Robin Dunbar

Robin Dunbar is the president, CEO and a director of Grid Metals Corp. (TSXV: GRDM; OTCQB: MSMGF), a Toronto-based junior mining company whose flagship asset is the Falcon West cesium project in southeastern Manitoba. In September 2026, Grid reported a maiden mineral resource for the Lucy South deposit: 51,500 tonnes in the measured category (the highest-confidence class under NI 43-101, Canada's mineral disclosure standard) grading 2.58% Cs2O (cesium oxide, the standard way cesium grades are reported), including a pollucite-rich zone of 15,600 tonnes at 5.19% Cs2O — pollucite being the cesium ore mineral that chemical producers prefer. The company positions Lucy South as the world's second-largest cesium resource in active development by a western-domiciled company, in a market where the United States and several European allies are fully import-reliant. For investors tracking critical-minerals supply chains, Dunbar runs one of the few western companies working to build new cesium supply.

Dunbar has led Grid since 1996 and, by the company's account, has more than 30 years of experience in mine development. Under his tenure the company has assembled one of the largest mineral rights positions in Manitoba — over 250,000 hectares — and attracted major-miner validation: Teck Resources can earn up to a 70% interest in the Makwa nickel project by spending C$17.3 million; Boliden is sole-funding early exploration at the Thompson East copper-nickel property; and Avenir Minerals, a subsidiary of Agnico Eagle Mines, holds 15% of Falcon West with Grid as operator. In 2022, Grid closed C$6.3 million in funding agreements with Lithium Royalty Corp. for its lithium projects. His board record extends beyond his own company: director of McEwen Mining from 2015 to 2025, and of Australia's Western Areas — a nickel producer acquired by IGO Limited in 2022 — from 2005 to 2015. He holds an MBA from Dalhousie University.

His approach is to acquire underexplored ground beside working infrastructure, prove up a resource, and let partners and offtakers fund the next leg. Falcon West, acquired in January 2023, sits 130 kilometres east of Winnipeg along the Trans-Canada Highway, near the Tanco mine — historically one of only three primary cesium mines ever operated, and now China-controlled. In February 2025, Grid announced a cesium purchase agreement with Tanco that included exploration funding for its Donner and Falcon West projects. The development plan is deliberately small-footprint: a near-surface, open-pittable deposit that would be crushed and run through XRT ore sorting (X-ray transmission sorting of ore from waste on a conveyor) to make a pollucite concentrate for cesium chemical producers, rather than building a full downstream chemicals plant.

Following Dunbar's progress is a way to track a rare corner of the critical-minerals market — cesium goes into atomic clocks, 5G infrastructure and defence targeting optics, and global supply is concentrated in very few deposits. The near-term markers are permitting and engagement with the Sagkeeng First Nation and Manitoba regulators, metallurgical results from the ore-sorting program, and winter drilling along the more than one-kilometre Artdon-Lucy pegmatite trend (pegmatites are coarse-grained rocks that host hard-rock lithium and cesium), where the deposit remains open in three directions. His nickel and copper projects, under Teck and Boliden earn-ins, offer a second read on how majors value the Bird River belt ground Grid controls.