Thank you. Fantastic to be here today, everyone, to tell you all about Andromeda Metals and the two exciting projects that we are progressing at the moment.
Ryan?
Yep. Okay, there we go. Sorry, everyone. Standard disclaimers here. I will be using some forward-looking statements today. We'll start with a bit of a corporate overview of our company. We do have a strong board. We have a board that has funded, built, and delivered projects before. Not only that, but we have two newer board members, JD Sorrell and Miguel Galindo. They have a lot of experience in the industrial minerals, marketing, and sales space, and ceramics. That is really key experience for us as we look to build into our markets, build our product reputation, and increase our sales. We have a little bit of a snapshot here of our cash in hand. That cash in hand is based as at September 30. It does not include our recent placement where we raised AUD 13 million. We've followed up with a share purchase plan.
We're targeting an additional AUD 2.5 million as part of that process. That share purchase plan will close today. Let's talk about our two projects here. Our first project is our Great White Kaolin project. This project is development-ready. We have done a lot of work to de-risk this project to get it ready for funding and for development. We've got all our key approvals in place. We have our mining lease and our PEPR. We also have our feasibility studies completed, which show really strong economics. It's a very profitable project. Really importantly, we've secured our offtake agreements, our binding offtake agreements for our first stage of development, our Stage 1A+ , which is 100,000 tonnes per year.
That is a really critical part of any funding process to be able to demonstrate that you've got the revenue line there and you can repay, say, a debt facility. The funding is the last piece of the puzzle that we need. We are in a funding process at the moment. We have received credit approval from Merricks Capital for a debt facility of AUD 75 million. We're working on the documentation for that. There is a balance of funding that we will need. We are pursuing an equity process for that balance of funding, looking at potentially a cornerstone investment at asset level for both the Great White Project and our high-purity alumina project, so our HPA project, which is really exciting. With that AUD 13 million that we've also recently raised, we are going to get on the ground. We're going to pay our bond.
We're going to start our site prep work. That is really exciting. That is underway at the moment. Now, the other project that I want to talk to you about today is our High-Purity Alumina Project. That is a critical minerals project. We have been really pushing this forward recently. We've had some really exciting lab-scale results. We take our Great White Kaolin as a feedstock. We use our proprietary process that we have developed at Andromeda after seven years of R&D, and we will be looking to produce high-purity alumina as part of that process. We have recently had the lab-scale test work done where we used our Kaolin and our process, and we produced high-purity alumina to a 99.9985% purity. That was an outstanding result. It really proved up our process at lab scale. We've gone on from there. We've completed a scoping study.
It shows really strong economics, the potential to deliver NPV post-tax of over AUD 1 billion. That is a really exciting project. We've followed that up further now. We have initiated pilot-scale test work, not only just to optimize our process, but really importantly, to produce samples that we can then start to go and engage with customers, start to build those relationships, remembering that offtakes are really key when you're looking to develop your projects. We've got two exciting projects there, both at different stages of development, but I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about our Great White Project now. Our Great White Project is targeting initially the premium ceramics industry. Think your large-format porcelain tiles, white, super bright tiles, high-end porcelain tableware. We have done a lot of work to validate our product in market.
We've done this through independent technical experts, the Institute of Ceramic Technology in Spain. They've tested our product. They've benchmarked it against other products. We've also recently released some hotelware results. These test results show that our product is highly competitive with the incumbent kaolin products in the market, even the best ones out there. For these markets that we are targeting, our product is really ideally suited. We have a 15.1 million tonne reserve that supports a 28-year mine life. We've done this work. We have a growing market at that high-quality end. There's a structural supply deficit due to other high-quality kaolins not being available in the market. It is a really good time for us to be entering in that market. This is validated by our offtake agreements.
Not only have we had independent test work done by other parties, but we've had it done by customers. We have signed up four binding offtake agreements that underpin our full first stage of production. By Year Three, matching our ramp-up period, we have 100% of production under binding offtakes. Our largest offtake partner is Traxys, a global industrial minerals trader. They are not only taking 50% of our production, but they are growing with us as we grow. Through our stages, they will take up to 130,000 tonnes per annum, which is fantastic support from them. We also have Bureau Clais. They're a leading formulator over in Spain. They'll be taking our product. They'll be blending it into a formulation or a recipe for things like tile bodies and selling it into those European markets. We also have Platan Yamada, a multi-generational Japanese company.
They will be focusing on the high-end tableware market over in Japan. Finally, our Chinese offtake partner, Foshan Gaoming. They're also involved in the equipment manufacturing in the kaolin industry as well as selling kaolin. The economics here, this is based on our DFS and our bankable feasibility study. It shows really strong, profitable business here. We are doing it in stages so we can grow into our markets as the offtake demand grows for our product once we enter the markets. Stage 1A+ has a CapEx requirement of AUD 84 million, and that delivers some strong economics. It's profitable at that first stage, but you can see as we grow through our stages, the economies of scale means that we deliver even better economics as we grow, which is fantastic. The funding process, we've had a lot of questions about the funding process while we've been here.
We are in the middle of it. We have received our credit approval from Merricks Capital for an AUD 75 million debt facility. Now, that process involved significant due diligence on us, on our legal, on our technical, on our markets, our offtake agreements, all of that side of things. Getting that credit approval, we really regard as a big tick of approval for our project. They have given us the credit approval. We are negotiating the documentation at the moment, getting that all finalized. We are also pursuing the balance of funding. We are progressing discussions for an asset-level investment for both the Great White Project and our HPA Project, which is really exciting for us. Not only that, but we are using the funds that we have obtained through that placement process to get on the ground, to get started with our site works, our site prep works.
We do have to pay the bond before we can start ground- engaging activities. That process is underway at the moment. The team is very busy in the office getting all the contractors mobilized and locked in for the works that we need to get done. We're talking about our mine access road, our process plant pad, getting the site preparation work done, our geotech drilling, our grade control drilling, all of this work that's really going to set us up for when we have Final Investment Decision. We also, really importantly, we're getting our long- lead- time items that have all been fabricated. They're ready to go. They're sitting in warehousing overseas. We are bringing them back to Australia, so they are close to site. That is underway as well. We're really positioning ourselves so that we're ready to go on this project.
That takes me into our High-Purity Alumina Project. Very exciting project. As I mentioned, we've done this lab-scale test work to prove up our process. We've moved on. We've done the scoping study. It shows really strong economics. What is high-purity alumina? It's a critical mineral. It's used in those future-facing industries, things like your LEDs, your semiconductors, lithium-ion battery separators, high-tech ceramics. It's on the critical minerals list in Australia. It's also on the critical minerals list in the U.S. A lot of buzz around that at the moment. It is something that we have long believed that if we can upgrade our kaolin, our Great White Kaolin, take it as a feedstock, extract the alumina, and produce a high-purity alumina, there is potential here for us to unlock significant additional value for our shareholders. You can see here, this product is in demand.
They are predicting this demand- supply shortfall of 127% by 2030. Great time to be entering the market. Great time for someone that uses HPA to be looking to secure their long-term offtake contracts. The pricing. The pricing is also forecast to increase. Some are forecasting it to almost double. We have used a very conservative $20 a kilo U.S. in our scoping study. You can see that red line up there. That's our assumption. The two lines above it are where the market commentator's predicting it to go. Here are our economics. These are some pretty special economics here. For a AUD 155 million CapEx investment, you can deliver a project over AUD 1 billion NPV. You've got cash operating margin of 85%. It really is showing that this project is worth us pursuing. We've got market-leading economics. The green here shows Andromeda. We have the lowest capital intensity.
We have the lowest cost of production. What does that mean? It means that we can be really highly competitive when we go to enter this market as compared to our competitors. Our technology. Why do we think our technology is going to work? We have proved it up at lab scale. Really importantly, I would note here that we are using known metallurgical units of operation. They are known to work in other industries. We are not inventing something new in that regard. We are just using it in a different way. That really lowers our scale-up risk here. We also have the benefit of using our Great White Kaolin clay as the feedstock. This clay is naturally high in alumina, naturally low in those impurities that you do not want in the process. That really reduces our cost and complexity as well.
We also have the benefit that we do not need to use acid at high temperatures and high pressure. Not only is that really unsafe, but that is a cost as well that we do not have to incur. We do not need the high-temperature calcination at the end of our project, at the end of our process to remove those chlorides. We do not need to do that. That gives us some product flexibility as well in terms of what we produce at the end of the day. Really exciting project. We are progressing it. We are pushing it forward. We have started that continuous pilot-scale test work. I would note as part of that process, not only are we generating samples to use with our customer engagement, but we are also going to be looking at our amorphous silicate byproduct that we produce.
Because at the moment in the scoping study, we assume that we are disposing of that at a cost. We actually want to do some further analysis to see if we can unlock further value there by actually being able to sell that for value. That is an exciting thing that we will be looking at as well. We have got our path forward there. Once we have our customer engagement, we have completed this test work, we will be looking at our pre-feasibility study and then the development pathway forward with the funding. Priorities going forward. Of course, it is our Great White Project first. We want to get that funded. We want to get that into development. We need that as a feedstock for our HPA Project. That is definitely our priority going forward. We want to expand our markets there too, grow our offtake book, grow into our next stages.
Really excitingly, in the pipeline, we have this critical minerals project, our HPA Project that is showing really significant promise here. We are pushing it forward. We are looking to engage with customers and really get that project up and running as well. Some pretty exciting times for Andromeda Metals at the moment. Thank you for listening.