Voyageur Advances Bayer Collaboration and Critical Minerals in the American Pharmaceutical Industry

[music] >> Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Brent Willis from Voyager Pharmaceuticals. And Brent, I'm really looking forward to this update today. Um barium contrast, iodine contrast company from earth to the bottle. Uh let's get an update on how things are proceeding with Bear. >> I think things are proceeding very well with Bear. Uh we're just advancing to um We just completed our work plan with Bear's. So they've approved it and we're moving forward with uh getting the next tranche of uh $1 million to come in to fund the project. We uh set up our our little lab in Houston. It's uh fully operational. Uh we are building our field units to go out and test brine waters with the Mueller process. Uh the construction of that trailer is is a trailer mounted unit is uh scheduled to be completed by the end of August. And uh we'll be out testing in the field. That's going to allow uh Fluor Engineering to accumulate the data they require to scale up and and complete our feasibility study for the projects. And uh upon completion of feasibility, then Bear will move forward with uh an off-take to fund the CapEx that uh Fluor creates off that feasibility. And uh we'll be moving forward with building that whole project out to provide iodine pearl for Bear to ship to their plant in uh Germany. And uh Voyager will retain 20% of that production for our own use, where we can uh sell it at spot price. The current spot price for iodine is $74,000 a ton. So that will start generating revenue for us uh in the near term with Bear projects. And uh we also use that 20% to feed into our iodine drug manufacturing facility where we can begin producing iodine drugs from the the bear project. And in parallel we'll be moving forward building out our own iodine and barium manufacturing facility for iodine barium contrast drugs. And we'll be deploying our own muller units out to the field to increase our uh production rates of producing iodine drugs through that facility. >> So we were talking at the beginning of investor talk about how when the world is looking at the demand for critical minerals, they don't necessarily think of the pharmaceutical industry and the impact that happens with these critical minerals with increasing geopolitical tensions. Can you explain that to our audience why they should be looking at Voyager Pharmaceuticals and why you're one of the most exciting supply chain solutions for the critical minerals market? >> Certainly. So these minerals are you know North America is 100% import dependent on these minerals. And and these drugs that are manufactured from these minerals are we you know barium contrast is uh is manufactured by Bracco in Montreal. They originally they they bought out a company called EZEM Canada where they had their own mine in Brookville, Nova Scotia. Since then that mine has uh has gone dry and they they had to pivot to uh uh synthetics or sub barium sulfate. And uh so having our own barium resource that's pharmaceutical grade in the ground gives us a significant advantage in in cost savings and supply chain security and allows us to be the only producer of barium contrast in North America with our own source at very low cost and secure supply chain. and with iodine iodine's uh we are 100% import dependent on iodine drugs into North America. Iodine is uh produced out of uh majority's out of Chile through their uh their nitrate ore mining process and uh roughly 20% or more comes out of Japan through uh oil field brine water. And there is some brine iodine production in the United States, but it's all being used for uh industrial uses. So, we're looking at uh producing our own iodine with our our technology, we call it the Mueller process, to extract iodine and uh create uh pharmaceutical grade iodine for Bayer and also uh produce the pharmaceutical grade iodine for Voyager to produce iodine drugs and build the first uh US-based radiology drug manufacturing facility, uh which will provide uh United States with secure supply chain for these critical drugs that uh uh we saw some serious uh issues back in COVID as an example. So, uh when we looked at uh what happened in COVID on the iodine drug side, uh United States lost 50% of their supply cuz uh GE uh had to shut a plant down in Shanghai, China. And uh when you look at that, uh losing 50% of your supply, that cost a lives of a lot of Americans by uh not being able to get their CT scans to diagnose whatever disease that they were they were fighting and uh that's what we're trying to to ensure never happens again is that uh we secure an iodine supply in a market that's over $2 billion in the US to ensure that uh we are are 100% isolated from uh geopolitical issues that we're seeing around the world for drug supply in this segment of the drug industry. >> We are so delighted my how you have been progressing Voyager Pharmaceuticals forward for the shareholders. I don't usually ask CEOs to do this, but you have a wonderful slide and this is this is a bit of a complicated story. Would you mind sharing your vertical integration slide and can you just walk us through it, please? >> Yeah, so what you see on the on the top is Voyager's uh pharmaceutical plant that we plan to build where we are bringing our concentrated or from Francis Creek, shipping it down to a site in the US where we're going to build this facility. We'll process that that barite into pharmaceutical grade barium API which will go in and to our different product lines. So, we have five health Canada licensed barium contrast products. We're moving forward with the FDA currently. Expect to get FDA licensing potentially by Q2 of next year. And on the iodine side, we have our Mueller processing technology where we can extract iodine from oil field brine waters and um and produce the iodine we need to produce our own drugs. On the bottom that slide, you see that Bayer is the Bayer project where we partner with Bayer. We're going to provide Bayer with iodine pearl and uh and we're going to produce iodine pearl for Bayer. They will finance the capex on that project and we'll be allocated 20% of the production which comes back to Voyager where we can sell it at spot price which currently is at $74,000 a ton and or use it to produce our own drugs. So, that is that is our what we're moving forward with for our final feasibility study that'll be published by Q2 of 2027 potentially. We have Fluor Engineering working on that. Um So, we're at a stage right now where we're moving forward with our our feasibility final feasibility studies for the Frances Creek project where we have a pre-feas coming out uh potentially in September. Uh that's going to add some significant value for our shareholders. Uh we're we're going to file a patent on what we call our streamline iodine drug process. So, we have a new method of producing iodine drugs where we believe we're going to cut the costs 50% lower than our competitors. It's going to give us a a huge advantage on our marketing and uh market growth into the iodine space. Um and uh we're going to produce a pre-feas internal pre-feas on that uh in the coming months after we file our our streamline patent. Um and uh we have our Bear deal where we're going to be producing a a final feasibility on that project as well. These These final feasibility studies should all be published here uh within Q1 Q2 of uh 2027. >> A quick question for you with regards to your vertical integration slide. In it, you you have your contrast uh facilities and you put a news release out about 4 weeks ago saying that you're evaluating three locations in the United States for these integrated iodine and barium contrast media manufacturing facilities. Can you tell us a little bit more about this process? >> Yeah, we're you know, what what's going to determine where we set up will be uh you know what what benefits who will give us the the greatest benefits from these uh, different communities we're talking to. Um, location to uh, iodine resource. So, we're we're we're starting this project by uh, using produced waters from water disposal companies. But, longer term we're looking at uh, securing our own resource so that uh, we're not dependent on uh, third-party waters. Um, as we saw in the past um, the iodine producers in the um, US who are tied to water disposal companies, when the price of oil drops, then there's no production. And uh, we don't want to be in a position where we can't uh, uh, secure resource. So, longer term we're going to end up with our own field that we're analyzing several areas. So, there's several components on where we're going to pick our our area of uh, to set up our plant. So, uh, once we get uh, all our water sampling uh, program completed here, so we are sampling different areas uh, looking at different grades, looking at uh, which water disposal companies uh, are the best fit for us to work with. And uh, who can supply us high grade for uh, with high volumes. And uh, so there's a lot of different uh, aspects to look at prior to selecting that site. But, we we should have that all pinned down by Q4 this year. >> Well, we certainly see an incredibly busy fall for everybody involved in Voyager Pharmaceuticals. And for those of you interested in learning more because there's a lot to follow in Voyager Pharmaceuticals, please go to the following website. Thank you, Brent, for joining us today. >> Thank you. >> Mhm.