Thanks very much, everybody. This is Australian Strategic Materials, first opportunity to present here at Noosa. I am delighted to be here with you all and grateful for you coming along this afternoon to hear the ASM story. We are building a global rare earths and critical minerals business. We heard from Travis earlier today about what an exciting sector this is at the moment and how important it is. There is an enormous amount of geopolitical uncertainty, and certainly from our perspective, that is driving an enormous amount of opportunity. We have seen the global political tensions really escalating through this year since Independence Day earlier this year. The retaliatory response from the Chinese of restricting the export of these materials through to their Western customers has been ticking backwards and forwards in recent months.
In particular, and again, as Travis mentioned, it is particularly putting an emphasis on restricting the heavy rare earths. We have seen China continue to increase their restrictions around those particular materials and the technologies associated with developing capability for those materials. What this has meant is that we have really activated both the governments, but also the consumers of these materials to start to act. This is not a new risk. The awareness of how consolidated this supply chain was in China has been known for a very long time, but we have been complacent about it. What we have seen in recent months is this felt pain of the actual restrictions kicking in has really activated both governments and companies to start to act. For us, that is fantastic because ASM anticipated this need some time ago.
We have been working for many, many years preparing for exactly this moment. When you have a look at that supply chain, 90% of that midsection, the separation, refining, and metals and alloys currently is consolidated in China. You can see that compared to other ASX-listed companies, we are the only one on the ASX that has got a strategy to span from mine all the way through to alloys. We are the only ASX-listed company that has established production capability in that metalization and alloying that already exists today. In fact, we are the only company outside of China that is not already integrated into a Western supplier that is producing these alloys today. Our strategy is to be going from mine all the way through to metal.
It starts with our resource in Dubbo in New South Wales, where we will mine and separate and refine those products all the way through to separated oxides. We take it that one step further, and we will take it through one of our metals facilities, the first of which we have built and is already in operation in Korea. We are well advanced in looking at replicating that facility in other jurisdictions. I am going to start with talking about our Korean metals facility. We built this through COVID, and that was very challenging. As I said, it has been in production since 2022. We deliver customers' product there, both the light rare earth metals, the specialist alloys that are the constituent for these high-performance magnets. Most recently, we have established our own in-house technology to do the heavy rare earth metals in this facility as well.
We made a commitment to have this—I am just trying to move it forward, and there we go. This is a video for you just to be able to see the facility. We made a commitment for this facility to be net zero carbon from commencement of operation. I am very pleased to say the last two years we have been able to confirm that we have delivered on that target. We are very proud of this facility. You can see there the strip caster, and before that were the furnaces where we make the rare earth metals. We are exporting from this facility now to the States and to Europe, as well as supplying local customers. We built it in 2022, anticipating that the Western magnet producers were going to come online rapidly. They have gone a lot slower than we anticipated, but they are moving now.
With what we've seen in recent months, the magnet producers are starting to ramp up their production, and that's flowing through to orders for us, which is really exciting. Noveon is an emerging U.S. producer. Until last week, they were the only producer of magnets in the U.S. We have got a 100-ton agreement to supply for them in the initial stages, and delivery started in July of this year. Vacuumschmelze is an established German producer. We have been delivering for them in recent months through to their facility in Germany. They just announced just earlier today that they have just made their first magnet from their South Carolina facility, and they are growing and expanding into the U.S. We have got a five-year framework agreement with USA Rare Earth. They are commissioning their facility at the moment in Oklahoma.
We have just done a 5 ton order for them to support them through their commissioning. We have been supplying to Neo Performance for about 12 months now light rare earth metals into their Asian facilities, but also into their newly opened magnet facility in Estonia. Very excitedly, they are our first customer for our heavy rare earth metals. We supplied them with small quantities of dysprosium and terbium just recently. The Korean facility was originally designed for 1,300 tonnes per annum in the first phase. That is what we have currently installed. That is currently with four furnaces and one strip caster. What we have been working on is an expansion plan to take that through to 3,600 tonnes per annum, and then potentially beyond to 5,600 tonnes.
That was the full design capacity when we initially built the facility to be implemented in phases as demand supported it. What we're seeing with these new orders and what we will see over the next 18 months-20 months is a ramp-up to fill the whole of phase one. We went to market in recent months. We've raised AUD 80 million in the last three or four months, which means now that the phase II expansion is fully funded. We are already talking with the providers of the long lead items for phase II so that we can commit to that second strip caster and the full fit out of the 18 furnaces to take that up to the 3,600 tonnes. In parallel with that, we're doing the development work with the terbium and dysprosium. I said we're doing that in-house.
We had success with that at lab scale last year. We've been piloting it this year. We had the first commercial production from our pilot facility go to Estonia in mid this year. We're continuing to produce small scale on that pilot facility at the moment, dysprosium metal. What we are working on is a second phase pilot for the first part of next year to just finalize the commercial design and then take it through to commercial scale in the second half of next year. We do have that option to do a third phase here, but it's not our only option. There is a lot of interest in, rather than continuing to expand in Korea, to replicate this capability in other jurisdictions, particularly the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. is particularly hungry for this capability to be onshore.
We have been talking with U.S. government and state officials now for almost 18 months about the potential for putting this facility in. The recent framework agreement that was announced between the U.S. and Australian government is also very topical for us. Now the Australian government is also interested in talking with us about potential funding support for what we are wanting to do in the U.S. We are looking at doing a facility there that in the first phase would be 2,000 tonnes per annum, but can then again in modular form be taken to 4,000 tonnes per annum. We will finalize our site selection early next year and then commence construction once it is permitted, which we anticipate will be at the end of next year. Exciting opportunities for us in metal, but also really important for us to have the feedstock.
We're currently sourcing feed for this plant from an Australian producer, from a U.S. producer. We're talking to a number of emerging producers in the U.S. and in Europe for that facility in Korea. We would really like to be able to support growth of the metals facilities by bringing on our own feed from Dubbo. Dubbo is a very special resource. It's a hard rock, polymetallic. It has lights, it has heavies, but it also has zirconium, hafnium, and niobium. It's been in development for a long time. Some of you may be familiar with it in some of its earlier phases. We've got a very large resource there, 75 million tonnes. It is in a fantastic jurisdiction, regional rather than remote. It is fully approved, fully permitted to commence construction.
We have got the flow sheet well developed and very comprehensively tested with the work we've done at ANSTO over the last 15 years. We are working with DRA Global and Bechtel Engineering on the final engineering, working to get funding and off-takes to be able to commence construction. What we've really challenged ourselves on is, is there a way of doing this more simply? It is a large flow sheet when you're making all of those products and bringing them to market simultaneously. Particularly with the urgency around rare earths, we have challenged ourselves, can we do the rare earths first as a first phase, bring them on, and then with the revenue from that support, then as a second phase, bringing on the zirconium, hafnium, and niobium?
We got some federal government funding last year and did test work because we had seen results that our ore body was particularly amenable to an atmospheric leach. The first step in our full flow sheet is a sulfide bake. It is capital intensive, it is energy intensive. We thought that a simpler way forward for the rare earths might be to do either a tank or a heap leach. What we published in July of this year is the scoping study that showed that this is a very successful option for us. It does simplify the flow sheet. It does reduce the capital by over 50%. It does also establish us in first quartile for costs. It is all very well getting your CapEx down, but this sector is going to continue to come under price pressure, certainly for the next five to 10 years.
We wanted to make sure that we had a flow sheet that was going to be competitive beyond being built and really thrive in these early years of operation. This is what the scoping study showed, that we would have about 1,100 tonnes per annum of light rare earths, but really importantly, just another 80 tonnes-85 tonnes of the heavy rare earths, which are really desired at the moment. That is a good proportion for how it would flow through into the magnets. A particularly attractive project for those OEMs and magnet producers that are looking to source feed going forward for their growth. As you can see, in 2021, the capital for Dubbo was AUD 1.67 billion. What we have in today's dollars now is a capital of AUD 740 million, which is a lot more approachable for us.
have already got substantial support from US EXIM and EFA and EDC, over AUD 1.5 billion worth of letters of support for the debt side of this stack. We are progressing at the moment discussions with off-takers and strategic partners to be able to finalize the funding for this for the more simplified proposal. That is ASM. We have a booth just outside the other side of this wall. I would be delighted to talk to anybody who wants to hear more about what we are doing. Thanks very much.