Stuart Gale, Managing Director of Meteoric Resources | Rule Symposium 2026: Rick Rule interviews
Summary
Stuart Gale frames Meteoric's Caldera ionic clay project in Brazil as shifting from resource growth into development, with a definitive feasibility study due shortly.
Its reserve grades over 4,000 ppm (parts per million — rare-earth content per tonne), roughly quadruple what Chinese and Southeast Asian ionic clay mines run.
Gale cites a $1.3 billion NPV (net present value — future cash flows valued today) against $450 million capital, repaying it in just over two years.
Century-old bauxite mining, three-lane highways, and hydro power give this part of Brazil a brownfields cost edge over greenfield builds like the Pilbara.
Pilot-plant work with ANSTO (Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) shows good grades mean little without proven recovery from ionic clays.
Rick Rule's takeaways
- Top takeaway Rule judges Caldera a good project by Jonathan Goodman's standard of at least 2:1 NPV to capital intensity, calling it likely in the best quartile worldwide on return on capital employed and the lowest cost quartile on all-in sustaining costs.
- Rule discloses he has been a Meteoric shareholder for a substantial period and says his symposium admits only exhibitors whose shares he or his sponsors own.
Nomi Prins's takeaways
- Top takeaway Rule recounts that Prins, then one of his conference keynote speakers, was intrigued enough by Meteoric on the symposium floor to visit the project in Brazil and subsequently joined the company's board.
Jonathan Goodman's takeaways
- Top takeaway Rule cites Goodman's classroom teaching that a project with an NPV at least twice its capital intensity is a good project, particularly when it sits in the lowest quartile of the cost curve.