Power, in the rare earth business, isn’t found in the grade in the ground—it’s found in what you can turn that rock into, reliably, at scale, in a jurisdiction that wants the mine built.That framing is why Jack Lifton’s conversation with Mark Tory—President, CEO, and Director of Defense Metals Corp. (TSXV: DEFN | OTCQB: DFMTF)—lands with unusual clarity. Tory is not a newly minted executive discovering the critical minerals script in real time. He has “over 30 years in resources,” he told Lifton, “cutting my teeth at some big companies like Homestake and Anglo American before going into the junior sector.” He spent roughly a decade at Northern Minerals in Australia’s Kimberley region, focused on heavy rare earths, and he has done the kind of work that separates rare earth rhetoric from rare earth reality: “I’m probably one of the few people, Jack, who can say they’ve built and operated a rare earth processing facility.”Defense Metals’ story is anchored at its 100% owned Wicheeda Rare Earth Element mineral deposit in British Columbia—about 80 kilometres northeast of Prince George—where the company is advancing a development plan that increasingly reads like a North American counterpoint to the usual dependency narrative. The project is “readily accessible by a paved highway and an all-weather gravel road,” and it sits near power and transport infrastructure that includes hydroelectric transmission lines, rail, and port facilities at Prince Rupert. Tory, speaking from the operator’s side of the equation, emphasized the practicalities: Prince George is “an existing mining town,” with “an existing workforce,” plus “roads, rail, and access to hydroelectric power.” The rail line’s reach to Prince Rupert—“about 500 kilometres away”—matters not as a brochure detail, but as a cost and logistics lever in a business that can be undone by distance, permitting drag, and processing complexity.Lifton, who has followed rare earth projects long enough to see hopeful flow sheets dissolve into reality, pressed Tory on why he took the helm. Tory’s answer was telling, and it wasn’t a romantic one. “I obviously did my due diligence on the project,” he said, before delivering the point that has become the quiet dividing line between paper deposits and bankable projects: “When you look at rare earth projects, you don’t necessarily focus only on the grade in the ground. You need to look at what it concentrates up to through a relatively simple beneficiation process.” What attracted him to Wicheeda, he said, is that the ore “goes from about 2.4% in the ground to a 50% concentrate grade,” a level he described as “in line with all the major producers around the world—Lynas, MP Materials, as well as the Chinese producers.” The implication is direct: a project that can upgrade material efficiently is a project that can credibly talk about economics—and, eventually, financing.That upgrade path also shapes the way Defense Metals talks about product strategy. In the company’s Preliminary Feasibility Study (PFS), completed in 2025 (with news releases dated February 18 and April 7, 2025), Defense Metals outlined a high-purity product concept that reflects real downstream conversations rather than generic “mixed carbonate” ambiguity. “It’s a very high-purity product,” Tory said, “with cerium and lanthanum completely removed.” What remains, by his account, is a chemistry that markets tend to reward: “That leaves an 87% NdPr and about 12% heavies.” When Lifton clarified the figures, Tory confirmed: “Yes—in the carbonate.” He added a detail designed to resonate with pricing credibility: “When Argus reviewed the final product, it valued it significantly higher than any other project globally, including the heavies.”
