of Australian Strategic Materials, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this year's Annual General Meeting of our Company. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians on the land in which we're meeting, and pay my respects to elders, past and present. I also extend my respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders here today. I'm joined in Perth by my fellow Board members, Rowena Smith, Kerry Gleeson, and with Gavin Smith and Nick Earner joining us remotely from each state. Also in attendance are Annaliese Eames, General Counsel and Joint Company Secretary, Dennis Wilkins, Joint Company Secretary, Steele Bromley, at ASM's Acting CFO, and Helen Bathurst of Auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers. The formalities of today will follow the common format for AGMs. Voting will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business.
A polling card should have been provided to you upon entry today. If you've lodged your vote by submitting a proxy form prior to the start of this meeting, and you would like your proxy vote to stand, you do not need to take any further action. Completed polling cards will be collected by a representative of the share registry at the conclusion of the meeting. There will be an opportunity to ask questions on today's business after all Resolutions have been put to the meeting, and I will address any written questions submitted via email from those who are unable to be present in the room today during question time. All questions will be answered prior to the conduct of the poll, and voting results will be posted on the ASX announcements platform later today. As a quorum is present, I declare the meeting open.
The proxies received for each item of business are displayed on the screen. I declare that as Chair of the meeting, I will be voting any available open proxies in favor of each Resolution. Further, I inform shareholders that the minutes of last year's AGM have been adopted as a correct record of the proceedings at that meeting. The minutes of the previous meeting are available for inspection, should any shareholders wish to do so. Please contact me or Rowena or Annaliese after the meeting end. I'll now move on to the business of the meeting. The first item of business is the consideration of the financial report for the year ended 30th of June 2023, which is now tabled.
The auditor, Helen Bathurst of PricewaterhouseCoopers, will be available to respond to any questions on the financial statements or on the conduct of the audit during the allocated question time. We will now proceed to consider the proposed Resolutions on today's agenda. Thank you. The first Resolution is the adoption of the remuneration report. This Resolution is set out in the notice of meeting and displayed on the screen, along with the proxy votes received on this Resolution. I put that Resolution to the meeting and will move to the second Resolution, for which I will hand the chair to Rowena as it relates to my re-election as director.
I'm sorry.
You want to come up here, Rowena?
Yeah, I'm welcome, though.
Give you a chance to support us.
Thank you. Thank you, Ian. As mentioned, Resolution 2 relates to the re-election of Mr. Ian Gandel as the Director of the company. If you like, would you like a glass of water?
No, thank you.
Because actually, it's a very, very hot here in Perth, so appreciate if I just-
I'd much rather be on the other side of the country.
So, Resolution 2, it relates to the re-election of Mr. Ian Gandel as Director of the company. This Resolution is as set out in the notice of the meeting, as displayed on the screen, along with the proxy votes I received on this Resolution. And as Ian mentioned, questions will be addressed just prior to the conduct of the poll. So I now put the Resolution to the meeting and hand back the chair to Ian.
Thanks, Rowena.
Yes. Um...
Thanks, Rowena. I now move to Resolution 3, which relates to the issue of shares to Ms. Smith on the vesting of the financial year 2023 performance rights. This Resolution is set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on the screen, along with the proxy votes received on this Resolution. I now put that Resolution to the meeting and then move to the next item of business, which is Resolution 4, regarding the grant of financial year 2024 short-term incentive performance rights to Ms. Smith. This Resolution is as set out in the notice of meeting, as displayed on the screen, along with the proxy votes received on this Resolution.
I now put that Resolution to the meeting and move to the next item of business, which is Resolution 5, regarding the grant of financial year 2024 long-term incentive performance rights to Ms. Smith. This Resolution is as set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on the screen, along with the proxy votes received on this Resolution. As that covers all of the business for this meeting, I'll now put those Resolutions to the meeting and open up the floor for questions. Firstly, to those present in the room, are there questions of the Board on any item of business or the auditors on the financial statements or the conduct of the audit? Thank you. If there are no questions from those present, Dennis, were you receiving any written questions?
No, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much. As all the questions have now been answered, we can conduct a poll. As mentioned earlier in the meeting, if you'd like your proxy votes to stand, you do not need to take any further action. If you have not voted a proxy vote and wish to have the vote counted, or if you wish to amend your proxy vote already logged, please complete your polling card and hand it to the Advanced Share, Rick Sie, acting as the returning officer for today's meeting. Thank you all. I now declare the formal part of today's meeting closed, and thank you for your participation. The results of the meeting will be released to the ASX later today. Do you want the polling card?
I don't answer.
Yep. Thanks. I'd now like to invite our MD and CEO, that's Rowena Smith, to provide an update on the company's results for the year and an insight into what we can expect for the year coming up. At the conclusion of this next presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions, and I'll have to apologize because I actually have to jump onto a flight back to Melbourne, so I won't be here throughout Rowena's presentation. I'd like to be, but I have an important dinner back in Melbourne I need to get to. So thank you very much, everyone, for coming. Rowena. As wonderful as again.
Very good. So I think we're going to start with a video. Oh, is it going to go, the chair? Just taking you through some highlights of the year. So we'll look at that first. It is a real pleasure to be able to be presenting here today at the annual general meeting. I have been presenting the ASM story many, many, many times over the last year and particularly over the last six weeks. But it's very rare that I actually get the opportunity to speak directly to shareholders. Thank you very much, particularly for those here in Perth, who really have traveled through extreme weather to be here. That's exactly very, very hot here in Perth.
But also for everybody who's online, it really is a pleasure to have your company here with us today. So, I do need to, I think, say when I want the slides to move forward. So if we can just move forward into the presentation. That is our disclaimer. You will be able to see that online, should you choose to read the detail of it. I am going to present to you today what I have been presenting as I have gone through all the various different forums, so that you get to hear the story as we're telling it and providing an update on where we're at and what priorities are for us this year.
So I appreciate some of this, you will be deeply familiar with already, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to hear the story as we tell it, to investors and partners and governments, as we have been presenting in recent months. So ASM, we're building a global rare earths and critical minerals business to provide those high-tech metals that are needed to solve the challenges of both today and into the future, and in particular, to support that clean energy transition. So the next slide just shows what our management team is. And one of the things that has changed through the year is the makeup of the management team. And I did just wanna call this out, because again, it's rare that I am able to actually introduce them in person.
But I have most of the team here today, and those of you who are observant would realize also, I have one team member who's based in Brisbane, Peter Finnimore, who has joined the screen as well to be able to say hello. So, I have with Steele Bromley. Excuse me, Steele. So Steele, who is the Acting CFO for us at the moment and also our GM Finance, a very valued member of our team. Thanks, Steele. We have Chris Jordan, who is our Chief Operations Officer, been with us now since August and he's been spending a lot of time in both Korea and in Brisbane with the Dubbo project team and in Dubbo, familiarizing himself with the work program that we have ahead. Thanks, Chris.
We have, Agata Krupa, who, is our Vice President, Risk and Corporate Services. For those of you who have, read through the annual report, you will see that there's quite a comprehensive, report on both our risk, work and also our ESG work and all of that work that Aggie does for us. Thanks, Aggie. We have Annaliese Eames, who is our General Counsel and Joint Co-Sec, who again, joined us at the beginning of the year, and is an integral part of the work that we are doing as we are progressing, just, the governance components of, what we're doing, but the commercial aspects. Annaliese brings a very deep commercial, experience set, which has really been enabling us as we've been working together in those components of the work. Thanks, Annaliese.
And then we have Peter Finnimore, who is on the screen. As I said, Peter is joining us from Brisbane. He's only just made it home to Brisbane on the weekend. He was traveling in Singapore and Vietnam for the last couple of weeks, progressing work in those jurisdictions for us. But Peter is our Vice President, Sales and Marketing, and hello to you, Peter. So that's the team and the team, as we go forward, is delivering as per our strategy. Next slide, which is mined metal strategy. So you know, as we're really working on establishing this alternative supply chain, we have to really think about how we're gonna establish the end-to-end supply chain, because at the moment, that supply chain in its entirety is really established in only one jurisdiction, and that is China.
So what we are working on is establishing that alternative supply chain. And we've made a strategy commitment to ourselves to deliver it from mine through to metals, and then work in partnership with others for the rest of that supply chain. So that starts with our Dubbo project, which is obviously very advanced, and we will mine, separate, and refine our products there in Dubbo. And for offtake parties for Dubbo, they can either choose to take it as one of the highly refined oxides that we will produce there in Dubbo, or they have the option of taking it then further through one of our Metals Plants.
The first of our Metals Plants we have already built, it's in production in Korea, and we are making a light rare earth metal there and using the praseodymium metal, as well as alloying that through to that specialist alloy that is the feedstock into the producers of those high-performance permanent magnets that are essential in a number of the clean technologies, the EVs, the wind turbines, and many others. The obvious challenge is, if we have our Metals Plant in Korea already in production, but Dubbo is still in development, then where are we getting the feed?
And it is part of our strategy, in addition to our Dubbo products, to supplement our business both in the short term before Dubbo comes online, but also, as we go forward, to supplement it, to help us grow the business and in particular, grow the Metals Plants as we go forward. We are seeking third-party oxides as supplementary feeds. We're working with a number of parties in a number of jurisdictions at the moment, to be able to secure those third-party oxides, and I'll speak to that again a little bit later as we go through the presentation. So that is our mined metals strategy. So I think the next slide will take us through the first of the key projects, which is the Korean Metals Plant.
There's a little bit of a video here again, just so you can get a sense of actually what we have got there in Korea. Because I quite often get asked, is this a pilot facility? No, it's not a pilot facility. It's a very significant commercial-size facility. Yes, we're still doing the ramp-up of that facility, but what you can see there is a very high-quality facility, and it's substantial. One of the things that we're very proud of is that we set ourselves a target to target the carbon net zero for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions for that plant from commencement of operation. And we were able, when we released the annual report, just to confirm. Sorry, I'm talking to you, Siri.
We were very pleased to confirm in the annual report that we delivered that target for the first year of operation. So we did, we did operate our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions at the net zero for carbon in that first year. That was a combination of some of the emissions reduction activities that we have been able to incorporate in the design of the facility, as well as an offset project that we had invested in in Korea. So that's, that was pleasing. What we're doing there in Korea at this point is producing on a small scale and ramping up in alignment with customers. You would know that we had our first metals customer, a Korean magnet producer, start to take product in September of last year.
We have done regular deliveries to that customer of that NdPr or light rare earth metal ever since. But excitedly, also this year, we announced that we had our first commitments to sales into the U.S. for alloy, that specialist alloy that I was talking about before. The first of that is a contract to Noveon Magnetics, who are an emerging magnet producer in Texas, in the U.S. They're currently doing their commissioning of their facility. They've committed to taking 100 tons of that alloy product for us in the first instance, as part of the support of their commissioning, and we're in conversations with them about longer-term arrangements beyond that. But then, more recently, we announced the first of our long-term sales arrangements going into USA Rare Earth.
They've committed to taking 60% of their feed over the Korean Metals Plant. they commence their commissioning of their facility next year, and so again, we will be growing with them as they grow their facility. The process Korean Metals Plant is a little different when you're working with emerging producers versus when you're working with established producers. The truth is, there aren't that many established producers outside of China today. So we are working with a number of the emerging producers in a number of different jurisdictions, in the States, obviously, but also parties in Korea and in Europe. And generally speaking, their technical validation processes are less involved than the processes with the established magnet producers.
So we're also very advanced in discussions and technical validation with the established magnet producers, predominantly from Europe. And that is an important part of our planned ramp-up of the facility as well. What we have seen in those processes is that may take up to 12 months with those individual companies as we work through all the various different steps in that customer validation process. And what we can also see is that whilst we're drawing to the end, the conclusion of some of those processes with some of those companies, we can see that then they will integrate us into their orders, but more likely to be from the end of next calendar year when those orders will start to be integrated.
So we've got two processes, the emerging producers and the established producers, but we are anticipating, while those validation processes are progressing very well at the moment, we are anticipating that we'll continue to see a slow ramp-up through 2024, and it'll be really in the second half of 2024 and into 2025, that we'll really start to see those volumes increasing significantly. In parallel with that, we're doing the work of securing the raw materials. In the public domain, we've announced that we're working with parties in Vietnam. And Vietnam is a very important jurisdiction.
It's, it's not as mature as some of the other jurisdictions, and there's certainly a lot of work there to be done on establishing, you know, good ESG credentials for those sources to make sure that they will meet what our customer requirements are going to be. So that's an important part of the due diligence work that we're doing in Vietnam at the moment. But it is a very richly endowed, that country, you know, has very high quality rare earth deposits. So we're, you know, still very, interested in finding the right partners to work with, to be able to secure those additional raw materials.
But we also are in conversations with parties in Australia, in Japan, in the U.S., and in Europe at the moment, about potential for oxides to come through, either through toll treating or through Korean Metals Plant. there are a number of parties who are considering moving into production of oxides next year, and their challenge is: well, how do they get it through to the end point of that supply chain without going back into China? They wanna know if they're going to do it, they wanna be able to see they can get it all the way through an alternative supply chain.
So we've had a number of inbound inquiries on whether or not they can take their product through our Korean Metals facility, which will then accelerate their ability to develop their oxide production. So those are all the conversations that are alive at the moment. Currently, Korean Metals Plant is 600 ton per annum. And we will continue to work towards filling that capacity first. But it is a very straightforward expansion to take it from 600 ton per annum to the design of 3,600 ton per annum of that alloy. The current installed capacity is constrained by the number of furnaces we have.
We have three furnaces, and when we run them, all in parallel, that then feeds a strip caster to enable that 600 ton per annum. But the strip caster itself has actually got capacity that is closer to 1,500 ton per annum. So, the first bit of expansion will be just to install the additional furnaces to match the furnace capacity to the installed strip caster capacity, and then the second part of the expansion will be to put an additional strip caster in with the additional furnaces. But it's very much replicating the technology and the operational capability that we've already established. We are continuing to do the technology development work.
Most of you would know that in addition to having the operational team there in Korea, we also have our own research and development team, who have been firstly developing the technologies for metallization over a number of years, leading to the commitment to the plant in Korea, but also have been absolutely instrumental in the commissioning of both the metal and the alloys. And it's one of the real benefits that we have when we see customers coming in for those product validations, that they're not just working with an operating team, that we've actually got a fully qualified technical team there to be able to work with them, to work through those product validation processes.
But in addition to supporting what I call revenue streams, current revenue streams, they also are continuing to do the development work on our new technologies, which we're focused on titanium. And then this year, we've broadened that work out to include also the two heavy rare earths, the terbium and the dysprosium. So there's development work going on for that technology for all three of those metals at the moment. And we've brought those heavy rare earths up because of the amount of interest that we have from those customers to have the heavy rare oxides metallized in that facility as well, to be able to then be incorporated into those specialist alloys. So that's a bit of an update on what we're doing in Korea. So the next slide then takes us through to Dubbo.
Dubbo is a very unique ore body, positioned at this point in time, perfectly to meet global demand. It has a very unique combination of metals in it. We have the light rare earths, the neodymium, and the praseodymium. But also we have an unusually high proportion of the heavy rare earths, and those materials are scarcer, particularly outside of China, and higher value. So we have the terbium and the dysprosium in that ore body as well. And then we have three other materials that are on many of the Western world's critical metals lists. We have zirconia, we have the hafnium, and we have the niobium. So, as we move through to the next slide, we can see that this is a very long-life resource.
We have a 20-year life mine based on the reserve reserves that we have established, but there is an additional 50 years of resource there as well, for future commercialization. It is construction-ready. We have all the major approvals in place. We have gone through a process in the last 12 months of updating those approvals to reflect the design work that was incorporated into the optimized study that was released in December 2021. So we went through that process of public... I forget what the word is. What do you call it? Consultation, I think. Thank you. And so public consultation and had that confirmed earlier this year. We've got all of the land and water licenses owned, and we are advancing the final engineering.
We've got Hyundai Engineering doing work on processing, engineering, and then more recently, we have awarded the contract for the non-processing, infrastructure engineering work to Bechtel Engineering. We continue to work with ANSTO. We've obviously got a very long-standing relationship with ANSTO. We've been working with them for over 16 years. And again, this year, we've continued to do test work. The most recent results that we published were from the dysprosium and terbium recovery work, where we had done work at the lab level on that part of the circuit before. It was the only part of the circuit that we hadn't taken through at the demonstration plant level, and we wanted to confirm the results. We were very, very pleased with the results that we were able to show.
For anyone who missed those results, we saw for the dysprosium that we can produce an oxide to 99.999% purity. For the terbium, it's even higher, it's 99.9999%. So, you know, that's... Yeah, the technical risk for rare earth projects in the flow sheet is one of the challenges, and it is one of the key advantages for the Dubbo project, that we have such a long-standing, comprehensive testing program of our flow sheet. So we feel that that part of the risk profile for this project is very well managed. We are continuing at this point in time, having got all of that work done, to really focus our efforts on securing the offtakes and progressing the funding for the project.
Our target is to have FID at the end of next calendar year. And what we've done this last 12 months is really broaden out the jurisdictions that we are targeting for those discussions. Whereas previously, we were almost exclusively talking in Korea for offtake parties and strategic investors. Over the last 12 months, we have broadened it out, and we've been in active discussions in Korea, but also in the U.S., and in Europe, and in Japan. And what we are seeing is a significant amount of momentum now in those discussions. We had hoped that we would have the first of the offtakes completed at, you know, this side of Christmas. That's unlikely at this point. These conversations are going to continue on into the new year.
In part because, the parties that we're talking to in North America are predominantly those large car manufacturers that are going to be manufacturing the EVs. Some of you may be aware that there's been quite a lot of industrial action in recent months that has slowed down their procurement processes. We can only go as fast as their processes. The parties in Europe that we're speaking to are not as impacted by that specifically, but their processes are also taking longer than the original timelines indicated. On the positive, we've been in regular cadences with a number of those companies now for many, many months. They started out with a large pool of potential suppliers that they were speaking to, and we've gone through a number of gates through the last 12 months.
So the fact that we are in the process still at this point is, is very significantly positive. But they are competitive processes, so we don't know with certainty what the outcome will be, which is one of the reasons why we are maintaining a number of these processes in parallel. So firstly, so we can make sure if we don't prevail in one, we've still got a number of other conversations that are well advanced. But secondly, also, so in a perfect world, we get to a point where we ourselves can then choose which is the best of these deals, to be able to proceed with.
It would be much easier to do a bad deal, and we are very conscious of the fact that it's critical for us to secure the offtakes, but it's also critical for us to secure offtake arrangements that are going to support the first 10 years of operation for this, this business. The challenges are not insignificant as we go through that first five to 10 years of operation, and we want to make sure that we've got the right parties and the right commercial arrangements, and the offtakes are going to enable the rest of the funding that is needed to be able to get the project into operation. So one of the other conversations that is well progressed at this point is with the various different either strategic investors or government export financing.
We have been in conversation over this 12 months with the Export Finance, obviously in Australia, but also in the U.S., in Korea, in Japan, and in a number of European countries. That's an important part as well, where that has been running in parallel with the discussion with the offtakers. So that once we've decided which jurisdictions the offtakers are in, then we can very quickly then start to work with their jurisdictional ECAs to be able to provide support to funding for the project. I do note that when we're talking to customers, actually the first hurdle for most of them is a very thorough review of our ESG credentials. It is very beneficial for us to have the Dubbo Project in a Tier 1 jurisdiction.
And we did go through a public rating of our ESG program earlier this year. So I will talk about that again in a couple of slides' time. But perhaps if I just to roll round out Dubbo first, if we just move to the next slide. The financials are very strong for this project. This is based on the December 2021 optimization study. But you know, we did publish then the internal rate of return is over 23%. It throws out very strong cash flow once it's up and running of over AUD 400 million a year. And you can see there a very strong margin.
And this is, this is a point that we've been making very strongly in recent discussions, particularly given that this was based on the December 2021 long-term price assumptions. And the rare earth prices have, the long-term projections have come up since then. So we would expect when we update this, that we will see that the rare earths are a large proportion of the revenue again. But what you can see here is that essentially, when you take the revenues from your niobium and your zirconia, you've already covered all the costs of operation. So the, the rare earths, one view would be, they essentially come for free. So it puts us in a very strong position as the actual prices for revenue, for sorry, those rare earths become stronger.
But the challenge, as you would well know, is that the capital cost is significant. So again, we're continuing to really challenge ourselves on this. We know that there's inflationary pressure, we know that we'll see some of those costs come up from the December 2021 estimate. But we have been working with Hyundai. They've missed the opportunity for us to lower some of the original cost assumptions that were based on stick build by using more modular design. So that's one of the areas that we're exploring. We also, in that original estimate in December 2021, we included all services. So another area that we've been exploring is whether or not we could purchase those from a third-party provider, which would reduce the CapEx requirement.
For example, the sulfuric acid plant, if we had that as being a service that was provided from a third party, then that would reduce our overall capital hurdle to be able to get started. We're continuing to do work with ANSTO on how we can optimize the flow sheet. And again, working with our off-take parties as we are able to determine really what products they want, there are potentially opportunities for us to reduce some of the kit that's actually required on site, which again, obviously is helpful. So there are things that will go for us, there are things that will go against us. We're not expecting to put out an updated CapEx until we've got all of those streams updated, and that will be just prior to FID.
So we're aiming to do that late next year. Just to the next slide. This just then just I guess reconfirms those milestones. We do continue to have very strong support from government. We have got a letter from the EFA that was for AUD 200 million, a letter of support. But they... We're in very regular conversation with the EFA. In fact, I just flew in last night from having been at their annual conference for the export finance groups from Asia. They have an annual conference, and they were holding that in Sydney yesterday, and I was invited to speak on one of the panels.
You know, it was very evident there in that forum, the amount of support that there is, not just from the Australian EFA, but from a number of the ECAs for the Dubbo Project. The recent announcement by the Prime Minister of increasing the Critical Minerals Facility from AUD 2 billion- AUD 4 billion, that money will be managed by the EFA. So certainly our hope is that, when the time comes for us to go back to confirm with the EFA funding, that we will be able to access that facility and be able to see an increase in that letter of support.
Nonetheless, since then, we've continued to see the New South Wales government, as well as the federal government, assist us with grants to help us with some of the early works. We got AUD 10 million, or just over it, late last year from the New South Wales Government to help us with some of the roadworks and infrastructure that's needed to be done around the project in preparation for construction. And then more recently, the federal government gave us AUD 6.5 million to assist us with some of the work around updating the design of the tailings storage facility and also, you know, the actual process infrastructure to meet the higher ESG hurdles, in particular, the carbon footprint, but also global tailing standards.
So that work has been ongoing, but where we're at now is progressing those bankable strategic offtakes, working with strategic investors, and really targeting to have our FID or final investment decision at the end of next calendar year, to be able to then commence construction with first production targeted for 2027. So next slide then I think takes us into the ESG comment that I just wanna make before closing. And that is, you know, this is obviously absolutely core to our purpose. We're making the metals that the world needs in order to be able to make the clean energy transition. So, you know, clearly it is core to our purpose.
But it is also important for us to recognize that it's not just to do the right thing, we have to do it the right way. So on the next slide, we will see we have a very comprehensive ESG program, much more so than most businesses of our age, and redevelopment. And I know many of you know, my previous role was Chief Sustainability Officer with South32. This is obviously an area of passion for me, but one of the reasons why I came to Board ASM is because this was already very strongly embedded in the work program, and many of these initiatives are long-standing.
You know, I spoke before about the fact that we did the Sustainalytics public assessment earlier this year, and we were assessed in the top quartile of visible performing diversified metals producers through that assessment, which is very pleasing indeed. We will continue to work in a fit-for-purpose way on progressing this work. Our focus this year is on continuing to progress our carbon net zero plans. So in addition to our targets that Korean Metals Plant, we have recently released our 2030 targets for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions for the Dubbo Project.
We are using that funding that I spoke about earlier to develop the action plan, so that everyone can see what our pathway is to delivering on those targets, and also sure enough, what our 2040 target is. Because most of the EV producers have themselves got a commitment that their whole supply chain will be carbon net zero by 2040. So when we do that early assessment with our offtakers around our ESG credentials, which, you know, as I said before, is the first piece in their process, you know, these are some of the questions that they're asking: Can we demonstrate that we're actually gonna be able to deliver on them? So I think that is then coming to the end. If we can just see the next slide.
So ASM, we are building an alternative supply chain to provide the world with both rare earths and critical minerals. We're already producing in Korea, the high-tech metals and alloys. We have Dubbo Project ready for construction, and we have got very advanced discussions happening with both our offtake potential offtakers as well as funding bodies. We underpin the business with very strong ESG credentials, and we have a terrific management and Board. So, with that, I open the floor to questions.
Are you still thinking of selling part of Dubbo?
Well, I like to think that as we're still welcoming investment in Dubbo. Yes, absolutely. So when we think about how we're gonna fund the project, predominantly, we're looking for investment at project level and selling down at the project level, rather than coming in at the top or the, you know, as the listing. Yeah.
Dubbo is not the wettest part of Australia. Where's the water coming from?
So it can be very wet there. So they do have a sort of cyclic drought and then flood. But yeah, there there are, there's a water table there, and the water licenses we have already acquired that are sufficient. When we did the December 2021 study, we actually reduced the water consumption by over 50% at that point. So we have, you know, through some of the improvement work we've been doing, reduced the burden that we place on our water requirements. But we have also already acquired the the licenses that we need. At the moment, we don't need them because, you know, we've acquired them, but we're not using them, and so we're actually selling them back to the community at the moment.
Hi, Rowena.
Hi.
Thank you for the update.
Thank you.
I have a couple of questions, so let me start with the first one, and it's in relation to the Korea Plant. I understand management's strategic intent around wanting to secure offtake agreements to at least for the 10 years of operation, which is fantastic. And, you know, get that-
That's the Dubbo, as opposed to the Metals Plant? Yes.
Oh, right. Okay. Thank you.
Yes.
For the correction. With the Metals Plant, if, you know, you were very successful, and you mentioned that the caster strip can take up to the capacity of 1,500, and it just requires furnaces. What would it take to be able to start producing and generating revenue, from that in terms of putting the furnace in place?
It takes having the customer orders secure. So in order to secure the customer orders, we need to have completed the technical validation process. So this work that we're doing at the moment with the various different customers, we need to get to a point where we've completed the product validation. Every magnet producer has its own special recipe for these alloys, so they're not standard products. And in fact, you know, the first part of the dance is that we have to build enough trust and relationship with the magnet producer for them to share with us their alloy specifications, so we can then do the technical development work, and then work through with them to demonstrate that we can consistently make that product to spec. So we need to go through that process with each of them individually.
So that's the work that we've been doing now for a number of months. So we need to complete that. We then need to secure orders. So once you've got through the technical validation process, then you obviously need to agree the commercial terms. And then we need to enter into their order book. And so that's the comment I was making before, is that they really have got their orders secured on a 12-month horizon. So when you get to the point where you have got a product validation complete, then we'll start to see orders coming in, but we would expect it will be a slow ramp-up through next year.
Okay. And, how about financing and the time it will take to put the additional furnaces?
So we estimate, the additional furnaces will take, somewhere between four to six months, to be able to have installed them and fully commissioned them. So that, that's relatively simple.
Mm-hmm.
To be able to take the facility from where it is now to the 3,600 ton-
Mm-hmm.
requires an additional strip caster, and that has a more significant lead time.
Mm-hmm.
And that's also the more significant piece of capital. So the total amount, we would expect it to be less than, or around about AUD 10 million to finish the facility. But, we would, we would expect that we don't need that capacity, prior to the end of this calendar year.
Okay. Thank you. So my second question is in regards to Dubbo. And the timing looks great, but there's always challenges that we're trying to get there, particularly start of construction. And from your current knowledge now and risk assessment, what do you see as the, you know, the top key hurdles around getting to that milestone?
Well, the first one is securing market, take the commercial terms that we desire, and to secure the funding. That's undoubtedly the most significant challenge for us and where we're putting all, you know, really all our attention to at the moment. But then beyond that, it will be then delivering what's a very significant capital project in an environment where there's scarcity of resources. So being able to make sure that we've got the right parties working with us, and the right construction plan so that we're not constrained by, you know, people being able to manage skills for that construction period.
The commissioning risk is then the next one that we've got quite a lot of thinking that we've already done on it, and obviously, the comprehensive test work that we've done over time helps to manage that risk. But that always is a significant piece of work to make sure that you've managed effectively, and so it's the commissioning and then the ramp-up.
Mm-hmm.
So, I would place them actually in that order at the moment, I think.
Thank you.
With respect to the Australian Government's forthcoming with some grants, and that, have you attempted anything with Korean Government?
Yeah. We've also had a letter of support from the Korean, the Korean, they're called K-SURE, but we've been in conversations with Korean export banks. We've also been talking with, you know, a number of the different Korean departments over time. What the Korean Government wants to see is that we've got commitments for offtake and engineering content. And if we meet those hurdles, then they're very enthusiastic about supporting the project. So we've really got to make sure, 'cause they're not the only government that are keen to support if we can meet those hurdles.
Sure.
So we really, you know, doing this process with offtake is to make sure that we're looking at all of the jurisdictions, so we can think about, all right, what's the best, not just the best offtake, but the best offtake that will be in combination with the best, incentives, government incentives in that jurisdiction. So, you know, I just, by way of explanation, I just said, a few weeks ago, I spent time in the U.S. traveling on the Australian Critical Minerals Trade Delegation, and I was, with the Prime Minister there in Washington at the round table, where he announced the extra money for the Critical Minerals Facility.
You know, but a lot of that discussion that week in Washington was meeting with the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce, and really understanding all of the incentives that are being put in place at the moment in the U.S., and how that might actually enable investment in Australia. And there's, you know, that's just one jurisdiction that at the moment is putting in place really material incentives that could enable us. So, you know, we're really looking at, well, which—it's not just which is the best offtake, but which is the best package that we think that's gonna enable offtake and funding for the project. And we will also look at which ones we think will move most rapidly, because some of the jurisdictions move more slowly than others.
These are all factors that we're currently considering.
... Are there any discussions with EU countries at all?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yes, yes, absolutely. We've got, we've got a number of offtake discussions happening at the moment in Europe, and we have also been working with the European government banks as well. And then, you know, if I speak to Korea, Korea continues to be very supportive of the Korean metals facility. So we have a, you know, very strong support from the Korean Korean Metals Plant, and we're very grateful for that as well. I think the chair has to pass.
Please, it's been my pleasure.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Ian.
Thank you, guys. Thanks for coming.
Thank you. You have a question?
Yeah. So, given the economic condition and the concerns around the slowdowns, all around the world-
Mm.
I just wondered, have you noticed a change in sentiment around these offtake discussions?
I haven't noticed a change, but it's the reverse to what you would expect if it was responding to the market. Because what is really very evident for the rare earth and critical minerals is that they are getting a lot of senior government attention around the strategic importance of it. And a lot of governments, not just Australia, but a number of these governments, and I've talked about the U.S., Korea, but, you know, we see it in Germany, we see it in France, we see it in the U.K., we're seeing it in Japan. You know, they're putting in incentives to establish this alternative supply chain. So whereas I think we see it impacting on the private investment, what we're actually seeing from the government is actually that it's accelerating at the moment.
And so, you know, wants to some extent improving it. But, you know, there, there's no doubt that we have a challenging year ahead. We shouldn't be dismissive of that. It is a challenging year for us, but we've got very strong support for that strategic imperative, which is helping to offset some of that down in the market.
Mm-hmm. Thank you.
No other questions. In which case, we can perhaps, then break for a cup of tea.
Yeah.
So could I just say thank you to everybody who has joined us today, both online and, to those in the room. And I would particularly like to call out, the support of the directors over the last 12 months. It's been a very big year for ASM, and a big year for me personally, and I'm very grateful for, advice, the counsel, the encouragement, and just general support that I get from all of the, Board. And I would particularly also like to acknowledge, management team. It's very, very, very nice to be sitting here today, with such a strong management team who I know are very committed to delivering on the potential of this business going forward. And for ASM team in this room as well, we've got a big year ahead.
I look forward to sharing it with you. Thanks very much.