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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Avalon Rare Metals Inc. president Don Bubar rarely does a presentation without pulling out the periodic table.

Premier Bob McLeod, left, and Tony Clement, federal Minister of Industry, Tourism, and Investment visited Avalon Rare Metals Inc.'s rare earths exploration project site at Thor Lake, approximately 100 km southeast of Yellowknife Monday.- Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo

Such was the case on Monday when Avalon hosted federal cabinet minister Tony Clement on a tour of the junior exploration company's Nechalacho rare earths project, located 100 km southeast of Yellowknife with a delegation that included Premier Bob McLeod and territorial cabinet ministers David Ramsay and Tom Beaulieu.

"I'm not trying to put everybody to sleep," Bubar said about his use of the periodic table to underline the value of the light and especially the heavy rare earth deposits at the flagship rare earth elements project during a presentation.

"It's the centre of the universe when it comes to rare earths, so it's great to see," Clement said as he examined core samples taken from the deposit more than 200 metres underground. "It's very promising."

While China, the "elephant in the room in the rare earths world" is currently the major global producer of rare earths, Bubar presented Nechalacho as what could be the centre for the valuable "heavy" rare earth elements outside of China, which include europium, terbium and dysprosium - elements increasingly in demand for green technologies such as fluorescent lamps, electric motors and batteries.

As Clement toured the Nechalacho site, he took interest in the uses of the deposit's resources for products associated with renewable energy and environmental products, calling the development a "win-win.

"I wanted to get a sense of some of the great development in the NWT and I'm a big believer in seeing with my own eyes," said the president of the federal Treasury Board. "You can be through all those presentations and see the slide decks, all the charts and graphs, but actually physically seeing the core samples, it leaves an indelible impression on me and it allows me to do my job better when I'm back in Ottawa."

Considering that the permits needed to eventually take the project to its late 2016/2017 production target date must be granted by the minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, "it's always valuable to have a minister of the Crown, especially a senior cabinet minister that has a lot of influence at the cabinet table on government policy moving forward" visit the site, Bubar said.

"In my view, the more senior cabinet ministers that are familiar with the project, the better off we'll be when it comes to getting the go-ahead to move forward," he said.

Clement heard the importance of getting the niche market of rare earth commodities to market first from Bubar, who has already seen a setback in the timeline to get the project to production, due to the complicated extraction process of the minerals.

Pushing the production start timeline to late 2016 from 2015 caused Avalon's stocks plunge below $2 after trading in the $2.50 to $3 range before the announcement in May.

Bubar does not think the timeline extension really affected the project's place in the race to get rare earths to market because the company still boasts the most advanced rare earths project outside China, only behind U.S.-based Molycorp Inc.'s Mountain Pass Project and Lynas Corp.'s Mount Weld project in Australia - both scheduled to reach production within the next two years.

Bubar also updated the city's business community on the Nechalacho project Tuesday at a Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Shares of Toronto-based Avalon Rare Metals Inc. closed at $1.51 on Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

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