We're ready to go. Look, hello, everyone. My name is Bob Katsiouleris. I'm thrilled to be here, thrilled to be here in Sydney, give you all a really good investor update and what we've been doing the last 60 days. Very busy, lots going on, lots going on in the market, lots going on with within Andromeda, and some really good technical news that will really position us going forward. That positioning and how we place our company in this market, which is very unique, is what I want to talk about today, how it impacts our project, how it impacts our plans for the next, the next quarter through the end of the year, and certainly how it plans, how it works into our funding plans and what we want to do in the marketplace.
Thrilled to share all that with you. Questions later. A lot of information to go through, right? And I want to really share the detail of it with you so you understand how important it is to our business and what it means for how we position our company, and what it also means for shareholders, stakeholders, employees, and our future, right? Let's take our time, let's go through the materials, and let's really think about what this means for our future, which I think you'll agree, is very bright. Look, standard disclaimer on forward-looking statements.
There's a lot of work here, has a lot of implications for our business, I'll be very careful in terms of what it means in terms of pricing and price potential, that we'll avoid that, because what's more important to understand is what does it mean from a demand profile for the customers and the markets we want, and how we're going to segment into those markets to create long-term value and sustainable growth, right? Look, really important to start with, you know, our partners, our First Nations, and an acknowledgment of country where we are, Eyre Peninsula. I think paying our respects to the nations that are involved is a very important part of our past, our present, and our future.
I think we'll, you know, I think that, especially on the Peninsula and where we're planning on mining and being long-term partners and owners, both with the landowners and the traditional owners, is a very, very big part of who we want to be in our community. Our team, you know, I think you're across all of the team. I think it's a very good team. I've been in the chair for about two months. Nick, Melissa, and Austen on our board, Sarah, our General Counsel, Tim and Joe Ranford, who's our Chief Operating Officer, has pulled together an outstanding team for ops and for our capital project. James has really taken to the sales and marketing role. He'll be in China on the 17th.
He's busy, he's enjoying it, and we've known each other a long time and been in industrial minerals a long time, and I think we're off to a great start, and it's a great partnership. Good team. We're still actively looking for a chief financial officer. Very important role for our company. I wanna take my time to find the right person to be part of that team, because that role will be absolutely critical, not only as my right hand, but really someone who's gonna represent us in multiple markets, shareholders, financials, stakeholders, the whole thing. Really important that we get that role properly identified and properly filled. What is it that attracted me to be here?
I've known about the Great White deposit for a long time, and I know a couple of very, very basic assumptions and basic things I want to share with you. First of all, it's the last Great White deposit left. It is great because it's unique, right? It will make us the Great White mineral company. That's very, very important, right? A Great White mineral company typically sells to plastics, typically sells to paints, and typically sells to paper. We are not selling to any of those markets. What's really important to understand here is, we're not planning on selling to those markets. That's what makes us great and will make us great, because that's not who we want to be, right? We want to create value and be great in areas that are end-user driven, consumer driven.
For those of you who joined us last night at the Porcelanosa showroom, I think it was an eye-opener for all of you, right? To see that product as driven by consumer, that depends on our product. What's really powerful is not me standing up here telling you that, "Oh, you know what? Kaolin's in short supply, the Ukrainian situation," so forth and so on. I think it's very different when Richard Earp got up last night and said, "You know what? I am the exclusive distributor of Porcelanosa here in Australia, and my biggest worry is kaolin supply to Porcelanosa in Spain." It's very different when he says it and I say it. The market's there. We'll go through the details a little bit later, that's the opportunity for us. That's the vision. How does that come together?
What are the three main pieces of pulling all that together? The Great White Project, commercializing it the right way, and we'll talk about what that means. What does commercializing something the right way means? It means when there's an opportunity in the market, you evaluate it, and if that adds value to your life of mine and your mine plan, you do it. If it destroys value over the long term on a life of mine basis, you don't do it. It's that simple. It's a driving principle of our company and certainly will be forward as we develop this project. We wanna be and aspire to be the best. The best means what? It means the best in terms of supplier of choice, partner of choice, and employer of choice. That's what we aspire.
We aspire to be Porcelanosa supplier, the best supplier to the best porcelain tile maker in the world, that supplies the best tiles to the most important markets in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and across Australia. We can aspire to be that company. That's my message. In the center of all that, is what we wanna do. I'm gonna focus a lot on commercial, on the commercial piece today. We'll talk about the project towards the end, project timeline, so forth and so on. I think I really wanna focus on the building blocks of commercial excellence, right? Commercial excellence just doesn't happen. It needs a lot of work. We spent a lot, you know, the good part of the last 60 days doing that work, motivating the position, building the commercial strategy map that responds and identifies the market opportunity.
A market opportunity is not hope, and it's not luck. It's hard work to identify where you want to play and with whom. Where we are, right? We sort of had a commodity mindset, price sensitive, and we're defining product and market portfolio. What we want to be, I don't want to be the BHP or Rio Tinto of white minerals. I don't. I don't wanna commoditize our product. I like the fact that our product is opaque. I like the fact that the value in use of pricing is for us to determine in terms of the value we're selling to, right? I want to be the supplier and partner of choice to the segments and customers that I want to be, and I've identified them.
I want to be your supplier of choice because I have chosen that segment, and that segment is a ceramic tile and the high end of the ceramic tile market. If it's porcelain tableware, and if it's cement, then there has to be a rationale that I can explain to you, as my shareholders, why I'm playing there. That's the rationale. That's my job to pull that together, right? I have to define the contestable market. Let's talk about that. What do I mean by contestable market? What is the market we're playing in? What's the potential size in that market? What can we get if we accept a certain price point and a certain value? What's the growth, and is it sustainable? Do you wanna be a one-off player? Do you wanna be a spot player, saying, "Hey, you know what?
I have some stuff from the peninsula. Once in a while, I can sell it to Southeast Asia." Great. Is that your business model? Is it contestable? Is it sustainable, and is it strategic? You have to answer those three questions as part of your commercial strategy. That underpins everything you do from the market to the mine. I'm not gonna worry about mine to market response until I can identify where I wanna play in the market. Very important, right? I should be able to explain that to you, my shareholders, to my stakeholders, to my employees, and to the market itself. Last piece, which is very important, we talked about the mine to market to mine balance, right?
The balance has to create value in the mine, the life of mine, the pricing, the value, the costs, the resource that we have, the value of that resource, driven by the market opportunities, has to be accretive when we say: Look, we're gonna play in this ceramic market, we're gonna play in this cement market, we're gonna play in this porcelain market, or we're going to do something different. We're going to play in this huge market, but we're gonna use distribution to address this market, but we're gonna address this market on a direct basis. What's the impact to our mine life? What's the impact to our cash? What's the impact to our working capital? For a young company that's just starting, all those are critical questions driven by your commercial strategy. Our products, right?
What have I done the last 60 days? I said, "Look, for starters, I need to make this simple. I need everyone to understand what is our core focus. What's core? What's complementary? What's adjacent?" High-purity alumina, carbon capture, all of the technologies we've developed at Andromeda are still in play. The IP still belongs to us. For right now, I want us to focus on core and complementary. What's core? Core is our Great White ceramic CRM products. We've tested them. We've benchmarked them. I'm gonna show you the results today. They are world-class. They're world-class for glazes, they're world-class for engobes. They are certainly more than world-class for large porcelain tiles that we saw last night.... Our HRM product for cement is being tested and validated.
We'll have the results of that validation at the end of June, that could be an incredible game changer for us. Why? Because it's low carbon. It decarbonizes the cement and concrete value chain. It allows companies in Europe and the rest of the world that are buying carbon credits, typically somewhere in the EUR 70-100 a ton, to achieve full Scope 3 carbon reduction, somewhere in the 5%-7% range, and their target is 11%. That piece is being developed, it's being validated, and it's gonna be part of our strategy. The rest is adjacent, right? Doesn't mean we won't come to it. We'll come to it when we can afford it, when we're generating cash, and when our core and complementary businesses have grown and are in the position that they need to be in.
You know, how do I look at things, right? What, how do you look, you know, these megatrends and all that, right? Megatrends are important. What's happening in the micro, and micro is important. Megatrends, geopolitical issue in Russia, Ukraine, 3 million-5 million tons of Ukrainian kaolin off the market. Large porcelain tiles are the megatrends. No one wants to use stone anymore because crystalline silica issues and respirable crystalline silica is making stoneware unattractive and ceramic tiles attractive. Neolith, the world's leading producer of ceramic kitchens and ceramic large format stone, just announced that they're gonna open 10 stores in Australia in the next year. 10. This isn't Apple, opening 10 stores. This is a Spanish ceramic kitchen producer, right? Benefiting from the megatrend, which is sustainability, health and safety, crystalline silica, all of which our products participate in.
Why do I talk about return on invested capital and cash conversion cycle? Why am I so worried about that? I am worried about it. I'm gonna dig a hole in the Eyre Peninsula. I'm gonna dig stuff up. I need to process it. I need to put it on a ship. I need to send it somewhere, and I need to get paid, right? Cash is king for us in the first 24, 36 months. We need to manage it carefully. We need to manage it weekly. We need to be careful. We need to see where and if we can get customers to prepay us for shipments, because we are not an LME deliverable company. There isn't a bank that's going to collateralize kaolin. They will for aluminum, zinc, gold, silver, great. We have to manage it carefully.
That's a key area of focus, especially for team, for all of us, we need to manage cash carefully in the marketplace. We want to be the best. We want to be able to move around between partnerships, resources, time, and regions, right? If there's an opportunity for us to sell in our competitor's backyard, which is the Mediterranean, we'll do so if it makes sense, right? If there's an opportunity for us to develop the right partnership or the right distribution model in parts of the world that makes sense, we'll do it as long as we can afford it, as long as it adds value to our life of mine, and as long as it makes sense and linked to our commercial strategy. You know, I've used this methodology.
I was thinking about it the other day, you know, sort of thinking before I joined Andromeda, I said: Look, you know, I've followed this commercial strategy map 26 times in my life. I'm happy to be done with it, right? Here I am, going through the commercial strategy map again as a core part of our business. Very simple, not rocket science. There are macro and micro trends. There are market opportunities. We look at that market to mine, we evaluate it through a strategic lens, which we just looked at. We develop an optimizer, and we decide what the mine-to-market response is. Does that mean bagged product, semi-bulk product, big bags, bulk liners, packaging, noodle product, dry product? I don't know, right?
You have to evaluate these opportunities, co-opportunities, co-marketing opportunities, through a map and a process that is defendable in terms of what you're doing, where you're spending your money, and where your approach is. That's absolutely critical because it defines what core and complementary is. If tomorrow the cement industry says, "You know what? I think this HRM thing is the greatest thing that ever happened," right? All of a sudden, things change and HRM is core. Can that happen? Certainly can. If someone tells you, "Look, you know, your ceramic product is really gives us properties in large tiles, including whitening, that only zircon can or certain other opacifiers," is that a game changer? Does that mean you won't sell to glazers, and you only sell to tiles and you won't do HRM?
That balance and how, what your mine-to-market response is, defines our company. People need to understand how we're doing this. You need to understand that we're following a process. You need to understand we're adding value. Sometimes it's hard to say no, but we will have to say no because it doesn't make sense. You know, we talked about I'm not going to go through the details of this. The market opportunities, they create a value. That optimizer in the center, cash is important, decision-making, the type of product, energy, production, feedstocks, blends. What is the number one thing I'm worried about on the Eyre Peninsula? Number one, First Nations, relationship with First Nations. I think we're in good, excellent shape there, where our landowners, Streaky Bay, Poochera, all that, right, is sitting in a very good place, but I'm worried about water.
Do you know that every person I talk to on the peninsula, I say, "Hi, my name is Bob." Say, "Hi, Bob, what are you doing about water?" Why don't you ask me, like, how I'm doing, or where are you from? I talk to the schools. Teachers say, "Hey, what are you doing about water?" Talk to the landowners. They don't even wanna hear your name. Say, "What are you doing about water?" Water for us on the peninsula, water, roads, investment in our peninsula is absolutely critical. We're putting a plan together on addressing that. Think about it, right? Initially, we're gonna start up our mine, and we will be trucking water. AUD 11-AUD 12 a ton until we can put that whole picture together, and we have to address that. That's all part of my commercial strategy. Why?
If I don't have water, I mean, what kind of products am I gonna make? How am I gonna recycle water? How am I gonna optimize water usage, energy usage, carbon footprint? I'm gonna be selling HRM to the cement guys, potentially, to lower their carbon content. Someone is gonna come visit my mine and say, "Hey, you're selling me a low carbon product, and you're trucking in water on a diesel truck." I mean, does that make any sense, right? We have to live these values of what we're selling to the markets we're selling in the way we produce our products. That's a key area of focus for me, and that comes out of this process. What does it look like? If you look at the bottom, you know, what's core is our ceramics piece.
We're gonna talk about tile bodies and the validation of that work, as part of this presentation that come a little bit later. Our cement and concrete piece, that work is ongoing. More on that, probably by the end of June. We'll talk about that piece. If you look at the macro and the microenvironment, right, you know, we have monetary and fiscal policy, Australian U.S. dollar exchange rate. We have shipping and ports. I don't have a proper port on that side of the peninsula to ship our product, right? I have to get over to Port Augusta, Whyalla, ports issues, right? Something I need to think about and address. The geopolitical risk, right? The situation in Ukraine and other parts of the world, Taiwan, China, and whatnot. How will that impact our business? Would you have ever guessed that this AUD 3 million-AUD 5 million...
You'll see the results of the Ukrainian kaolin. This stuff is absolutely amazing. It's off the market. Will it come back to the market? When will it come back to market? What about the infrastructure needed for that product to come back to the market: rail, ports, trucks? Who will take the risk on buying that product in the future? Don't know. I don't have the answers to that. I need to be across that detail in order to position our products, either short term, long term, or medium term. The micro environment, we talked about water, we talked about value in use, the regional supply demand. China's probably close to 1 million times short on kaolin, all types of kaolin, ball clays. It's not, you know, different qualities of kaolin.
Our sister company, WA Kaolin, which makes a ball clay, a ball clay kaolin for that type of market, is seeing unprecedented demand in the Chinese market. These are commodity markets we don't participate in, but it's great to see them turning the corner on the demand cycle as well in their markets. That's only good news for us. I think that's really important. Strategic lens, we talked about that before, validating and the mine-to-market response. For right now, where does that position us? Ceramics, right, cement, and porcelain. Porcelain tableware. You guys saw the deal we did with Planan Yamada. We're really excited about that. Top company directly into tier one, Japanese porcelain, Noritake, and other fantastic Japanese brands that love our product for its whitening capability. What does that mean?
What's the defining issue for that product? The titanium dioxide. We have to have TiO2 at a minimum level for our porcelain market. That's one piece. Our ceramic market, which is core, three parts to the ceramic market, the top of the tile, the middle of the tile, the enamel piece, and the tile body, right? Where is the best place for our product? Where is the best value? Where is the best price? Where is the biggest and most important sustainable and strategic profit pool? We did a lot of that work in the last 35, 40 days. I'll share just the highlights with you in this presentation. In terms of strategy, before we get into the technical detail, what's next, right?
We are wrapping up the work with the benchmarking of our product versus other products, which means the next step is we will be formulating our product. Which means companies will say, "Look, how much of this Australian kaolin can I use in my tile body, glaze, or engobe for this type of tile, this plant, this location?" This formulation work is ongoing, and we expect that to be wrapped up also probably in the next two or three weeks, and that will present itself as a set of commercial opportunities for us, right? Both in the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, and globally. That work will be wrapped up. The technical evaluation of the cement and concrete work, we expect that to be wrapped up as well. That could be very promising. It could be high value in use, mid-value in use. We don't know.
What we do know is that Cement Australia, which is a joint venture between Heidelberg, Holcim, and Hanson. The qualification of that product in the Cement Australia piece is done. That means our product has been permitted to be used in concrete and cement in Australia. In Europe, that process will take another three to four years, especially on the back of what happened in Turkey with the earthquakes, right? People are very, very concerned that people are not following concrete and cement standards. And what happens? You end up, I'm sure many of you have seen the video footage from CNN and others, what happened in the Turkish earthquakes, and the buildings, literally new buildings, up to code, just literally collapsing with an incredible loss of life. The work will then be incorporated into an updated DFS.
The DFS that we currently have doesn't really reflect where our company is, right? We're not a paint company. Look, we could talk about that DFS, how we put it together, why we put it together, but let's put it behind us, right? We need to update the DFS, get all of this information in there, our core work, our complementary work, our cement work, put all that piece in, and then be ready to take that into the market as part of the request for equity post the debt piece. I'll talk about that. Commercial negotiation discussions align with Andromeda's commercial strategy, right? That's the formulation piece. That's the next step of discussions with the ceramic and porcelain guys, and how does that fit through to our strategy.
One other comment, I'm going to come back to the project later, what's really important about the DFS is that is going to be the new valuation of our company, and it's going to be based on commercial strategy, contracts, technical valuation, rigor, discipline, and everything that is measurable and definable, right? That's exactly what the market wants to see. We opened the data room for the debt investors, had an excellent response, I think, from a very good group of debt guys who want to participate in Stage 1A of the project. Stage 1A is 50,000 tons for AUD 55 million. The IM, information memorandum, for that piece built on this commercial strategy is in the data room. The technical, independent technical valuation of our project done by Behre Dolbear is in the data room.
The independent marketing work done by TZMI is also in the data room, as is our bankable feasibility study and model. We pulled all that together in the last 40 days, and that's a really, really good piece of work. A lot of interest. We wanted to limit the data room to three, two or three players. you know, there's five excellent potential partners in there at phase I. We'll talk about what that means a little bit later. look, a quick discussion on markets. I don't want to get into a lot of the details, but, you know, this is the type of work we look at in terms of compounded annual growth rate. We did a lot of work with TZMI, China, other Pacific and Europe.
If you look at the regions we want to play in, we clearly are growing, 5.1%, 3.9%. The demand is there. Key to look at, you know, people talk about China. China is a very big market. It's a very fragmented market. It's not a market I want to be directly in because it's simply too fragmented and too many channels, too much marketing, and too much cost to serve. The other markets that are interesting, of course, are Southeast Asia Pacific, and the European and North American market are still relevant. We can still compete in those markets, and we should compete in them because that's where the formulation for the tiles are done. That's where you want to be as a supplier of choice if you want to play in the other markets, especially if the multinationals are serving those.
It's a very, very important piece of our strategy. Very, very key point, right? You'll see the deal that we did with FG that we announced. When was that? This week, last week? FG is a excellent partner for our China strategy. They're big, they make equipment, they have access into the China, into the China market. They're credit worthy, and that's the type of partner we want to serve in that distribution channel. Does that mean we'll always do that? Does that mean we won't do direct business in China? No, it doesn't mean that. When we find the right opportunity with the right customer, the right size, the right growth in China, we'll do a deal with a direct customer. It has to be someone that fits our strategy, right?
It has to be architectural, large, porcelain, value in use priced for our product in China, direct. Okay? We talked about Ukraine. Look, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but, you know, there's a lot out there in social media concerns. Spanish and Italian ceramic tile manufacturers are, I would say, in a tough spot right now. Why? If you don't have the kaolin, what do you do? Do you use another clay? No, not really, because it doesn't perform the same way, and in fact, for the high-end tiles, it's the worst thing you can do. You have to use more zircon, and you have to use more opacifiers. What's the difference in price between zircon and a good quality kaolin? Probably a factor of three, right? Two and a half times, three times.
Sorry, Iluka's Tier One zircon, ceramic grade versus an excellent kaolin, probably three and a half time price differential. Can you imagine what these tile guys are paying to put zircon in the tile body as a result of the not availability of kaolin? High quality kaolin. It's a great opportunity for us, right? It would have been great to have the product available as we speak, clearly something we need to watch very carefully. You look at end use, you know, why are we not playing in paper, rubber, plastic, fiberglass, and all that? They're not growing, and they don't have the value in use for our product. I'm not going to sell our product into commodity end use.
Ceramics and porcelain, especially the high-end part of the market that values us, gives us the price and the sustainability and the positioning that we want, is what we want. The growth in ceramics, driven by the larger tiles, the kitchens, bathrooms, we'll see that a little bit later, is really, really significant going forward. Consider this, right? We're not talking about calcined kaolin, where you need to, you know, 1 million, 2 million tons to generate a decent cash flow. We're talking about a company that wants to grow to about 300,000 tons of absolutely high quality, value in use kaolin in ceramics, porcelain, and potentially cement. It's a very, very different strategy than a traditional light mineral kaolin play. China, right? This is a graph that just came out of the David and the TZMI team.
The supply gap is significant. It's significant today. I would say, just to give you a flavor for these numbers, from the time that this was published, which is part of our, which is in the data room for the debt guys, and will also be part of our DFS, there's probably another 400,000 ton shortage on top of this, right? Because all of those clays have been consumed. They're not being replenished. There's a lot of issues. The high quality Chinese kaolin for porcelain has run out. The Imerys Mine in New Zealand, that supplies a fantastic halloysite kaolin for high-end porcelain, is probably down to 10,000-15,000 tons per year. Just the porcelain market, if you can imagine that porcelain and ceramic prices have converged.
Traditionally, porcelain prices have been $50-$75 a ton lower, right? Because ceramics still is the highest value in use. Today, due to demand, you have a convergence of price, right? Porcelain returns, ceramic returns in this market, especially China, Southeast Asia, have come together. Very, very interesting. We've never seen that before. Will it last? Let's see. It depends on supply, demand, right? You know, it's clear, right? Where this is the way we wanna identify our addressable markets. This is what it would be in China. When we look at the addressable market, we see that it's growing. We see that it's 330,000 tons, as an example, in that, in that market in China.
We say, look, then if we want to, if we want to say, at a 15% or 20% market share, that's the size of the prize we want in China through a distribution channel. That's the way we do it. That's the way we're motivated. We check those numbers, we decide where we're going to play, and then we execute. You know, you look at these numbers, and they're very, very interesting. This is the global ceramic tile market. Some, you know, just key numbers that I want you to look at. Just look at the scope, right? These are ceramic tile producers. You see China, India, Brazil, how dominant they are. This is mostly commodity grade. You look at the growth in 2017 to 2021, right? How fast India and Brazil and Spain is growing, but China isn't.
Interesting, eh? That tile is commodity tile, right? Again, you have to really look carefully at where you're playing and what segment. The top 10 account for 84%. Very, very interesting. Global tile production, this is about, you know, it's 400 million tons of minerals a year going to ceramics, feldspar, quartz, kaolin, zircon, and red clay. A lot of that is running up. If you know, for those of you who are investors who follow Iluka, right? JA, some of their deposits also here in Australia, right? They are, you know, facing a resource challenge, which is kind of interesting. 60% of the tiles produced are porcelain, which is high end. The figure, right, is 90% in Italy and 50% in Spain, 30%, which is unglazed, right, which is the porcelain piece.
Spain and Italy is still small, right? Still very, very much in the high-end part of the market, where you need the high-end kaolin, the high-end zircon, and the high-end products. Look at the exporters as well, which you can see again, China. Look at the Spanish exports, the Indian exports, and the Italian exports. Incredible how much of the products made in those countries are exported. People are still buying and paying for the high-end stuff. People in Melbourne are paying, people in Sydney are certainly paying, and people in Adelaide are paying. It's incredible to see those products in showrooms, incredible price point, and incredible demand. The tile consumers, you know, clearly China is still the biggest consumer. India, followed by Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Turkey, all markets that we'll be looking at as part of our direct strategy.
Tile production, 3.2% growth until 2026. Porcelain tiles are projected to grow at 7.3%. That's an incredible growth rate, and that's a fantastic driver for our business. Because a porcelain tile needs glaze or not glaze, but it needs the tile body, and it needs fantastic mechanical strength in those large formats. We saw tiles yesterday in the 1x2 size, right? We saw some of the biggest tiles I've ever seen in my life, ready for sale in a showroom. Just a couple of comments on just the process and where we fit. You can see here the main components and the additives for ceramic tiles. You can see the firing temperatures down below. You can see the different additives, right? The non-plastic, the basic parts, and the red clay of the body.
You can see the piece, the additives that give the refractory piece, which is what happens when you fire the tile. You see in the center column are what we call the whitening agents, right? Feldspar, alumina, and zircon are used there, and then the coloring, which is the pigments, chromite, and iron oxide. Those colors, let's start from the far right. Those colors, to go through a digital printer and be put on a high-end tile, need 20% kaolin on the flux side, on the glaze side. If you look at the body where the white clays are and the kaolin, right, especially on the refractory piece, our great white CRM fits there exactly with the other clays, but also, if you see the dotted line, provides whitening equivalent to zircon in a tile.
For someone making a large tile, they're thinking, "Hey, this stuff is great because it gives me the mechanical and plastic properties I need. In addition to that, I can displace some of this zircon, which costs three times more." That's value that no other kaolin in this segment has, this whitening capability. I'll show you the details of that work in just a bit. Yeah, here it is. I'm not gonna get into the details of this. Some of the high-level results of the work that Iberoclay did to benchmark us. You can see from left to right, there are two samples, in red are ours. The ratio of iron to aluminum, lower is better. You can see how good the Ukrainian material is.
In terms of where we sit versus everybody else, we are with the Brazilians and lower than everybody else in terms of iron to aluminum ratio. I can tell you with certainty, the sample we sent for testing was certainly not the best sample we had, and certainly not representative of the iron, aluminum ratio we'll be delivering in the future. We are world-class in terms of ratio, in terms of what people are looking for, and in terms of control, if you look at the color measurements. If you look at the L* value, where we are, and the b* value for color on a fired basis, we are incredibly white. When we fire CRM from Great White mineral deposit, you get an additional whitening benefit that's kind of unique to our deposit.
We've suspected this for a while because we also see it in porcelain. The results down below are also very interesting because they point to very, very excellent mechanical strength. Just look at the number of 524, 279 compared to everyone else. Why is that important? Can you imagine not having mechanical strength in one of these big tiles? How is this big tile at 3 millimeters or 6 millimeters going to stay together? You need that mechanical strength, and that is given really by the mix of kaolin particles and halloysite that's unique to our deposit. White, excellent mechanical strength, excellent aluminum, iron ratio. We pulled all that information, validated, tested it. Now we need to see how you can actually use it in formulating these tiles. That's the next step.
Top three, iron, aluminum, high brightness, and very high dry mechanical strength. If I look at those three key points, where should I focus? Porcelain, ceramic, glaze, large format tiles. That's what we want. I need all of you to change your kitchens, bathrooms, and put in porcelain tiles in a large format as soon as possible. You can send the check and the request for payment to Patrick. If you do that, I'm sure he can help you out. Let's get the project up and going first. We saw a lot of that last night, and we were thrilled to see that. I want you guys to have a clear view of that. If you have a chance, and you're here in Sydney or Melbourne, to visit the Porcelanosa showroom. Doesn't cost anything.
Just go in, take a look, tell them you're a Kaolin shareholder. They might get really excited, offer you a glass of wine. Never know, it could happen. Take a look. I invite you to take a look. You will see something that represents the best potential of our company and represents art in its own way. Really fantastic. Both there's a showroom in Sydney, and there's a showroom in Melbourne as well. Another way of looking at it, see where the body is prepared. This is the flow sheet for producing a tile. With top three there. We've got unique mechanical properties in the pressing piece. We provide rheology in the glaze, and we fire, right? You know what? We provide value in this chain in multiple places, right? That's the unique opportunity that we have.
It's a really cool way to look at it, to look at the potential, right? You could play in all of these red circles. You could play in one of them. You could say, "Hey, I'm only going to sell to polished, fired, large tiles. Maybe I'll get involved in the pressing. Maybe I'll do all of it." There's different value at every step, right? We have to think about that as well. Look, a lot of discussion on digital printing, right? You can print anything on a tile. You can put your family photo on a tile. You can do anything you want. The quality is incredible. You can make a tile look like marble. You can make it look like leather, wood, textiles. We saw all kinds of incredible stuff, last night....
The leaders, the key target markets over time, in terms of conversion into digital production, is still Spain, Italy, India, and China. Look at the Spanish and Italians are the leaders in digital printing and formulation. You are not going to get this stuff through a digital printer if you don't have the right rheology and kaolin in the glaze. That's another key part, and another key part of our strategy to participate in what we call the glaze portion, that's critical to digital printers. Key target markets, they export. Look, about 85%, 84% of that production digitally printed in those countries is exported, and people pay an incredible price for those tiles. Key market. I'm not gonna go through it. It's just some things to think about. Commodity products, they grow in China.
Double firing, disappearing porcelain slab grows, right? That's very important. We've talked about that. People need higher, better raw materials. We have the right product for that. We have the right product not only to replace Ukrainian kaolin, but also to participate in the new technology that's evolving on kaolin demand. The growth in Europe is significant. The move to porcelain slabs, it's happening in Europe. In fact, it's happening in Australia as well. Ukrainian clays, we talked about. Look, don't underestimate the crystalline silica issue. A lot of you like granite, a lot of you like stoneware in your homes. You love stoneware, the rest of it, granite, the rest of it. Sooner or later, though, especially in Australia, respirable crystalline silica will not allow those products to be used. You can't cut them without releasing respirable crystalline silica.
The answer there is going to be ceramics, large format tiles. We're seeing that demand already. There's an excellent, I can provide anyone who's interested, excellent article in Australian Press about that as well. You know, we talked about you know, quartz and respirable silica. Big, big issue, right? Some of the key trends to look at, clearly driving our market, clearly part of our commercial strategy, clearly part of our thinking. This is, kind of I wanted to show you guys can look at the video when you have the time, there's a link down here. Just understand how big these things are, right? I mean, look how big these tiles are. A lot of architects using these, a lot of people using them in their homes, wall tiles, the rest of it.
You need the mechanical strength, you need the firing properties, and you need to be able to digitally print on these in a way that's, you know, as nice as the picture on the right. You know, you want that marble look, you want that stone look, you want whatever look you want, it's possible. The technology exists. Yeah, great stuff. All cursive, PORCELANOSA, a lot of what is being put in place globally. Everything you see is ceramic, including the wood. We were on a floor last night that we could have sworn was wood, and we were told it's ceramic tile. All of that is doable. You see the kitchen counters, all of that ceramic tile slab as well. Really interesting technology.
All of that needs quality kaolin, of the type that we have. Bathrooms as well, you can see the wood. All the wood piece is tile, the stone piece is tile, and everything on the wall, and including some of the stoneware, is ceramic tile. Very expensive stuff. Really nice, though. Let's talk about the project, right? Where are we? Data room is open. Debt only investors, the IM, the BFS, the ITC, and IMC are all done. They're in there. Investors have been invited. I think they're impressed at the quality of the debt IM. That's Stage 1A. We are looking at Stage 1B already. Why? Because the market demand is there and could be there in the next six to eight weeks. Let's see what happens with cement. Let's see what happens with formulations.
Another AUD 50 million is required to get to 150,000 tons, which is Stage 1B. We have a preliminary model for Stage 1B. We won't proceed with Stage 1B until we update the DFS, which evaluates the company and provides a new valuation based on our commercial strategy, contracts, and the market. We need that DFS updated, that underpins Stage 1B and the potential mix between debt and equity. We need to get that DFS done as soon as possible, right? First week, second week of July, we need to have that ready to go with all the rigor and discipline and data that I showed here in this presentation, so that people understand where we're playing, why we're playing, the value we're creating, the sustainability of what we're doing, and how important our product is in the marketplace. End of June, I'll update the IM.
Definitive study, mid-August. We need to get it probably finalized sooner than that, but that's sort of the drop dead date, 1st week of August. Latest, right? The updated financial model and the IM all need to support Stage 1B, needs to be ready to go, I would say even much sooner than mid-August, based on the discussions we've had this week with institutional investors here in Sydney. There's a lot of institutional interest in our company. They're all clamoring for the DFS, right? I put this slide together. I thought mid-August was, you know, achievable. The response, I think, from institutional investors this week is, "Hey, mid-July, you've got to have the updated DFS ready to go." If that's what it takes to get institutionals across the line for our company, we'll do that, right?
We'll commit to getting the updated DFS because the valuation in that DFS will include the HRM product in the mine plan, which the current DFS does not. Okay. Construction, we have the environmental bond in July to pay. Well, we can certainly pay it, or we can push that off because we're not mining yet. We'll see how that goes. Look, I've, you know, I've had a lot of comments about this planned shipment in October, right. The mating season, the negotiation season for industrial minerals typically opens on American Labor Day, which is September eighth, and ends Thanksgiving or the first two weeks of December. We have to be ready to ship in October. We have to participate in that negotiation season. We have to have a seat at the table.
We have to tell the world that we are selling a kaolin at this price for 2024 and 2025. We have our existing offtakes and additional contracts that we're participating in. We are part of setting the global price for kaolin. It's not just Sibelco, not just Imerys, and not just the Americans from Georgia setting that price. It's Great White, CRM, and products from Australia that is sitting at the table as well. Absolutely critical, because I don't wanna wait until the fall in October to participate and promote our pricing in the market. We need to do it in October. That's a little aggressive. You know, we have long lead time items. We have a plant to build. We have roadworks. We have the rest of it. We have a detailed plan. We're ready to do that.
We wanna wrap up the data room with the debt guys in the next six to eight weeks. We need to get the DFS updated in that timeline. We need to come back and see the work at the end of June. If it warrants a look at 1B versus 1A, we need to make those decisions, have that valuation, and be ready to go to the market. Look, a lot of people tell me, "Oh, you know, Bob, man, you guys aren't gold, you're not aluminum. We don't know anything about kaolin. This is not..." You know what? I love that. I love how opaque our market is. I love that you can create art by mistake. I love that ceramics has, for a long time, been art.
There is an element of challenge to create what these people have created in the last 100 years. I loved it, I loved it when I was in Rio Tinto Minerals, where we led a big push for the use of boric acid and borates in tiles, where we created borosilicate glass, where we created Gorilla Glass with Apple for the front of your iPhone and iPads. We did all that from an industrial mineral. That was opaque. The same product I sold for a tile, I sold to Apple for their glass. The price was different. What's wrong with that? That's arbitrage. We own it. The product has it. The optionality sits in our deposit in the peninsula. We own it, right? We manage it, and we're custodians of the deposit.
We're also custodians of the value and where we play and why, as shareholders, owners, employees, stakeholders. Very, very, very important. Don't let anyone tell you, "Oh, it's kaolin, this and that," whatever, right? Rather kaolin than gold, aluminum, or copper, because it's our product. We decide what the value use is. It's a very powerful concept. Really is. Just some comments and acknowledgments. You know, Ibero is a fantastic company. Ultimately, we'd love to make them a customer, as they're the key company in the world working on Spanish and Italian formulations. Miguel Galindo was my point person in Rio Tinto Minerals, leading the push in ceramics and tiles for the better part of the 10 years we worked together. He's a consultant and have been a big part of our success with the work.
Porto Marinosa, our old friends, great to see them last night. They were gracious hosts when we were in Spain, a really fantastic evening hosted by Richard Earp and his teams. If you guys have a chance to see the Earp Brother showrooms, please do. They're fantastic people, fantastic technology, hopefully great potential partners. It would be great to get our products into some of this high-end, high-end end uses, because that's really gonna drive value, really gonna drive our growth. Okay? Look, a lot to digest. I wanted to take that time today to share with you, go through the presentation. Happy to take your questions.
Understand that we are, that we're not just validating, we're positioning, we're formulating, and we're creating a fantastic opportunity to commercialize our deposit, in a, call it a non-traditional way, right? Really good value use, really good potential, certainly in the next 12, 14, 16 months. Okay? Happy to take your questions. Patrick has a microphone. Over to you, Patrick.
Anybody have a question? Hi, Bob. I wanted to ask a question. The debt piece is obviously the piece that you're going to come back in the next six to eight weeks. What proportion does that represent in terms of your capital requirements to get you to a stage where you can sell your products in October 2024?
for the One A case, probably be about 40%. 40%-45% in there. Yeah.
Okay. Are you able to elaborate as to how the balance of money will come through, whether it be cornerstones or even investors having to front up with the balance?
There is a group of cornerstones interested for the equity piece. They are clamoring for an updated DFS, right? I'm not going to engage any cornerstone on any discussion on the asset value of our company or our company value until I have a value, right? I don't think that's fair to anyone in the room or any one of our shareholders. I'm excited about that, but as you can imagine, there's not much I can say about that at this particular time, right? The balance, right, then, in terms of, you know, a raise, capital piece, let's see how that piece pans out. Let's see where the institutions, who are very interested, cornerstones. There is, as you can imagine, that cement piece that needs to be tied up because the cornerstones are looking at that very carefully as well, right?
They know about it, right? They know and are across our commercial strategy. That's what makes us appealing. We need to manage that carefully, right? We don't want to, how can I put it? Don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, right?
Thank you.
Welcome.
What you're saying is then that there'll be, in effect, a significant dilution, but that dilution will be matched by the enterprise value of the company increasing with your revised strategy?
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. What is that? You know, it's a good point. You know, what is that enterprise value? You know, where can this go? I have an idea in my mind on where I want to drive it in terms of value. How is that going to be re-reflected in terms of a market response? I don't know. The macros and the micros, and the story itself and how you can validate it, in my mind, it's pretty straightforward, right? It's certainly, it's as straightforward as any metal commodity, but in a more powerful way, because it's regional to us here in Australia. I think Australian investors, I think global investors, cornerstones, there have been one or two very big strategics that wanted an engagement. I have not engaged them.
I'll be discussing that at the board level on the 14th, simply because that's a very tricky and touchy commitment, right? Where we are right now, because that valuation. What we have in our hands until I have the DFS, right, that value, I need to know what that is first, because before I really push this thing any further, either be it with cornerstones or strategics at the door, because I don't want to give any value away, right? That's really, really important. We need to have that patience. Let's get the DFS work done. Let's put the rigor and the discipline, similar to what we've done here, into that piece of work. Let's stand behind it. Then let's engage the right people on our terms. That's what I want to do.
Sounds like you've got a little bit of Scottish blood flowing through your veins. You don't want to give anything away. That's excellent. That's music to my ears anyway.
I think, you know, ultimately, we're gonna, you know. You know, I think those, you know, I look at the debt guys, you know, they're such a good group of guys, right? anytime you're talking debt, you really want to make sure, you know, you're keeping your firstborn close to you, your mortgage close to you, your car close to you. all joking aside, look, I'm accountable, right? I'm responsible. we've had a chat the last 60 days, you know, a lot of frustration, a lot of discussions. I thought it was important to show this to you today because I want you to understand where we're going and why. That's really important. to have the courage to say, "Hey, we're going the right way.
I'm worried about this. I'm worried about that," market, so forth and so on. I think we're really well positioned. I really do. Yes?
You've got a hell of a lot of work to do with getting FEED, front-end engineering, and design done and all that now.
Yeah.
A lot of changes.
Yeah.
All that.
Yeah.
The board hasn't even. The board's got to get to a decision to mine, DTM, decision to mine stage and so on.
Yeah, we have a really detailed plan, really good team.
FID. You haven't even had to work the FID yet.
Yeah.
Wow.
You know, we're running a lot of things in parallel, right? We're running a very detailed project in parallel. We're running a debt process in parallel. We're putting together and getting ready to put an IM and updated DFS in parallel. We're doing all of that, be in Melbourne at the end of June to engage our shareholders and institutional investors. You know, there's this institutional piece, too, that sort of caught me by surprise this week, eh? Just to be honest. You know, it's not sort of meet and greet hi, you know, this is not right. You know, people are across our story, once you present the story this way, now people are interested, right?
I think, you know, I made a comment to Patrick, said, "I, man, I need to be," and Frank, who's in the back, "I need to be back here in four weeks to follow up on this," right? That's a great opportunity for us. I'm really pleased with the response of the group here in Sydney. Hopefully, we get the same type of response in Melbourne. I need to get my head around, you know, going to Perth and seeing, you know, what kind of interest is out there. Look, based on what I've seen here the last two days, certainly there's an appetite for our company and to invest in our company. Which is good news.
I know you're not very keen to talk about pricing products, because that would be you talking about a commodity. However, have prices increased since the DFS?
Prices have increased by, I'd say 30%.
30%?
Mm-hmm.
So-
Just to answer your question, if you look at the tile, the upper part of the tile is the best price. The middle part of the tile is probably AUD 50 per ton less, and the tile body, traditionally, AUD 75 less. Today, though, today, that traditional difference across the tile is gone, right? What are people willing to pay for a high-quality kaolin in a tile body today, that gives you whitening against zircon? Interesting question, right? I have the answer to that, but I can't say it, so.
Does that mean that when we have the updated feasibility study, that the financials, the economics of the project, will be much improved compared with what it was in the previous one?
I would say yes. Yeah. The key levers for that, very important lever, what happens on the cement side, right? Our cement product, in terms of value, is about two and a half times, almost three times more than the ceramic piece, right? Very, very important to understand that.
It's lower cost.
It's lower cost.
Which means the margin is huge. You have a focus on the concrete product, but you are more about the CRM rather than the HRM.
I will be more enthused on the HRM and certainly more enthused in CRM once the validation is done, right? It's different having a distribution agreement for HRM out there, and it's different when the world-leading cement, concrete, and material science company tells you, "Hey, you have a product." I'll be more than excited. Here, when a ball clays tells you that your CRM is world-class, I'm excited. If we get that type of validation back, then we really have something.
The HRM in the previous feasibility study, I think you only allowed for about two years or something like that, on production of the HRM. You had virtually limited, virtually no resources.
Yeah.
What's the situation like today?
We've updated the resources for HRM across all of Great White, that will be in the updated DFS. Look, the NPV impact to the company is significant, right?
What extent have they been updated, upgraded?
I would say through the first, through the first 10 years, and then estimated to life of mine, which is 28 years.
That's huge.
Yeah. It's huge, yeah. Huge piece of work. I mean, look, we've been busy, right? I'm excited to put... You know, that'll be part of the model. That'll be part of what we put in in the updated DFS. What would be fantastic in that updated DFS is you have your ceramic validation, you have your formulation, you have your cement piece, you have your mine life, you have your HRM. Pull all that together, now you have a valuation. Now you have a company. Now you can invite people to say, "Hey, take a look.
The high-purity alumina, you haven't spoken about that much. I know it's something in the future. I think it's fair enough that you're concentrating on what you need to do right now.
Yeah.
Can you talk a bit about the potential for HPA?
HPA is significant potential, right? The challenges with HPA are technical, they're market-focused, but the potential is huge. How do I see HPA? I see HPA as multiple players in Australia want to participate in HPA. It's a critical mineral. It's all under another fragmented, misaligned, strategic approach from multiple players with multiple technologies. What I'd like to do, pull everyone together, say: Look, make HPA here in Australia. Let's make it under one banner, right? I'll make it, you make it, you make it, and we market it as one product.
They're all different. They're all different products.
They are.
because they have different resources.
Correct.
I4N is the only one that has it.
Correct. Correct. There is a superb interest to market HPA globally, right? In one market channel, even though they're marked, right? I think for us, linked to this commercial strategy, that makes sense because we will have a production advantage versus our peers, and we can focus on what's core and let HPA take its course. If that becomes core in due course or complementary, fine, let's do that.
It's years of market research. Look at I4N, they have a fantastic product, but it's taken them two to three years.
Correct.
it'll be the same for you.
Correct. Spot on. Spot on, yeah.
Now, what happened? What went wrong with the Indians at the University of Newcastle?
On the University of Newcastle, I was just convinced that we were losing really too much focus, timing, and our credibility, both within the market and shareholders, was really in the wrong place. I just didn't think that was really the right thing for us. The IP still belongs to us. We're not losing the IP, right? Just, you know. Remember we talked about supplier of choice, partner of choice, and employer of choice. We need the partners of choice, right?
Right. Could be months, and months, and months before you say you picked it.
I, look, I don't wanna comment on. I think they're a great group of people. They've done fantastic work in the past. They have a niche R&D. They have a good proven track record. For us right now, you know, the partners needed to move that forward, I think, are different.
I agree.
Are different things different? Yes?
I understand the concrete additives passed some standard one to two years ago.
Mm-hmm.
Your slide suggests there's still a fair bit of work to do. Where is it at in terms of a % of completion?
The additives have been certified for the Australian market. That work was done with Holcim a couple of years ago, we are ready to go in the Australian market, but we cannot sell into the European market because we are not certified in Europe. The certifications in Europe are country by country, Germany, France, blah, right? The people, you know, we're looking at three years out. The pricing for the European market is better than the domestic market. If we could, you know, we'd be selling in euros in the European market. That's where we wanna get to, we need that certification first. Getting that done means we need the right partner to do that because it has to be done individually in each European country. My view is three years, four years out to get that done.
It doesn't mean that we can't start here in our own backyard, right, with Cement Australia, if things go right, things go well. We're excited about that.
Thanks.
Welcome. Yeah. Great. Look, we have a little reception, I think, tonight, Patrick, help me, right? Just upstairs. Happy, if you guys, wanna stick around till 5:00 P.M., happy to chat with you, happy to take additional questions, answer any other questions, that you like. Thrilled to be here. There's probably one last comment I wanna make, and that is, look, I'm here, I'm here because I want to be here, and I believe in this project, and I believe in it a long time, so I'm thrilled to have this opportunity. We have a lot of work in the next six to eight weeks, a lot of things going on.
You have my commitment to communicate with you, to share what I can, and I will, and certainly make sure that as we move forward in the next six to eight weeks, you guys are all, you know, informed and know what's going on. Okay? Thanks a lot. Thanks for coming. Really appreciate it. Thank you.