00:00Give me a flavor of actually what the nature of the partnership is, Maximo.
00:04I mean, it's quite rare that Codelco enters in these kind of partnerships.
00:08So what did you see?
00:09Well, we are partners nowadays with BHP, Rio Tinto.
00:14We are partners with Tech, with the Anglo-American, with Freeport in Chile.
00:20So now we are partners with IPOS and Robert Friedland
00:23because Chile owns the largest copper reserves of the world.
00:28And we know that the world needs a lot of copper, but we need to be competitive.
00:32We need to produce it with less energy.
00:35We need to cut our costs and be sure that we can supply this market at the right cost.
00:44So that's why this will only be done with innovation and new technologies.
00:50So that's why we are partners now with IPOS
00:53because we believe that they are leaders in something that will change the shape of the mining world.
00:59So, Robert, how would you explain Pulse Powered?
01:01I remember actually meeting you in Qatar, you know, in the corridors of the Qatar Economic Forum,
01:05and you showing me how this works.
01:08This is something that you've always believed in.
01:10But what are the applications in the mining world?
01:13Well, Francine, it's great to be back here with you on a show called The Pulse
01:16because our company is called iPulse.
01:19Who came first?
01:20In the entire known universe.
01:22This is the best place to explain Pulse Power on a show called The Pulse.
01:27So we're compressing electrical energy, and among other uses,
01:31we're using it to burst rock or tear it apart from the inside.
01:35For all of the history of humanity, we've crushed rock from the outside,
01:40squeezing rock into little pieces.
01:41Now we're pulling it apart with electromagnetic pulses.
01:45So it's a much more efficient way to get the metal out of the rock.
01:52The act of crushing and grinding rock is using roughly 4% of all the electrical energy in the world.
01:59So it's a green technology, and it results in higher metallurgical recovery.
02:04And we've been developing that technology for some 19 years
02:07with assistance from the French government, even though we're an American private unicorn.
02:13What, Maximo, at what valuation did you buy into the iPulse, and how much do you own?
02:20Well, this is an equity stake that we've taken,
02:23and we will be commenting on this hopefully in the coming weeks.
02:29But it's a significant investment for Codelco.
02:34We're committed to innovate, and I think this is the best way to do it, with partners.
02:41How much do you want to grow this company, Robert?
02:43How big do you think?
02:44I mean, I'm going to try and ask about valuation, but how big?
02:48What's next for iPulse?
02:49So there's three fundamental ways to use electrical energy.
02:52There's direct current, which Thomas Edison was a big fan of.
02:56There's alternating current, which was Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse,
03:00and there's pulse electrical power,
03:03which has been confined mainly to national strategic weaponry and weapons.
03:09But we're dumbing down technology.
03:12In the military, pulse power is used at terawatts,
03:16and we're just playing with gigawatts,
03:18and the power output of a nuclear power plant, approximately.
03:21And the applicability is very broad, not only in mining,
03:25but in manufacturing and a host of other industries, even in agriculture.
03:30So what are some of the other tangible benefits of this technology?
03:35I mean, Robert was explaining a little bit of the convenience,
03:38but how much does it cost, for example,
03:40to produce a ton of copper compared to traditional methods?
03:42Well, I mean, it has a huge impact in our energy efficiency,
03:46and we are very, obviously, intensive in energy.
03:53Also, this has a great impact on sustainability.
04:00This is environmentally more friendly,
04:04the way we can use this technology,
04:07not only in developing our mines, but also in exploration.
04:12I think Chile, as the largest reserves in the world,
04:18is a country that's underexplored,
04:21and we need to increase exploration,
04:24because that's how our business starts.
04:27We start our business with exploration.
04:29So a technology like the one that Robert has been describing
04:34is very, very strategic for exploration,
04:38and therefore, for finding new mines.
04:40This business is not only about buying other assets
04:44or buying other companies.
04:46It's primarily about finding new resources and new reserves.
04:53And I imagine that's much cheaper than the current methods that you have.
04:57Absolutely. It's not only much cheaper, it's more efficient.
04:59You can go deeper, because in the past,
05:02we could find copper very close to the surface of the Earth.
05:05But copper now has lower ore grades,
05:11and it's deeper in the Earth.
05:13So we need to explore, and we need to drill deeper today,
05:19and that's how this technology will help us to find new resources.
05:24And Robert, how much does it cost to deploy this kind of technology,
05:28and will it get cheaper?
05:30Firstly, we want to tell you, this magnificent studio runs on copper.
05:35I'm sure everything runs on copper.
05:36And all this big data, AI, the world runs on copper.
05:38And the price has to be low enough
05:41that humanity can really achieve uplifting 7, 8, 9 billion people on this planet.
05:47So the mining history has been very slow to innovate.
05:50With 19 years of innovation,
05:52we're changing the fundamental way that we get metal out of rock,
05:55not only for copper, but all other metals.
05:58We've been seeing news about critical raw materials on the news every day.
06:03So we're tearing the rock apart.
06:06We put huge shockwaves.
06:09We put the rock in a bath of water.
06:11We put enormous shockwaves through that water.
06:13The rock just pulls apart and liberates the metallic particles.
06:17That could be scaled to produce more metal for the world at much lower cost.
06:23Otherwise, the industry is going to have real problems finding the copper needs.
06:27We're going into deficit in future years.
06:30The world is not producing as much copper as it needs.
06:33Cadelco has enormous lower-grade resources that become more.
06:38They become profitable.
06:39But you have to reduce the energy consumption in the act of mining.
06:44And it's that very copper that we're mining that you need to produce energy.
06:48I mean, the numbers are mind-blowing.
06:50I think about, what, 5% more or less of the world's electrical energy is used for crushing rock.
06:55Isn't that incredible?
06:56To give you an idea, the amount of energy that we use as human beings to crush rock
07:01exceeds the amount of energy for all the world's aircraft flying around.
07:05And we're worried about efficiency in aircraft as well.
07:08Let me comment probably that we had the numbers for the first semester of this year
07:16where the main source of power generation in the world now is our renewable energies.
07:26It's 35% of all of the power generation in the world comes from renewable energy.
07:32And 34% is from coal.
07:35So, we want to continue having renewable energy that uses a lot of copper as well.
07:43And renewable energy needs copper.
07:45So, if we want to speed up the energy transition, we will need also more copper.
07:51Maximo, what's your outlook for the copper industry?
07:55Well, it's obviously a very challenging moment because probably last year,
08:01the main issue for the copper industry was geopolitics.
08:05This year, we are now in London Metal Exchange Week.
08:10This year, the main issue for the copper industry is operational continuity.
08:15Because it's becoming more and more challenging, more and more difficult to find copper and to develop copper mines.
08:24So, we are at this stage facing a very challenging moment where we need to bring more innovation so as to make sure that we can bring, we can have more copper.
08:35And, Robert, I mean, you think this is a revolutionary because also it decreases energy consumption by 80%.
08:41Are there any other new technologies that you see innovating the mining industry?
08:46Nothing to compare to this.
08:48You know, we're in a desperate position for mining metals in the world.
08:53We've mined 700 million metric tons of copper in human history.
08:57We could get it back if we tore down this studio and all the buildings in England and Europe and the United States and China.
09:04We'd get the copper back.
09:06But at the rate that we're consuming copper, our industry has to mine as much copper in the next 18 years as we mined in the last 10,000 just to maintain 3% GDP growth.
09:17We won't get there with the old way we've been mining.
09:20The industry has to innovate, and we need a real step change in energy savings and a greener, more sustainable way to mine.
09:28And that's what we've been working on in this company for about 19 years.
09:32Do you think this significantly changes the future of the mining industry, and how much faster can you find and mine?
09:39Well, I mean, on one side, we can see a very healthy and robust demand for copper.
09:45You just mentioned renewable energy.
09:47It's about electromobility.
09:48It's about AI.
09:52But on the other side, the supply of copper can grow at rates of 2%, 3% per year.
10:01That's what we have seen.
10:02It's very difficult to develop a mine.
10:06It takes more than 10 years.
10:08So it's long planning.
10:10It's a lot of perseverance, patience.
10:12And therefore, we require to be very, very disciplined in this if we want to increase copper production.
10:23I remember last year when we visited the LME week, people were commenting that there was going to be a small surplus of copper in 2035.
10:332035 is almost over, and there is no such surplus in copper.
10:39It's short.
10:40We are short.
10:42You have seen a shortage in copper supply precisely because of the operational continuity issues.
10:49Yeah, I remember having the former head of commodities at Goldman Sachs saying, we're running out of everything.
10:55Robert, what comes next for iPulse?
10:56Are you going to sell this technology to others, or is this, you know, for the moment, are you focusing on Codelco?
11:02No, BHP is a shareholder.
11:04They're the largest miner in the world, as is Rio Tino.
11:07We saw them yesterday during London Metals Week.
11:10Tech Corporation is talking about merging with Anglo as a shareholder.
11:14Newmont, the largest gold producer.
11:16But Chile is the biggest copper endowment in the world.
11:20All the easy copper has already been mined.
11:22We have to go deeper.
11:24We have to mine lower grades.
11:26The Democratic Republic of Congo is now the second largest producer of copper.
11:31However, these two countries have the best endowment.
11:34Peru also has some challenges in growing production.
11:38We just want to tell you that you want to keep the lights out on this planet.
11:42You need copper metal, and somebody has to get out there and find a better way to do it.
11:46iPulse will be at the very forefront of disrupting technology to find the metal by injecting electrical energy into the earth
11:53and lighting it up at depth so we can see it non-invasively,
11:57then crushing the rock, grinding the rock,
12:00and then we're going to go into driving tunnels underground,
12:05and then geothermal power, all from the same core technology.
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