. We are now going to break that monopoly, not only here in the United States, but also internationally because of our ability to co-locate our technology. We don’t use a lot of square footage, we don’t use a lot of chemicals, so it’s not toxic and the process but that to me is, when I look at it, I want my son to be safe, I want our country to be strong and without supply chain security, we saw it during COVID, during COVID we couldn’t get basic necessities or there was delays on it or there’s fearful of that. But the rare earth magnet supply chain could shut down our military, it could shut down our commercial enterprises. That’s jobs and security. Without it, you get chaos. We are super thankful to be a part of this solution. And work with collaborative partners to unlock the supply chain efficiently and economically to go head to head against them with cost structure.

John: Secretary Besson and president Trump have been very clear. It’s paramount importance to the future of American safety, as you point out in security and also for the future of the green industry, the EV industry, and of course even the electronics industry to decouple from China, but not to decouple. We’re going to have to be good partners in trade and all that other kind of stuff in terms of economics. But to de-risk from China in exactly the way you’re saying. From de-risk from their critical mineral dependence. It’s not only the United States that feels that way, the Gulf feels that way in the Middle East, the Canada feels that way, Japan feels that way, South Korea feels that way. Everybody doesn’t want to decouple from China economically speaking, but they want to de-risk. So you are one of the greatest and biggest solutions on de-risking us from our dependence on China’s critical minerals.

Mark: We think our technology along with partnerships enables countries to have sovereign security.

John: That’s [crosstalk]

Mark: To be able to protect themselves to be able to supply what they need. We’re a global world. We buy products that say China on them, Italy on them, Canada on them, US on them.

John: It’s all great.

Mark: We need that. That’s trait. But when push comes to shove you need to be able to have the capability. That’s something that I would say that the Trump administration’s doing a phenomenal job of saying, we demand manufacturing to come back to our country. We demand the ability to produce these products, should we need to in our country. We’re excited. We just announced a deal with the US government that they own part of our company today.

John: Talk about that. Talk a little bit about, say more on that.

Mark: We partnership with a company called Vulcan Elements that’s making rare earth magnets. They couldn’t get the oxides from anywhere else other than China. We started supplying them a year ago. Then we were approached working with the government about and showcasing what we’re doing together. They obviously did their due diligence, spent a lot of time in our facilities and meeting with us. They came up with the idea of how can we expand this better and faster. We ended up announcing recently that it was a $1.4 billion project that we’re building a 10,000 metric ton rare earth magnet supply chain in the United States. As part of that the Department of War, which is former Department of Defense, got an equity stake in both of our companies. And honestly, I’m thankful for that. Because it helps us go better, faster, stronger. Everything is about partnerships.

John: It is. Talk a little bit about that. How partnerships can really allow you to go faster, further and make a greater impact than you could have ever imagined with the technology that you have. Talk a little about that. The new entrepreneurs of the next generation need to hear from a guy who’s mastered this collaboration and strategic partners and why that matters to entrepreneurs. Instead of the old version of the lone entrepreneur, the gates, the Bezos, which is fine. They’ve done tremendous. The must. Really, those are more the anomalies and really the great entrepreneurs of today are collaborating and collaborating at a very high level. Please say more about that and how you’ve mastered that.

Mark: I would say that, I don’t know about mastered, but I think my team’s doing a good job on it. We do something really, really well. We separate and purify really, really well. A multitude of critical minerals rare earth elements now. But if you think about it, if you look at where are magnets today? Like, they’re in your earbuds, they’re in your cell phones, they’re in your computers, they’re in your cars. How do you get access to those?

John: That’s right.

Mark: For us, we want to partner with the best that knows how to get access to those materials and aggregate them and feed them back into the supply chain. And then at the same point, I don’t need to make magnets. I want to break the bottleneck that exists and the bottleneck is on the refining side. But there’s really good companies out there that make magnets. Like Vulcan elements and Posco and others that we’re working with and or that make missile defense systems and thermal heat barriers that we supply products to. I want to focus and do what I do really, really well and then bring in partners that help make us better. That’s from an aggregation perspective to a product manufacturing perspective. Because if I try to take it all on ourselves, one we’re spreading ourselves really thin. And then two, we’re not making our product the best it can be. That has been a focus from us from day one, is making our refining solution the best. The lowest cost, and then continuing to dig that mode. I’ve had bill Smith from Eli Lilly, Bob Gallion from CATL, two phenomenal leaders that have given me a lot of insight of investing in R&D, investing in development, and continually focusing on making your business better. That’s been a huge driver for us to continually invest in that.

John: Talk a little bit about some of your strategic partners. You made a deal with the Department of War. That’s no easy trick to make. For any entrepreneur anywhere in the world to make a partnership with the federal government of that country. How did that go and did they reach out to you originally? You reach out to them? How did you do that? Because it has to be a fascinating story unto itself.

Mark: It is. I will say that I’ve had the opportunity to be in Korea with Secretary Nik sitting with 16 of the largest Korean companies. I’ve never seen somebody as impressive as he was in that room of showcasing the strength of the United States and how we work together with Allied Nations. To get introduced to the Trump administration and what they’re doing and how they conduct themselves in the business world. They’re master negotiators and they’re really good at it. But they found out who we were through partnerships. We have a really good strategic partner which we’ll announce who they are here shortly. That brought us into the White House and opened up that door for us. Of saying, Hey, this is what ReElement does. Then we got a grant through IBES and they came to see our facilities and they started asking questions that was for rare earth elements. They’re like, wait, you’re doing something else over there? What’s that? And they’re like, that’s lithium. And they’re like, what’s that? What’s that over there? And that’s trium. They’re like, how are you doing all these things? And we’re like, well, we have a team that’s been focused on this for the last three years of developing these different flow sheets. They’re like, you need to go talk about what else you’re doing because nobody knows. John, I’m super thankful to be on here today because most people don’t know what we do and the capabilities of what our team can offer.

John: Well, here’s what I love. I love the fact that you came on today because A, we’re going to talk about something we’re doing together in a second and you’re going to talk about it. Want you to announce it. But I know Mark, you’re headed. You’re going to be featured with Kramer soon. I know you’re going to be featured in the Wall Street Journal. You are going to be the hot hand and you’re going to have your Nvidia turn, your Jensen Wong turn and you deserve it. Because people don’t realize you’ve been, like you said, learning since 07 on the job in terms of mining and what the possibilities are. So of course, when people see you on the big screen, it’s always, Hey, that guy, overnight success. He did this whole. But as you and I know, there’s really no such thing. Jensen Wong been at that for 33 years and now everyone’s heard about him the last two or three, they don’t realize what a journey he’s been on. You are on a similar journey. I see great, great things for you as well. Talk a little bit more about that meeting with Secretary Lutnick. What did that evolve into? I don’t want to give away any secrets, but haven’t you partnered with one of the great Japanese training companies? No. Before we get to Japanese, one of the great Korean trading companies to invest in your company and invest in what you’re doing here in the United States?

Mark: We’ve been working on the relationship with POSCO for over a year almost over a year and a half now, two years now. Phenomenal one of the largest steel companies in Korea innovative investors in the rare earth magnet supply chain already. They came to us, they’ve been to our facilities multiple times, and then we signed our MOU with them to build another 10,000 metric ton magnet facility here in the United States. We’ve worked with them to get them to commit to doing that and it’s coming to fruition. We’re working with them every day on it. But their CEO invited me over to be a part of the APEC CEO summit. We flew to Korea and then Secretary Lutnick asked if we could join the meeting with the CEOs of SK, Samsung, POSCO, all these great companies. It was a really cool experience. Just because you see one these great companies talking about what they’re going to do over the next few years. And then Secretary Lutnick really showcasing what America’s about, about exceptionalism, and then about collaboration too. We had the head of Korea trade in there as well and he was a really impressive guy. He was talking about how Korea and US can work together. Because it isn’t. We’re not going to solve it just as the United States. We need access to the materials, we need access to the ore bodies, the recycled content. But he was pretty remarkable. I’ll say that we got invited because of what we can unlock, of how we can work with all these big companies that are doing amazing things.

John: I’m 63 years old now, Mark, so when I was a little boy Panasonic and Sony were the two biggest electronics brands in the world and now as you said I spent a lot of time in South Korea as I have South Korean partners as well. Samsung is number one in the world and LG is number two. Very forward thinking economy when it comes to technology and when it comes to innovation and you were with some of the greatest brands in the world. Posco, Sk, Samsung, I’m sure LG was in the room. Those are some of the greatest brands on the planet, and POSCO has one of the greatest reputations in South Korea. Doesn’t have to get a lot of exposure here in the United States in terms of branding like Samsung or LG, but I know those great people there and what a great partner to have in Posco. Good for you.

Mark: Thank you. [crosstalk]

John: Where will that plant be?

Mark: We’re choosing site location right now. We’re pushing towards the east coast just given the logistics side of it and some of the relationships they have there. We’re hoping to announce that here in the next three to four months.

John: That’s great. I know you also maybe we talked a little bit off the air and also our companies have been known to each other and been in negotiations for quite some time. You also have an amazing partner in Japan. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that relationship came to be and talk about who that is.

Mark: A couple of team members will actually be over in Japan here in the beginning of December meeting with Mitsubishi. We signed an MOU with them. A super strong company that actually what’s cool about them is they know about the resin world and what we do, and then also on the ore bodies and the content creation, one of their partners is a Tochu as well. And so at Tochu actually distributes their residents for them and so we’ve worked with them extensively as well. But really strong. I’m excited about the Japanese and Korean relationships and what they can mean given the technology forefront of what they live in. They’re just phenomenal innovators.

John: Some phenomenal innovators, great businessman and businesswoman reputation, and just wonderful partners. I’ve had Korean partners here at ERI since 2008. I’ve had the LSM&M family, which is the coup family from LG, couldn’t be greater partners for 17 years. So I know you’re onto something big that are going to be, and they think long term. They don’t just partner with you for a year or two. They’re thinking 10, 20 years out with you. So I know you’re in for a long journey with those and can’t say better things about POSCO, Mitsubishi and Tochu. Those are just some of the greatest brands on the planet. Tochu being one of the greatest trading companies in the world, 150 years old at Warren Buffet just recently invested in the last two years. You’ve really set yourself up for amazing things not only here in the United States, but you’re really starting to move into other parts of the world that are like-minded, that can fuel the growth here in the United States, but also fuel the growth in other important parts of the world as well to showcase your great technology. Talk about the United States. Who have you partnered with here? Talk a little bit about Vulcan Elements. How did you make that partnership and how did that come together?

Mark: We actually got approached by Vulcan pretty early on. They came outta the military, so they came outta the defense industry. What was cool about them is they said they were going to make magnets. They came to us and said, Hey, we’re going to build a magnet company. Like okay didn’t know you knew that’s what you did. This is a number of years back. One thing about them is they did what they said they were going to do. They did it every single time. Those are fun guys and gals to partner with in that they had a mission and they had a plan to execute it and they did it. We’ve announced our partnership with them, which we’re super excited about supplying them the oxides that they need. They’re part of this whole partnership with the US government. Then on the feedstock side, working with all those different feedstocks. Because a lot of what we want to do with the Vulcan Consortium partnership is to treat it using recycled content. Making sure we get recycled content back outta the United States and outta the world and feed it right back into their magnet supply chain. One, it also, the heavy rares within those products are very needed within the magnet supply chain today and hard to come by. It’s been an awesome partnership to work with those guys. Because they did what they said they’re going to do and there’s constant communication never a communication gap. We’re always talking about it and that’s how partnerships should work.

John: I know you’re a very humble human being, Mark, talk a little bit about the Tech Leadership award you just won from Purdue University’s Krach Institute. I know that’s a big deal. Share a little bit about that and why that’s so important to you.

Mark: Krach Institute’s awesome. We’ve known about it for a while, actually I’ll say that for about five years we tried to get into the Krach Institute to like to tell them what we were doing. Then we got notified this year that we won that award. That was such a good honor. Mark Verba got on our team, got accept that award because unfortunately I didn’t need doctor appointment. Purdue University is a phenomenal engineering school. Honestly, it’s where the technology came out of, but Mung Chiang, what he’s doing on the semiconductor space to what the whole university’s focused on. They actually put more PhDs have in the military than any other university in the country. Most people don’t know that. It’s such an honor to get Krach Street Award for technology and innovation, but also what they do on the defense side and their leadership that they portray for them to recognize what our technology does is really important. I will say, I mean Jeff Peterson Eding both come out of Purdue University. Jeff was actually traveling in California for another partnership we just signed. Ed just lives in our lab all day long because he just loves to work. But it was really cool that Mark [inaudible] and Ben Kincaid on our team were able to accept that award and be a part of that. And get to meet other entrepreneurs at the event it’s already leading to new leads and new partnerships that we can establish.

John: Good for you and congratulations. This morning while I was prepping for our discussion, which I was so excited about, Jim Lutsky was on CNBC with Jim Cramer, and he was talking about his partnerships with the Department of War and what he’s doing with MP. Talk a little bit about, you’re comparing what you’re doing to what Jim’s doing obviously and talk about the similarities and differences and why you both are going to have big futures here in the years to come.

Mark: What Jim did, Jim took over Molly Corp when it was bankrupt. I applaud what he’s done. Cut from a little bit of the same cloth in terms of how we got into this industry as well. He’s put a lot of money into it. He’s put a lot of effort and blood, sweat, and tears into it. I think he brought a couple of private equity guys to go run a mining operation. I know somebody else that’s done that. It was not an easy task to do. We’re excited about what Jim’s doing at MP. We want Jim to be successful.

John: Sure.

Mark: He’s going full landscape. He’s going all the way across the magnet supply chain. He’s going to go from mines all the way up to magnets. I know he is hiring quite a bit of people. We want him to be successful.

John: Sure.

Mark: We need an industry. We need the whole industry to survive and grow. Where we live we use a different technology, different separation process. I hopefully someday we’ll collaborate on that. We think we can help make his process more efficient. Because we separate and purify, that’s what we do really, really well. That’s what our technology’s known for. It’s very scalable. We’re building out massive capacity. Now, our goal is to be competitive. I want to be bigger than him. I want to produce more oxides than he does. Then I hope he wants to do the same. That if you don’t have competition, you don’t have a game to play. And we come from the sports world that we’re here to play. We’re excited about what he’s doing. We’re excited about what we’re doing. We know there’s room in the market for both companies to be extremely successful and we hope other companies come up too.

John: Absolutely. Our teams have been working together the last couple of years. Talk a little bit about some exciting news that we have. I want you to break it and then we’ll get into it a little bit more and why we’re both so excited about it, Mark.

Mark: John, you’re such an innovative company, what you do. The growth and the leadership throughout not only the United States but the world. To us getting access to a feed stock that can feed into our process very efficiently is a game changer. It’s the heartbeat of what we do. We need the product to refine it. We are super excited to announce our partnership with ERI and what we’re doing together, where you guys are doing the pre-processing aggregation work to feed these high tech products into the magnet supply chain. This is the first large scale project that’s an efficiently driven. Technology, recycled product, going back into new technology products. Then our Department of War partnership that we established is all predicated on signing partnerships with companies like you, and ERI and what you’ve done. But your team has been so strong in terms of working and working with my team to develop a product that feeds into our process efficiently and effectively and the ability to grow this, not only here domestically, but also internationally is something we couldn’t be more excited about. Just working with like-minded people that understand the supply chains, understand the aggregation side. We haven’t worked with a partner like yours since inception that has been so efficient at how you do things.

John: I want to give a shout out like you did to some of your key people, my key team, David Hirschla, Litan Lou, Anthony Borges, they love working with your team. They say our teams in terms of chemistry and DNA are so like-minded. They said it’s been one of the easiest partnerships ever to put together in terms of working with wonderful people. That good on you, that you have really built such a wonderful team. It’s obvious you can’t have partnerships with Mitsubishi, posco, department of War, Vulcan, and not have a team that’s open to negotiation and opportunity and flexibility and all the things that it takes to build. It’s a marriage. Marriage is give and take every day. We are beyond honored and humbled to work with you and to be the first electronic recycling company to have a technology partner like yours that can combust the critical mineral monopoly that China has is beyond an honor. We are so excited about aggregating more material, getting it to your facility here in the United States and eventually around the world and other locations because we do business around the world and we recycle around the world. We’re just so excited for, again, 10 years from now working with you for a long time ahead because this is really one of the paramount issues of our country today, of our world today. Economic security, defense security, military security, and also the Green Revolution is here. The materials you produce are going to be fueling that green revolution and taking it into a new direction, which we all need. So the honors on our side, Mark, and we just couldn’t be more excited and to have you break this today with us at ERI on impact is just beyond a dream come true. I gotta pinch myself sometimes.

Mark: Well, what I would say, John, is that the products that we will produce together. And that is, we can’t do it without you guys, we need these partnerships, we need these relationships to be economically viable. I will say that if you’re in some of the vocations where you’re working globally, we would happily go along with you. We’d be honored to have the opportunity to do so.

John: We’re going to do that together. I’m excited about what you’re doing in Japan because we are coming to Japan next year. We’re going to be opening there and we can’t wait to meet your partners there and work with them as well. Same thing in other parts of the world, the Middle East and other parts that we’re working in. I know there’s a big opportunity for us and a lot of blue sky. But first here in America. You’re building your big plant in Indiana, we have our largest facility in Indiana, which is such a blessing that we’re right down the road from each other. I’m real excited about that. Any final thoughts that you want to leave with our listeners and viewers? I know that you’re in high demand today and this was just taking some of your time to do this interview I’m so grateful for it. Any final thoughts about what’s coming next year and beyond for ReElement in American resources?

Mark: Absolutely. From ReElement and American resource, American resource is going to continually invest in feedstock supply chains, ReElement on the refining side. We have a number of defense primes. We’re working with that work. I have two brothers in the military. So to me, I’m always going to put a plug in for our military and the hard work that the soldiers do and if I can get them products to make their jobs easier and or make our country safer that’s awesome. Hopefully announcing some really nice partnerships here in the next few months with large defense primes that need the products that we can produce to give them that diversification of sourcing is really big. Our goal is to have four or five facilities not only in the US but then also globally. Like I said we have a partnership in Africa, in Japan. My team will be there obviously Korea. We want to follow a little bit of the ERI model if we can a little bit and try to replicate your success. We’re a small company compared to you and you’ve done a phenomenal job of leading the business. We want to try to learn a little bit about how you did it and hopefully learn a little bit from you.

John: That’s great. Where Africa are you working in right now?

Mark: We’re in South Africa with Navarre. So we have a partner that manages pension funds.

John: Great.

Mark: We’ve done a lot of work in West Africa and then Angola we have a mine in Pensana. They’re coming online here shortly. We’ve been working with them to refine their materials and I’ve been to Africa nine times in the last two, three years now. It’s a beautiful continent with a super fast growing population. Maybe we can get you to come there soon too as well to come along with us.

John: That could happen. We’re looking right now down there. So I was just invited recently. I’ve never been. I’m going to follow your footsteps down there. You’ve been there nine times. You got me nine to zero. That’s something that we can definitely talk about more. For our listeners and viewers to find Mark and his great colleagues at ReElement, please go to www.reelementtech.com. Mark, the only thing I’m going to tell you is I can’t wait to have you on repeatedly on the Impact Podcast to continue to share your critical and important journey that you’re on with your partners and colleagues, and how you’re building one of the most important companies for the future of the planet. I just want to say thank you for your time today, but more importantly, thank you for making the world a better and safer place.

Mark: John, thank you so much. Thank you for bringing us on. Thank you for the partnership that we’ve been able to put together, and we look forward to building this together with you.

John: This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent, for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet and your privacy. And is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices please visit eridirect.com.