Apex Critical Metals moved rare earth and niobium exploration forward with eye on domestic supply chains Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock

While the problem has been widely recognized for decades, many of the world’s leading economies seem only now to be taking seriously the need for control over their access to critical minerals for use in everything from high-tech products to military equipment.

If there is a positive side to this, it is that strong markets for precious, base, and other metals mean proper funding is available to explore and develop critical minerals projects in a variety of jurisdictions.

When the goal is to bolster vulnerable supply chains, it is best to be close to home, and in this regard, Apex Critical Metals Corp (TSX-V:APXC, OTCQX:APXCF) seems well-positioned, with carefully chosen rare earth and niobium assets in Nebraska and British Columbia.

Canadian Securities Exchange Magazine spoke with Apex Critical Metals Executive Vice President, Growth Strategy Joness Lang recently about the company’s success in 2025 and plans to progress both projects quickly in the current year.

Apex Critical Metals’ focus on rare earths and niobium has you working in North America, with the potential to help offset China’s and South America’s respective dominance in production and processing.

Around mid-2023, the company went through a restructuring, recapitalization, and total revamp of personnel. The CAP project, located relatively close to Prince George, British Columbia, was the primary focus out of the gate. There was good infrastructure and an emerging niobium belt for targeting that had seen very limited drilling for several years.

Our team did a summer campaign in 2024 involving a lot of mapping and sampling, and we saw some very promising results. We followed up in 2025 and had the best niobium drill hit ever on the property, with 36 metres of 0.59% Nb₂O₅ within a 124.5-metre mineralized interval, including a 10-metre run of 1.08% Nb₂O₅.

Importantly, none of the other drilling in that campaign directly followed up on that hole, so this area is wide open for expansion and an obvious priority for us to go back to next summer.

The company also had intimate knowledge of the Elk Creek carbonatite complex in Nebraska, as members of our team originally assembled a land package there 15 years ago within a company that went on to become NioCorp Developments. This was not a reactionary acquisition based on recent narratives and geopolitical vulnerability. Our team spent more than a year assembling and consolidating the Rift Rare Earth Project land position after reviewing countless carbonatite targets in North America and prioritizing the Elk Creek area.  That was one that was always on our radar screen.

Our technical leadership includes Jody Dahrouge and Darren Smith, who have been focused on critical metals, including niobium and rare earths, for two decades. They bring a wealth of experience, from discovery to processing, that will be invaluable as we advance our flagship Rift project.

Carbonatite-hosted mineralization globally has the highest percentage of mines, be it past production, current production, or current resources. They are a prolific host rock for minerals, and there is a grocery store of commodities and minerals within them. We are very excited about the land package we have next to NioCorp in Nebraska.

Having a successful project next door is definitely helpful. Tell us more about that aspect and the local operating environment in general.

One of the advantages Apex has going forward is NioCorp securing significant funding, very much being in the spotlight and knocking down a number of the different development and permitting goalposts as they advance their deposit. Certainly, if we are having exploration success right next door, it puts us in a very good position to explore synergies and follow a streamlined permitting path.

It is also private land, which provides other advantages. You are not working with the U.S. Forest Service or navigating Bureau of Land Management permitting. These are private lease deals with options to purchase that we have secured over the past year. The land position now stands at 3,500 acres in holdings that cover globally significant rare earth mineralization. There are two previously drilled holes located 160 metres apart that encountered broad intervals of more than 2% rare earth oxide (REO) mineralization. Both of these drill holes also included consistent higher-grade intervals within, with 55-metre to 70-metre runs of over 3.3% REO.

These two significant, consistent drill hits remain wide open with no other drill holes in the immediate area, so this target area will be the primary focus for the company in Q1. We will be completing a first phase of drilling that will look to verify, extend, and expand upon those significant historical results over an approximate 850-metre strike length.

Let’s turn our attention to CAP. It is located in northern BC but you can still access it throughout the year.

CAP is about 250 kilometres southeast of Taseko’s niobium deposit. That’s a big company with other assets and it’s not necessarily their flagship, but it is a well-known belt in BC. The project is located 85 kilometres north of Prince George. It is accessible year-round, though we typically like to do our drilling and more significant work during the summer, as it is easier and lower cost.

There is a 1.8-kilometre trend identified at CAP. We drilled nine holes for just over 2,300 metres this past summer and made a new discovery: 36 metres of 0.59% Nb₂O₅, including 10 metres of 1.08% Nb₂O₅. The other drill holes were regionally focused, testing various targets throughout the trend. The hole I just mentioned with the 36-metre run had no direct follow-up, so that is an area that is wide open for us to go back and step out from later this year.

In addition, we completed a geophysical survey at the end of the summer season, which identified a massive buried magnetic anomaly that is much more significant in terms of its response and scale than the areas we drilled in 2025. A couple of deeper drill holes will also be planned to test that very compelling target later this year.

Rift will see much of the Q1 work and plans for CAP feature in the summer. What other activity will take place in 2026?

Rift is without question our primary focus, and from the time we put together that land package, we have been moving as fast as we can. We completed a strategic financing of $10 million that brings our cash position up to around $14 million.

We partnered with the Conservation and Survey Division, School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln to complete re-logging and re-assaying work of the preserved drill core from Molycorp's work in the 1970s and 1980s. It is rare and a huge benefit to have access to the original drill core, given the vintage of some of that drilling, so we are grateful to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for being the custodian of that drill core. We should have those results later in Q1.

We have been working to incorporate all of the historical data that we can into a 3D model. We’ve got our permit for drilling and secured the same drill contractor that completed much of the drilling at NioCorp’s neighbouring project.

Drilling should commence by the end of January, with roughly 8,000 metres over 10 to 15 drill holes planned, with the program running for the better part of three months. On the back of that, getting assays and really understanding the mineralization controls will position us for a follow-up Phase Two program, with the objective there being more resource-definition–focused. We are trying to rapidly advance Rift to a maiden resource stage by Q1 2027.

Is there anything we have missed?

I think it is probably just the growth side of the equation. We appreciate the need to secure domestic supply to reduce reliance on other parties, but the demand for permanent magnets is expected to more than triple by 2040. The growth in the electric vehicle space is well documented, but applications span renewable energy, robotics, consumer products, electronics, defence – the list goes on, and rare earth magnets are indispensable and vital to industry. Demand projections, coupled with the challenge of finding economic concentrations that can be efficiently processed, let alone on North American soil, create a significant opportunity for us at the Rift project, and one we are excited to take on in 2026.