Non-executive directors Margie Johnson and Tony Sgro. Annie Liu, based in the U.S., is with us via Zoom. Dr. Regan Crooks is traveling and sends her apologies. Also with us is the company secretary, Richard Edwards. Steven Boyd, the company's auditor from KPMG, is attending by Zoom. Today's meeting has been convened in accordance with the Corporations Act. The notice of this meeting has been sent to shareholders and is taken as read. I'll now briefly outline the voting and discussion procedures for today's meeting. All resolutions today will be decided by way of a poll, including valid proxies submitted before the meeting. When you registered your attendance this morning, you were issued with an attendance card. People with a blue card are shareholders entitled to vote at the meeting.
You indicate your voting by marking the for, against, or abstain box on the back of the blue card for each resolution. Your blue card will be collected by a Computershare representative acting as scrutineer at the end of the meeting. The formal results of the poll will be notified to the ASX after the meeting and will be posted on the company's website. As Chairman of the meeting and having been appointed as proxy for shareholders entitled to vote, as stated in the notice of meeting, I will vote all directed proxies in accordance with the directions provided by shareholders. Where authorized, I will vote all undirected proxies in favor of all resolutions. I now propose to deal with the formal business of the meeting. Following that, Rob Williamson will give a short presentation on the company's activities.
Shareholders are welcome to ask questions during the meeting regarding the formal business of the meeting or the company's activities. The meeting is also being webcast, and shareholders not able to be here in person were invited to submit questions in writing to the company secretary ahead of the meeting. A slide summarizing the proxies received will now be displayed.
Do you want me to do that? Slides.
Okay. The first item of business is to receive and consider the company's annual report and statutory statements for the year ended 30 June 2025. Are there any questions in relation to the financial statements or the report? If there is no discussion, we can record that the annual report and statutory accounts have been received and adopted. Resolution one is set out in the notice of meeting is to consider as a non-binding ordinary resolution the adoption of the remuneration report as set out in the company's annual report. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll open for resolution one. Could you please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution one on the blue card?
Resolution two is set out in the notice of meeting is an ordinary resolution to consider and if thought fit to re-elect Rimas kairaitis as a director. Rimas is required by the Corporations Act and the company's constitution to retire and offer himself for re-election. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll for resolution two open. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution two on the blue card provided. Resolution three is set out in the notice of meeting is an ordinary resolution to consider and if thought fit to re-elect Tony Sgro as a director. Tony is required by the Corporations Act and the company's constitution to retire and offer himself for re-election.
Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll for resolution three open. Could you please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain boxes for resolution three on the blue card provided? As resolution four is in relation to myself, I'll hand the chair to Rob Williamson.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Resolution four, as set out in the notice of meeting, is an ordinary resolution to approve for all purposes the grant of performance rights to Mr. Norman Seckold under the company's incentive performance rights plan on the terms and conditions described in the explanatory memorandum. Are there any questions or comments in relation to the resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll for resolution four open. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution four on the blue card provided. I will now hand back to the Chair.
Thank you, Rob. Give people time to vote, and we'll move on. Resolution five as set out in the notice of meeting is an ordinary resolution to approve for all purposes the grant of performance rights to Mr. Rimas Kairaitis under the company's incentive performance rights plan on the terms and conditions described in the explanatory memorandum. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll for resolution five open. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution five on the blue card provided.
Resolution six as set out in the notice of meeting is an ordinary resolution to approve for all purposes the grant of performance rights to Mr. Robert Williamson under the company's incentive performance rights plan on the terms and conditions described in the explanatory memorandum. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? The proxy votes received on this resolution are currently displayed on the screen, and I declare the poll for resolution six open. Please record your vote by placing a mark in the for, against, or abstain box for resolution six on the blue card provided.
Thank you.
Speak one second.
Of course. No problem.
Are there any more cards in the room?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the formal part of the meeting, but I'd like to ask Rob Williamson to give us a presentation.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I begin, I just wanted to acknowledge the work and commitment from Mr. Rimas Kairaitis, both in his capacity as Managing Director up until February of this year and his ongoing work in his capacity as Executive Director and Chief Commercial Officer. Both Remus and I have been lock-step in delivering the best outcome for this business, and we're unwavering in relation to that. With this in mind, there is some irony in the number of votes against resolution two. I will leave it at that and move on. Just a quick catch-up in relation to what the business is really trying to do. We've become a significant materials business, specialty materials business, and we are leveraging some exceptional technology that is using sort of minerals processing technology, but in a manufacturing mindset.
To that end, I just want to reiterate the fact that this is not a resource business. We're not attached to the resource industry in that regard. We just leverage some of the technology and how we do it. We're commercializing that technology through our HPA First project in two stages. Stage one is well and truly in production and running swimmingly, and stage two is well into construction. A few highlights for the year. I think the emergence of Alpha's products as critical materials in the semiconductor sector has been absolutely stellar this year. We've been always looking at it. It goes right back to when Remus and I met with some businesses in the U.S. in 2021. It really has come out in this last 12 months, in particular in relation to the application of materials in thermal fillers for AI chipsets.
We can explain a little bit of that later on. I think this piece of information in particular is really a key driver for shareholder value in the coming sort of 12 months. The whole process is technically driven in terms of technical qualification. As we continue to work with customers and drive that technical qualification, the stickiness that follows with those customers being locked into us is a considerable source of value for the business. For the stage two project, I think we're very satisfied with the progress that we've had there. I've got some really great show and tell slides here in a minute. The concrete works have started, and they're on track. We've had delivery of the solvent extraction technology and some large tanks, all of the large sort of reagent storage tanks that are related to the Orica partnership.
They have all arrived in Gladstone and are in the process of being moved to site by way of barge and truck. I think just it bears commenting that the business has actually sort of built its own in-house EPCM company, in effect. Why that's significant is that the value that's creating for us in relation to the efficiency in which they work, they're incentivized with all care and responsibility as opposed to the more traditional approach of working with an EPCM and contractor where it can be all care, but not necessarily all the responsibility, if you know what I mean. We are very excited with the way in which we've motivated the team to deliver the project as efficiently as possible.
We are working alongside Sedgman and Prudentia as the main engineers, but we have an in-house significant sort of procurement construction management team that is operating and driving home value for the project. Stage one operations also had a fantastic year, both in terms of safety with no recordable injuries and consistent sort of production, if you will. About 90% of what we're producing under stage one is sold as an ongoing concern, and probably 70% of that is for ongoing consumption and use as opposed to technical qualification. We continue to work with our customers in relation to that, and it's proving a key sort of success factor in the business's ability to move through technical qualifications, show our customers our ability to scale and build out that supply chain.
We also successfully converted the QIC government funding, the Queensland Investment Corporation, which is basically the sort of pension for the Queensland government. That funding of AUD 27 million has also hit the accounts. We are pretty happy with that. They work very closely with Nathan EFA in relation to that, and they very much sort of are inside the tent with us on all support needed. Of course, technical qualifications is going really well with the customers. We have got about 65% under LOI at the moment for stage two plant capacity. As I mentioned earlier, the qualification process that we are in is delivering, and our customers can continually confirm the performance, the outperformance that they get with our materials compared to other incumbents.
There is a number of LOIs right now that we have in draft and some other sort of firmer contracts that we work on for stage one that will flow into stage two. Finally, the work we have been doing alongside, it is no mean feat, but the activity that we have to do to ultimately financially close with Nathan EFA, there is a number of conditions precedent that we have been working on. We have been ticking those off and expect to achieve those by end of Q1, calendar Q1, early Q2 next year. So couple of photos for you to see. This is stage one, obviously in the corner there. In stage two, you can see the large slab, if you will, on the bottom right. That is the solvent extraction foundations.
Up in the sort of middle section there towards the road towards Orica is the Orica reagent area and the storage. All those things are ready to receive the tanks that I mentioned earlier. This is a good sort of establishing shot. You can see the solvent extraction equipment there on the bottom left. That's that foundation that I was referring to. It's quite high. It's about sort of six, seven meters in the air when it's all done and dusted. We're in the process of letting a contract for the main pipe rack. There's quite a significant amount of work in that, and all of that is being modularized for us at the moment. A few more shots there. You can see some close-ups of the foundations. These other shots are actually of the SX equipment that was sort of what they call a workshop fitting.
They just make sure it all sticks together before they pack it back up and put it on the boat to come out here. Speaking of boats, we just had this dedicated vessel that was completely full with our equipment. You can see the green tarps as the solvent extraction technology, plus there are some other blue tarps buried in the holds. Those big blue ones are the large tanks that have been fabricated, partially fabricated. These are like twin cans. They stack on top of one another to form a single tank. The strategy here is that initially this was going to be multiple components that would come in sheets that have been pre-rolled.
We work closely with our contractors, and we have established a way in which we can basically bring these tanks in two pieces, which is, again, one of those examples of where we are creating value in the project by thinking through, looking at the constructability, working with the local council to be able to ship something that large through the streets. That will reduce time on site, which reduces the risk of injury, but more to the point, increases or helps to accelerate the schedule as best we can. A couple more shots there of the float. This is just one of the storage areas. Some of the little bit more detail around that. You can see these columns here on the bottom left that have been constructed at night. They are about four meters tall, and then the solvent extraction equipment will actually sit on top of that.
Some more of the equipment that I can't tell you what it is. It's really cool, though, and it'll be coming to site. Then some other switchboards and so on. This is just, I guess, a good sort of example of the kinds of materials and the quantities that we're shipping out. We're shipping out sort of by the ton, a couple of tons a month nominally that's going to our customers dominantly in Korea and Japan, but also across to the United States as well. They are all bound, with the exception of that photo in the middle, all of that material is bound for the semiconductor sector, either as thermal filler or as CMP. I won't spend too much time on this. I think it's taken as read that people understand or see that the technology works.
I just wanted to sort of highlight the first three steps in our process, which is the aluminum solvent extraction, the aluminum nitrate crystallization, and the HPA precursor precip. This is the core part of our process, and this is the IP that is delivering what is starting to emerge as a monopolistic material, particularly for AI thermal fillers and as a heat sink for the cold plate on a semiconductor. As we continue to work with our clients, that seems to be the ongoing emerging situation, and I'll get into that in a little bit. Just a quick reminder about what's different about us and why it works so nicely is this is just simply illustrating where we sit in the supply chain for aluminum production more broadly.
Across the top, you've got the classic supply chain of bauxite through to aluminum refinery, then the calcination, then smelting into purified metal. That purified metal forms the feedstock of our competitors. We see our competitors that are those that are already in production, and they're hamstrung by the availability of that type of that metal that meets their requirements. There's not so much ability to purify their material within their process compared to us. Of course, their unit cost is a lot higher, $12-$15 per kg. Meanwhile, we take our material from the aluminum hydrate stage, which is pre-calcination, smelting in the normal aluminum supply chain. That comes into our processing, and then we're able to deliver a much more pure material and at a much lower cost.
It's one of those rare situations where it's greener, cheaper, and better, and we're not reliant on a green premium to nail the commercial outcome. Just a couple of comments about what is really emerging for us, as I say, a potential to be quite a significant outcome in terms of we're the only company in the world that can deliver this type of material at this quality for this market. This comes down to the issue of cooling on AI semiconductors. The chart on the right and the top right is representing the thermal coefficient, the thermal heat transfer, if you will, of high-purity alumina versus high-purity silica, which is the incumbent material. There's a move towards using more thermally conductive materials because the limiting factor on the compute that comes out of these AI data centers is heat.
The cold plate, which the cold plate is that black surface on that image of that chip, that sort of diagram there, that is the connection point for the ability to heat exchange the heat away. The more heat you can pull out, the faster you can pull it out, the more compute the data center can get, and that drives better value for the data center. By moving to high-purity alumina, it can introduce this other issue of this material of uranium and thorium, which is present inside the alumina naturally, and that uranium and thorium causes issues with the chip's performance. Quick calculations, actually, not quick. This thermal filler demand model is something we've put together that is really connected to a combination of AI data center growth.
More importantly, it's something I've put together as a ground-up fundamental analysis of the number of chips being produced, the number of servers in the rack, and then the number of servers flow through. We've considered the die size, the volume, etc. This gives us sort of what we're seeing, potentially 8,000 tons per annum of the material by 2030. And that's obviously, this is on the assumption that it's fully adopted. We're obviously working with our customers on how the adoption can marry into that. What we see with these numbers is consistent with the feedback we get from our customers as well. A quick comment about, well, where does this material actually sit? That image on the right is a typical AI GPU. It actually is a Blackwell B200 NVIDIA GPU for what it's worth.
You can see where our material is sitting on the chip in two different locations. There is encapsulation of the high bandwidth memory and the GPU itself, as well as the CPU, which is the CPU sitting in the middle section on the bottom part of the GPU. Why this is important in terms of the low alpha, low thorium is it's all about alpha radiation, not to be confusing. Alpha radiation causes what they call bit flips or soft errors, which basically reverses the polarity and it attracts an electron or detracts from an electron, which causes the switch to switch the other wrong way and creates an error in the chip's performance. This is fundamentally a reliability issue. The heat dissipation improves the reliability.
Having the low uranium and thorium and therefore zero alpha emission dramatically improves the reliability, and it's particularly important on these single-digit nanometer nodes or technology nodes, as they're called. Our material, as we currently see from all of the discussions we have with our customers, is the only material that can meet that super ultra low alpha specification as seen here on this chart. Quick examination of the supply chain. You can see here we are producing powders that go into these spherical alumina companies that do the sphericization, and then they turn it into advanced packaging, which then goes to the semiconductor integrated device manufacturer or the foundry, such as TSMC. We're also seeing some emergence of the adoption of the material in what they call OEM components for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
This is, again, an area where they're focused on reducing that alpha radiation exposure to the chip while it's in fabrication. Still early for us at the moment, but we're working through that. This is just the supply chain that we're working at the present. We've got a key customer in Japan. This customer is actually probably the gold standard for these materials and are considering how they can scale up and wanting us to scale with them as we already have plans to do. That goes into, as I say, an epoxy molding compound OEM and through to a semiconductor foundry based in Taiwan. Down the bottom, the Korean groups, this is essentially a high bandwidth memory story. This is in conjunction. The two chips go together, the GPU chip and the high bandwidth memory.
They work together that allows for the parallel processing that happens that is a key enabler of artificial intelligence. There is the other sort of key exposure to the semiconductor sector is around our performance of our materials in chemical mechanical planarization. This is basically the process of polishing the wafer, but also polishing the various stages of the construction of the chip. Initially, this has been a key focus on hard carbon surfaces such as silicon carbide and also sapphire and gallium nitride type chip surfaces. Now we are also seeing it emerge as a polishing material for other hard carbon surfaces for what we believe to be high bandwidth memory.
What is really important about that is that the use of our material is to clean and wipe polish the dielectric hard surface while leaving behind a good quality finish of the metal in that stage of the chip's construction. As an example, that could be copper. Copper is obviously a very soft metal, but our material is, whilst it has the capacity to scratch it, it is not causing too much of a problem with that, but they can use it for the hard carbon for the high bandwidth memory. This is a sort of a new sort of market within the broader CMP market that is opening up for this at the moment. The supply chain is pretty straightforward. We are either supplying our powder or a slurry.
We'll be receiving some equipment from the U.S. to produce actual wet slurries of our nano alumina, and that will go to our CMP slurry manufacturers. They do their little dressing to it, and then it ends up in the hands of the semiconductor OEMs themselves. It is a very, very straightforward supply chain, this one. A couple of words on Alpha sapphire. We still continue to proceed with that. It is a little bit of a slower burn than what we'd initially imagined. However, we've just recently received further requests for wafers into one of our clients in Europe. We continue to work through our qualification process for this. This is all about supplying power semiconductors ultimately for EVs, EV battery packs, fast chargers, etc.
We continue to work on this, and the equipment is running all the time in Gladstone, and we're pretty pleased with where that's going. It's just not going to be for micro LED at this stage. That technology is taking a little bit longer to roll out as it was initially envisaged. Just a quick recap of really our technological advantage. I haven't touched too much on direct lithium extraction except to say we're still quite bullish around the view around the performance of the material. We are working with a number of counterparties that are quite keen to understand why they see the outperformance. They're working through their qualification for DLE. That, along with the thermal fillers and CMP, we see as a significant driver and a rationale for a stage three Alpha Polaris project. That work is continuing as we speak.
The study is going well, and we're looking to see what the opportunity might look like for that. Our rationale, if you will, for a stage three facility is stronger now than what it was when we initially kicked that exercise off. We are quite confident in relation to that. Few other comments in relation to the marketing effort. As Rimas and the team have been doing a fantastic job, we have quite a number of people now within Alpha working on this, and they're seeing a slow sort of a shift in terms of the value of the materials. We're seeing a bit of an upsize. You'll notice in particular, the alumina trihydrate pricing is up from 15 - 23, which is a sort of an average weighted pricing. That's a reflection of the semiconductor materials that are now being bought for that particular product.
Whereas back in the DFS of 2024, that was $15 was a DLE pricing at the time. Some strong pricing coming in, as well as the nano alumina, which is in the slurry form. That is sort of washing through, we believe, into the broader sort of financial metrics of the business. That unit average weighted product price of $24, we think that is sort of nudging up over $25 at this point in relation to the product mix. I think dominantly, as it stands, we expect to be putting a large proportion of the volume of stage two into the semiconductor sector. We expect to be sort of kicking that into play in 2027. I think that is all I have. Thank you very much.
If anybody has any questions, happy to hand over to the floor for anything they'd like to hear, anything they'd like to discuss.
Yeah. Rob, you probably covered it there and doesn't mean we'll speak. Last year, you were very excited about the prospect for the safety covering for the lithium batteries. And suddenly, back right up on that for a reason. Do I need to repeat that?
I heard you. Just for the benefit of people online, a gentleman asked about lithium-ion battery safety technology, which was something we were quite strong on this time last year. I just should add that we are continually working with our customer in relation to that. We are in a second phase of technical qualification with our customer's customer. It is really out of our hands. It is in their hands.
The challenge that we're seeing there is the focus on performance and wanting to see additional performance as well. That is just a process that we're working through. By performance, I mean performance of the battery. The safety certainly seems to be there, but they're wanting to understand more about how they can get more performance out of it. That market is moving very, very rapidly, as you can imagine. We are at their service, and there is just further development to happen there. In the meantime, we're seeing such significant value coming out of the semiconductor sector that that's where we've put our time and effort. I would add that at this stage, the work that we need to do in relation to that battery sector is really in the hands of our customer and their customer at this stage. It's a long process for the automotive sector. We'll wait and see. Thank you.
Thanks. You mentioned you're working through the conditions precedent for the drawdown on the loan. Are you able to expand on how that's going and what those are?
Some of them are sort of administrative in nature a little bit. They're a little bit dry to talk about. Probably an example would be there was one around, it was sort of in relation to engineering, actually, for the project. The initial CP sort of talked about achieving 60% engineering. It seemed like a good idea at the time. As we've worked through the sequencing of the project and how we're running the project, it became apparent it didn't really make sense to use that as a metric.
We've proposed a different approach, which is more about a holistic view on the maturity of the project itself. That has been we're in the process of working through that now, but we anticipate that to be accepted, which will be a much more sort of appropriate way to view the status of the project rather than just being clearly focused on engineering. We want to drive, and the reason that is because we want to drive engineering along the critical path rather than worrying about finishing every single piece of engineering on every single piece of the project when it's not necessary. It's just really how we can deploy resources more efficiently to deliver the critical path. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Now, I was just going to ask, can you give me any further comments on the technology behind this moving of the heat energy out of the chips? Because I understand the current system is they've been using water.
Yeah.
Water and electricity, as we know, is probably not a good mix.
Yeah. Probably the best way to think about it is you've got the semiconductor itself. It has to be encapsulated in a material. That material is 90% our material with a glue around it. That forms the top plate, as they call it, or the cold plate. You could almost imagine it's like we've used the term as like an ice pack, perhaps. It is a flat surface. What they do, there's two forms of cooling. There's air cooling, which is pretty traditional.
Pretty much everybody's computer at home has probably got air cooling. Even so, they attach a heat sink to that top plate that is designed to further conduct the heat away. There's a fan going through fins, just like a radiator. The water cooling approach is actually like a heat exchanger block that has a tube in and a tube out. That block has obviously a very highly thermally conductive face. It's attached with thermal paste to the actual surface of the chip, to the top plate, as it's called. That water is coming in and out and then out to the external of the building. When I talk about water cooling in that context, it's still a radiator, but it's kind of like almost in your car where you've got water channels throughout the block of an engine.
That water goes out and passes through a radiator in the front, and you've got air passing through those fins, and then that gives you cool water that comes back through the engine block. Think of the engine block as being the CPU. That's really not what we do, but that's what the data centers do in conjunction and collaboration with the chip designers and the GPU circuitry designers, essentially. That infrastructure that's there for that is obviously a complex set of pipes and tubing. That's not something we get involved with. What we're providing is a way to transfer more heat more quickly to that heat exchanger point where it comes into contact with the heat exchanger block, and then the water can take the heat out. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah. They can either use air cooling or.
Yeah. If you have air cooling, it's literally like a big heat sink fan thing with a bunch of fins on it and then fans on it that's passing air through. There is a wall of fans that pass through a tunnel. That tunnel is ejecting air out and pulling cool air in, if you know what I mean. I've been in a Facebook data center, actually, back in the U.S. That's exactly how that went. That was an air cooled data center. They sort of structure these data centers in sort of tunnels. They have a rack, a tunnel, and a rack. In that tunnel is the wiring, but also the heat's ejected into that tunnel, and then it's whisked out. Some of it's diverted to heat the property for office, and the rest of it is ejected.
Has the tariff situation given you pauses too with the development of North America? In fact.
We obviously keep.
Generally, the whole tariff situation.
Yeah. We keep a close eye on it. A lot of our material right now is into Japan and Korea. The tariffs in that, by extension, kind of become their problem if those chips are going to the United States. Of course, there is a lot of work being done around that in terms of those types of materials and whether or not they are given certain relief, if you will, in terms of transfer of critical technologies and equipment. As it stands right now, we have not seen anything that is giving us cause for concern in relation to our materials. Technically, I think right now, if we were shipping to the U.S., we would incur a small tariff. I think it would be 10%.
That is not affecting us right now. All those things are sort of washing out at the moment, I think. Yeah, we do not see any. No. That work, we are still in terms of the Polaris project, the Canadian business. That work is still ongoing, the study. I think the work that we are doing there, whether we end up deciding to build there or somebody else, the work we have done on that study will be very transferable to an alternative location if that is what we end up doing. You said it, not me. The gentleman mentioned Iowa. Yeah. I mean, look, I think the thing to recognize with a stage three / Alpha Polaris business is that freight is not a driver for us, right? The key for us is to be co-located with a business such as Orica.
That's the main sort of rationale. Shipping in feedstock, the alumina hydrate feedstock, and then shipping out the product when we're talking 10,000, well, all told, 20,000 tons of ins and outs is not so that doesn't move the needle in terms of the business case. That sort of gets back to the idea this is a manufacturing making specialty materials bespoke to the customer. It's not an I and O business where freight is a key driver of the business's outcome.
Quick question. Would it be true to say that the battery sector is holding back on their LOIs?
At the moment, we're still working through with those battery customers. Their LOI, I guess, will come as and when they feel like they've got qualification on their side. We'll wait and see.
In the meantime, my view is that the battery sector's competition is not other battery makers in terms of Alpha's products. It's the semiconductor market. That's who they're actually competing with, in my view. That's how we think about it.
The semi market is, sorry.
You're on.
Yeah. The semi market, you saw the numbers before. The margins are significantly greater in that area. My personal private belief is that the battery people can test as long as they like. They may find that there's no supply when they get to a decision.
That's exactly right Norman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
At the moment, there is because you've got 35%.
Correct. Correct. But it's not really 35% because there's just a bunch of paper in the system, right?
I think the dynamic that's unfolding with the semi market, particularly thermal fillers, is it's the understanding between the foundry and through that supply chain back to ultimately to us and the recognition of the capacity for everybody in that supply chain, which is really only one other customer, say our customer and us, to scale to service those needs. As the awareness and the confidence in the ability for our customers to scale along with us, those communications are happening with our customer's customer, if you will. That's the phase that we're in right now is creating that certainty that we can deliver that and that our customers can deliver that so that they can over time switch into using high-purity alumina as the dominant heat sink material or thermal filler within that application. There are other alternative materials that are manufactured.
They're a lot more expensive. The market seems to have landed on HPA as the appropriate sort of trade-off between cost and availability of the material and its reliability as well.
Can I just ask about the viability of Rio and the aluminium supply? Because obviously, that's the competitive advantage you've got. We keep hearing about aluminium plants shutting down through the energy costs. Is there security in that supply for you or for us?
Yes. Rio have reiterated on the day they gave us a call directly, but they've reiterated their capacity to supply us as we need. I should point out that we're talking 12,000 tons per annum of alumina hydrate that is what we need. Now, if we had to, in a world where the aluminium industry has somehow collapsed within this country, it would have been an absolute tragedy.
But in that world, we could source material from, say, Indonesia and other parts of the world at minimal increase to the cost. Our overarching cost of feed represents about 4% of the cash cost. If we cop a percent on freight, I do not think that is going to trouble the scorers too much. Of course, when you are talking about a total consumption of sort of 12,000 tons, stockpiling six months' worth is really not a huge footprint either. Again, it is very great. It is great to have Rio Tinto and, for that matter, Queensland Alumina Limited within a 20 km radius of us. It is sort of not as critical to us in a sort of catastrophic situation for that industry, which again, I think would be an absolute tragedy for that to occur.
You have the person right here in the room, Margie Johnson, who's the CEO of the Australian Aluminium Council as a side job, who she'd be happy to talk to you about that offline as well if she's got a deep knowledge of that.
Yeah. Okay.
Thank you very much.
Thanks very much, everyone, for your attendance. Much appreciated.