All right. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to another ShareWise webinar. Today, we're very, very lucky to have the Executive Chairman, Charles Lew, and the Chief Operating Officer, Tim Gilbert, from Hastings Technology Metals, which is HAS on the ASX. I appreciate both of you for your time. I know you're both busy men. We'll let you guys get into a few things. For those listening, it's going to be recorded. If you do have to leave halfway through, feel free to reach out to us or jump on our YouTube channel. You'll be able to watch that. I'm sure Tim or Charles will be more than happy to answer a few questions. Again, thanks for your time, gentlemen.
Just the structure of it for those listening again, go through a bit of a presentation, drop in your questions throughout the presentation, and we'll have a Q &A at the end. It will be really engaging. It should be good. I'm looking forward to it, certainly. Tim and Charles, I'll let you take the reins. I think Charles is going to share his screen, go through a little bit of a presentation, but go for it.
Thank you, Harry. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for coming to listen to our presentation, which will be focused on our two primary assets now, but in particular, the Yangibana Joint Venture that we have recently signed a joint venture agreement with Wyloo. And more recently, we also announced this landmark acquisition of a gold area in Kalgoorlie called Whiteheads Gold. And we'll talk more about that in a moment. Let me just bring up some slides. I'm just going to put up this share screen. And just bear with me.
Perfect. Got that.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right. Good. Okay. This is the standard disclaimer and also forward-looking statements and competent person statement. Let me just get straight into the investment highlights. I started off to say about the Yangibana asset that we have up in the Gascoyne. You can see in the map on the right-hand side where it is. It is about 1,100 km north-northeast of Perth. I have been involved in Yangibana since the very discovery of this ore body back in 2014. Myself, working with a couple of geologists, discovered this high-grade neodymium-praseodymium, otherwise NdPr being the chemical symbol of an ore body that is well endowed, rich with these critical minerals that are needed for making magnets, what we call permanent magnets that you will find in electric vehicles to wind turbines to robotics and, of course, even your smartphone.
Since 2014, I have taken the project step by step all the way to where it is now fully permitted. All the mine infrastructure has been built. The process flowsheet has been defined. The asset sits on 17 years mine life, 30 million tons of resource, and about 21 million tons of reserves. With this joint venture signed with Wyloo, we basically have de-risked a lot of the execution risk of the project as we go into the final stage of FID and also construction then and into production. I will talk a little bit more about that as we progress on the slides. The other key thing about this joint venture, which is, as I said, the 60-40, 60% Wyloo, 40% Hastings, is that we still have equal representation on the management in terms of a joint management committee as well as the marketing committee.
The pathway to FID and production is well defined once this transaction completes in two months' time. We have signed the agreement. We just need to go through various transfer of titles, particularly relating to about 30 over tenement ground and also transfer of contracts, transfer of certain assets. These are all the long lead equipment items that need to be transferred into the joint venture company with Wyloo. Interestingly, we announced this acquisition of Whiteheads Gold and located in Kalgoorlie. As you all know, Kalgoorlie is the mining capital of Australia. In WA, Kalgoorlie is well served by manpower, infrastructure, and for us in the gold space, what you'll find as we progress in this presentation is that there are four gold processing plants near to the Whiteheads mine site. What is interesting is that this particular tenement area is owned by Great Boulder.
Great Boulder Resources is also listed on the ASX and ticker symbol GBR. Great Boulder entered into an option with Great Western Gold, which is basically a group of private individuals. We took over that option and basically provided clarity to Great Boulder and Great Western Gold the timeline that we would want to bring this project into production. You will hear very shortly as my colleague Tim will talk more about the Whiteheads is the fact that the project is very much simpler to execute than Yangibana. We do not need to build infrastructure. We do not need to build a process plant. We do not need to build a tailings dam facility. It is really speed to execution and cash flow is what we are aiming for.
As you can see in this bullet point here, we are looking at maiden reserves targeted for the first half of next year and therefore being able to mine soon after that. What you see in Hastings therefore is a multi-commodities company. We have rare earth. We also have niobium that is a byproduct of the rare earth at Yangibana. Even within our other asset, you can see on the map on the right is Brockman. Brockman is an asset that has been sitting in Hastings for many years now. There is a scoping study done on the Brockman resource going back to 2015, 2016.
Now that we've done the joint venture with Wyloo on Yangibana, we're going to start to just blow the dust off Brockman and see what are the potential of monetizing this as well in terms of the niobium and the heavy rare earths. Heavy rare earths here, we are really talking about dysprosium, which also is used in permanent magnets. It's just that dysprosium is used very sparingly in a permanent magnet compared to neodymium and praseodymium, i.e., NdPr. Also sitting at Brockman is the Darcy Gold exploration area that we own. There's also Ark Gold, which is also an exploration area that we own right next door to Yangibana, as you can see from this map on the right. Let me just talk about the joint venture with Wyloo. It's a 60-40 joint venture. It's what we call an unincorporated joint venture.
The reason is mainly motivated by tax in the sense that the accumulated tax losses over the years do not get lost if we were to transfer it into a self-contained new company. The 60-40 structure is such that we will have 40% share of revenue and project cash flow. Of course, we are also committed to 40% of the cost going forward. Wyloo is acting as the JV manager and operator, and two representatives, myself and a colleague that you will find, his name is Vince Catania. If you look at the photo on the left-hand side, he is standing to my left. Vince, which is actually in fact on the far right of the photo as you look at it. He and I will sit on that management committee.
The project is de-risked in a significant way simply because there is an outstanding $12O million of exchangeable note due to Wyloo. With this transaction, it actually cancels out that exchangeable note that was taken on back in 2022, October 2022, when we were considering a, or rather we took a 21% interest in Neo Performance Materials. We were then considering trying to merge the two companies together. The other thing I should call out on this joint venture is that for most of you, you probably know that Wyloo is the private investment minerals company of Mr. Andrew Forrest. Mr. Andrew Forrest obviously built a very successful company in Fortescue. His whole group brings significant technical as well as financial strength to the project. With the partnership with Wyloo, we are looking forward to progressing Yangibana into construction and production.
Here's the organizational structure. You can see that myself and Vince, as I mentioned, and from Wyloo, Joel Turko and Luca Giocovazzi. If I may just go back very quickly, Luca Giocovazzi is standing there on my right-hand side. Looking at the photo, he'll be the second individual from the left. With Joel, he is also standing there on the far left of the picture as you looked at it. Basically, we have equal representation.
What Hastings brings to the joint venture, as you appreciate very importantly, is that having discovered Yangibana in 2014, a lot of the money has been invested into the process flow and into defining the resource and the reserves and into permitting and also not just the construction and the process flow of a beneficiation mine at Yangibana, but it's also the downstream hydromet plant that we are looking with Wyloo to decide where is the best location for this hydromet plant. At the moment, we are permitted to construct it in Onslow. With the cost pressures of the mining space in Australia, the opportunity has come about for us to consider downstream in Saudi Arabia or even in Estonia where Neo Performance Materials have a processing oxide processing plant as well as a magnet manufacturing plant.
A lot of discussions will go into where would be the best and ideal location to position the hydromet plant. We will work closely with Wyloo to determine that. What Hastings brings to the joint venture therefore is obviously our experience and knowledge over the last 10, 11 years in the rare earth space, all the way from the quality of the ore body and even into the downstream into the markets. We have offtake contracts with ThyssenKrupp for two-thirds of our material, whereby ThyssenKrupp, which is a German industrial company, they have a raw materials trading arm. We signed an offtake with them, which is like a framework agreement. What happens is that when we come closer into production with a timeline of delivery of our concentrate, we will then enter into a final take-up pay with the customer of ThyssenKrupp.
What ThyssenKrupp provides for is obviously credit-standing, counterparty risk, and most importantly, bankability from a project finance perspective as we get into final discussions with the lenders before we call on FID. The other thing that we bring to the joint venture is our geological knowledge of Yangibana and the whole logistics and supply. What you will see later on in the slides is that we have procured all the equipment. These are long lead equipment as well as equipment that is small items that are needed to construct the concentrate plant or what is also called a beneficiation plant at Yangibana. On top of that, also equipment for the hydromet plant because some pieces of equipment for the hydromet plant have a two, two and a half years lead time from the point of ordering for it.
If you factor in the engineering design work prior to placing the order, the lead time could be as long as three to three and a half years. The engineering input, the knowledge of the industry adds a lot to the joint venture that we are into with Wyloo. Here you see a timeline. This is an indicative timeline. I guess the important thing to call out is that, as I said at the start, having signed the agreement, we will now go through the conditions precedents to closing. Also, there will be a shareholders' EGM in the course of the next five, six weeks. Once we can close on this transaction, the immediate task is really to review the CapEx and OpEx for the project. The last CapEx was done about 15, 18 months ago, and we need to refresh that.
You'll see later on in one of our slides that the remaining capital cost, now that we've built the infrastructure at Yangibana, the remaining capital cost is in about $316 million , including contingencies, but if you exclude contingencies, about $219 million . Once we have done that CapEx review, we expect that in the course of the next 12 months from now, we would have the project ready to fund and calling FID. As you can see from the quote from Luca Giacovazzi, the CEO of Wyloo, his intention is really to try and take this to FID as soon as possible. The construction time of the beneficiation plant is 18 months. Therefore, we'll be looking at the fourth quarter of 2027 for first production out of Yangibana.
The important point I want to mention about the Yangibana ore body since the discovery in 2014, we've done a lot, a lot of test work, both in terms of two pilot plant test work on the concentrate and one pilot plant test work on the carbonate, which is after the hydrometallurgy process. You can see from this slide that compared to a lot of the other rare earth companies that, for example, Lynas, of course, we all know is in production. MP Materials is also in production. Peak Rare Earths is coming to production. Bayan Obo in China is, of course, one of the largest rare earth mines in the world. If you look at our high-grade neodymium-praseodymium NdPr to TREO ratio, we sit right at the top compared to all our peers. This, in essence, drives the very strong economics of Yangibana.
If you look at the margin curve on the right-hand side, according to CRU, a London-based commodities research company, what they have told us is that we sit high up on the operational margin curve in terms of the strength of that ore body. Basically, when you compare to all the others in the group, we are in the top quartile of that margin curve. As a quick snapshot, I talked about the fact that we have 17 years mine life and a world-class ore body. $158 million has been spent on non-processed infrastructure. That means the infrastructure on the mine site. This effectively has de-risked one-third of the project. Being fully permitted with both state and Commonwealth approvals in place, native title agreement in place, and an offtake with ThyssenKrupp, as I already mentioned, we are well-positioned to undertake this construction and into production.
The remaining capital cost is $289 million , as you can see on the right-hand side. With that high-grade NdPr ore body, our post-tax NPV is about $865 million ungeared. The IRR is 31% with 3.4 years payback. The EBITDA for the project on a per annum basis is about $ 250 million. The life of mine free cash flow is $ 3.3 billion. As I said earlier, we sit on the first quartile of the global margin curve. Here is a snapshot of all the what you see is what has already been built. A picture speaks a thousand words. With the exception of the aeroplane, everything else you see on this photo, we own and we have paid for. There is no debt secured on this equipment.
We are already, as they say, shovel-ready to get the plant construction underway once Wyloo and ourselves have made certain critical decisions on going into FID. Here's another slide that just shows you the long lead items. I mentioned about the rotary kiln needed for the hydromet plant, which is what we call also the stage two. The hydromet plant produces a carbonate before it goes into oxide separation. What you can see is that the rotary kiln is sitting outside of Perth and pumps and equipment and off-gas scrubber, another big equipment, and again, another long lead item that takes about two, two and a half years to fabricate. Also the number of the pumps that are sitting in the warehouses. Just very briefly on supply and demand. Here we have CRU, Boston Consulting Group, and Coherent Market Insights.
We went to different analysts to get an idea as to what is the growth for permanent magnets. What you can see is the projections from 2023 to 2030. The compound annual growth rate that is being talked about is about 8% for the growth in the different segments, electric vehicles, wind turbines, the combustion engine vehicles as well, because in your standard combustion engine cars, you still have a lot of magnets for things like your car seats and your window lifters, wiper motors, and power steering. All that requires a permanent magnet. Of course, in the electronic space and others. In the other, what we have seen is that there is an emerging area whereby robotics and humanoid robotics is now being talked about and being researched. Very advanced research has gone into it.
We expect to see robotics being a new growth area for permanent magnets. On the right-hand side, what you have is that CRU is advising us that if you look all the way out to 2040, their view is that there is a shortage of supply because it takes a long time to bring a rare earth mine into production. Their view is that by 2030, with the expected growth in use of permanent magnets, they see eight times eight more Yangibana that is needed to come and fill that demand-supply gap. Now I would like to hand over to my colleague, Tim. Tim has many years' experience in the gold mining space. I will let him introduce himself and talk to you briefly about our Whiteheads Gold project. Over to you, Tim. Thank you,
Thank you, Charles. Good morning, everybody. As Charles said, Tim Gilbert, I've been with Hastings two and a half years or so. It's exciting to be talking about Kalgoorlie. I spent a lot of time in Kalgoorlie previously roles. Let me update you on a very, very exciting project that we have going on in the goldfields. You will see in front of us right now that we have a modest transaction consideration to buy the Whiteheads project. That is being bought from Great Western Gold. The upfront cash for that is $ 370,000 and 3 million Hastings shares, consideration shares that go with it. In addition to that, there are another payable process later on as we get into resource, JORC resource. That totals $ 800,000 later on. That's dependent on three different tranches, getting 225,000 ounces of resource, 250,000, and then 1 million ounces of resource.
The prospectivity for us up there is very, very good. I'll talk a little bit about that in a short space of time. The acquisition itself is we are well into our due diligence at the moment. It is looking very, very good in terms of the options that we are seeing in front of us to monetize the project quickly, as Charles alluded to earlier on. Some of the excitement that we're seeing in there is I'll just bring your attention to some of the grades that have been mined. This is a historic mining area. You'll see the photograph on the right-hand side. It's the old stamp at Whiteheads. Back in 1895 is our earliest records we can find. It was mined right through to the 1950s.
In some places, we are seeing reported grades of 49 grams per ton coming out of Whiteheads. In today's money, an ounce and a half. If you are mining an ounce and a half, then you are in good gold areas to be mining. Some of the other areas that we found historically reported grades, Lady Betty's, one of the underground old mines that is there, 41 grams per ton, and Whiteheads Find, 35 grams per ton. You will see that there is a lot of opportunity for high-grade historical mines in and around this area. Not that we are expecting to be finding grades quite as high as that, but we are expecting to see some very positive results coming back from some drilling we will be doing very, very soon. The highlights close to Kalgoorlie. It is the right postcode. We are talking Kalgoorlie, 50 minutes in the air from Perth.
It is the center of the goldfield mining industry. There are no need for us to have an airport anywhere near us. There's no need for an accommodation village. All of that will be served out of Kalgoorlie. Just in terms of getting on the ground, we have a great relationship with the Kakara Aboriginal Corporation. They have recently been nominated as the native title for the area we're in. We have a long history with those guys. Charles alluded to why we see this as a real opportunity to monetize gold into Hastings. As I mentioned beforehand, we're very, very close to Kalgoorlie. This is open-pit mining. We're not going to be having to push a decline down and get into ventilation for undergrounds or anything like that.
We certainly expect that we will be able to process the ore at one of four process plants, which are situated within 80 km of us. I'll show you that momentarily on a map. Upside geological space, we're on 380 sq km of highly prospective tenure. I just would mention through from that point of view, Great Western Gold and the previous owners prior to that, Great Boulder Resources, have been amalgamating some tenements in the area. Part of the deal that makes it very good for us is the fact that those tenements have now been brought together under one set of tenure. Thanks, Charles. This gives you a little bit of a map of where we are. You'll see Whiteheads Gold Project, which is center top right.
Around that area, you'll see as you come down towards Kalgoorlie, we've noted the four process plants that are close by. Black Swan, that is a plant that is currently looked at to convert it from a nickel operation to gold. You get down to Kanowna Belle, Lakewood, and Paddington on the way into Kalgoorlie. We haven't assumed that we're going to go into the super pit here. I think the owners of the super pit are going to be pushing as much ore through that plant as they possibly can. We're just taking a small view on us. The four mills, as I said, have 9.2 million tons per annum of processing capacity through them.
When we are talking about what is our optionality that we're looking at, to put it into perspective, we're looking at a modest 5,000 ounces that we want to bring into reserve in the not too distant future. Now, 5,000 ounces in an open pit, it is not a huge amount of ore. We think it's going to be something in the order of 120,000-140,000 tons of ore. At 5,000 ounces, at $5,000 an ounce, you can see that there's potential revenue there, which is going to be in excess of $20 million if and when we prove that up. I expect we will be.
Because I say it is only 150,000 tons of ore, that is why we think that we will be able to find one of those four process plants will be able to take that ore and co-feed it with their own production and allow us to monetize the mining. In the future past that, as I mentioned beforehand, 380 kilometers of tenement packages and in historic gold mining areas. The opportunity there is that with that 10,000 meters of historical drilling, the geochemistry that has been done, and the gravity surveys, we believe that we are going to be able to bring a little bit more knowledge, a little bit more focus into this area and get these near-term opportunities that we see up and going. Those near-term opportunities are some areas called Blue Poles, Seven Leaders, and Lady Betty.
Now, those Seven Leaders is the area that we believe we will get into production very, very quickly, as Charles mentioned beforehand. That is going to be next year. Soon after that, we expect that the Lady Betty, which is one of those very, very high-grade underground, previous underground mines, that we will be able to put a pit over the top of that. We will be able to get into some very, very good grades to come out of that area as well. The biggest resource that we are seeing at the moment is Blue Poles. We think that has got something in the order of a little bit over 1 million tons in that area and 1 million tons at around about 1.2 grams per ton.
You can certainly work out that the options that we've got here are looking at a very good opportunity to mine some gold. I've got a picture of around about 50,000 ounces, which is in those three areas. Again, that is my view. And from what I've seen of the geology so far, I think we'll be in a position that we'll be able to give further updates to the market as we go through and actually define those resources as we go through from that point of view. Thanks, Charles. Now, the other exciting options that we've got within Hastings' portfolio is Charles mentioned it beforehand, Brockman Niobium and Rare Earth project. You'll see from the map on the right-hand side, that's based up near Halls Creek in the north of WA. It's got some very well-known partners in and around that area.
Brands Range is just a couple of hundred km down the road from that. WA1 is 490 km south of Halls Creek. There are some good neighbors. The Brockman Niobium project, it has been with Hastings for a long time, as Charles mentioned. It is a very substantial resource in there, 41.6 million tons of resource sitting there. What we want to be doing is going back into the pre-feasibility study status and updating that for current knowledge that we have and updating it for process plants that we are going to need and see how we can monetize that area as well. Very quickly, just to touch your base, sorry, yeah, just thank you, Charles. You lead on to Darcy's Gold. This is another exciting area that we have up and around the Halls Creek area.
We have these tenements, which are overlain by Brockman, as you can see in that left-hand side there. It is another one of those areas that is historically well-endowed in gold. It was first mined back in 1885. It was one of the original gold rushes in WA before everybody moved from Halls Creek down towards Kalgoorlie in the early 1890s. From those days, again, very, very high-grade mining has occurred. You'll see the second dot point in there in Darcy's, 79.3 tons of ore at an average grade of 24 grams per ton. Again, we're very, very excited about this portfolio of gold that we're actually starting to build up within Hastings. On the right-hand side, bring your attention to Ark Gold, which is some tenements we have 100% holding of, which are just to the southeast of Yangibana.
Again, very close to where we are with other historical gold mines in that area as well. The picture that we're starting to build here for Hastings is we've got our primary flagship at Yangibana. As a 40% owner of that, we're now branching ourselves into some gold mining areas where we believe we can monetize those leases quickly and efficiently and get some cash flow into a diversified mining Hastings. Thanks, Charles. I think we can just zip right on past that one. This is just to bring the opportunity of the Darcy's Gold up near Brockman. You'll see where Halls Creek is there. You'll see some of the historical mining that's been going on in and around that area over previous times, which is Creek is a callout one that has been a prolific gold miner there.
Nicholson's, they're the two major mines that have been in and around that area. Again, it's good geological background for us. It's got another good postcode. We're very excited to be able to get into Darcy's once we've got Whiteheads settled down and we move through that Whiteheads into reserve. To summarize that for us, I'll hand over to Charles momentarily, but the gold mining opportunity that sits in front of Hastings, I think, is very, very exciting and in a place that we know very, very well.
Thank you, Charles Thank you, Tim. Just to assess a quick slide on the board of directors and senior management in the company. As I mentioned, Vince Catania, who's GM Corporate, will join me in the management committee of the joint venture.
Looking at the board of directors, John Cross was formerly the Chief Operating Officer for Lynas going back to 2013 to 2015. He has been on the board of Hastings since 2016. Guy Robertson has been with Hastings since 2012 when he joined the board and has many, many years of CFO experience as well as having served in large multinationals in Hong Kong and Australia. Myself, my background is investment banking. I left investment banking in the early 2000s and ventured into the mining space after the subprime crisis of 2008, 2009, and took over Hastings in December of 2013. Basically, from 2014 onwards, working with the geologists, as I said earlier, discovered this amazing Yangibana ore body. We have been very blessed and gifted with this ore body.
The good Lord has blessed us over the years, and we've taken it step by step, going through all the many different challenges and obstacles to bring it to where we are today as being shallow ready. Neil Hackett, who has been on the board, is a very experienced Company Secretary, as well as he's also a facilitator for the AICD courses. Mel Randall has 45 years' experience in the mining and resource space. In summary, what I will just want to call out then is that there is a very strong demand, as you saw in the supply demand slide, and that's projected growth in humanoid robotics as being a big area that will be opening up in the near future.
Just shows that demand for NdPr remains very strong, that number, CAGR number of about 8%-9% over the next five years to the end of this decade underscores that demand opportunity for and therefore drives the opportunity for a company like Hastings and in this joint venture with Wyloo to bring the project into production. As I said, the project is DRI, one-third DRI. And with Whiteheads Gold coming on as our other project, we are very confident with the nature of the ore body, the advantages of being in Kalgoorlie, and what we have seen in the geological data of Whiteheads that we can bring this into cash flow without spending a lot of money.
Brockman, as Tim has mentioned, is something that we will take a closer look at and see what is the opportunity there for us, given that it has a very strong presence of niobium as well as dysprosium, haptium, and zircon. On that basis, I end my presentation today and I hand it back to Harry.
Charles and Tim, excellent. Thank you very much. There is a lot happening, that's for sure. There are a lot of exciting times potentially for Hastings and shareholders involved. You have a very strong team behind you, just the sort of slide you just had up there with everyone on the board and the whole team behind you. There is a lot of experience there.
Does that give both of you, or Charles in this instance, more so I'll ask you this question, does it give you a lot more confidence that Hastings can get to where it wants to with the right team? And there's still a number of people you're trying to get on board to boost the projects to where they need to get to. How is the team looking?
Yes. I think over the years, I've always focused on ensuring that we build the right management and bring in the right skill sets into the company as we progress the project stage by stage. As you can see, in 2016, the first person or the first rare earth experienced person I brought onto the company as the director is John Cross. As it turned out, he left Lynas in 2015.
He had a lot of experience having been at Lynas, and he was able to guide me when we started on defining the process flow for Yangibana. Having brought on different skill sets into the board over the years, we have also reinforced the management and a lot of that management strength and the knowledge that we have in the company just basically has positioned us in this whole rare earth space where, as you know, there's not a great deal of people you can go out there and call on unless you build that knowledge in-house because the nature of the rare earth ore body is that each and every ore body is different. It's not like gold. Therefore, you have to develop your own bespoke process flow. The quality of your ore body ultimately defines the economics, as we all understand.
The geology of Yangibana, as I said, we have just been blessed with a very good geology there that does not have high levels of radioactive materials. We have very, very small, very minute levels of uranium and thorium. Those advantages help us to bring this project into realization. Over the last 10 years, with the joint venture now signed with Wyloo, that combination basically enables us to undertake the project with a much, much higher level of confidence in de-risking and building value for shareholders.
Yeah, beautiful. I think the management team and just the team in general, if everyone's got the same mindset, it increases the chances of getting the company to where you want to get it to. You have been based in Singapore a lot of the time. How do you manage to keep everyone on track and keep everyone on the same page?
I spend a lot of my time on teams. I spend every month I'm down in Perth for a week, 10 days, sometimes two weeks, to travel occasionally out east to meet with investors. The advantage of being in Singapore is that we also have a lot of shareholders coming out of Singapore and Malaysia and Hong Kong and even London. In the early years, I spent a lot of time talking to the end users in Europe, the European tier one automotive components manufacturer like Schaeffler and Brose and Bosch, and also the OEMs like BMW, Mercedes, and VW.
There was a lot of travel needed, and I traveled to China and traveled to Japan so as to get a very full understanding of this complex business of rare earths and magnets. Hence, we had always the intention of integrating end to end from mine to magnets because there is a lot of value in the entire supply chain because from the mine to the magnet, there are seven stages that one has to go through to get that end product of a magnet. That magnet is bespoke. That really led us to, in 2022, work with Wyloo because they had the same vision. That is where they lent us the money under an exchangeable note structure whereby we bought a 21% strategic shareholding in Neo Performance Materials.
Now, with this joint venture, what we have agreed on is that it would make more sense for Wyloo to partner us and be invested at Yangibana at that project or asset level and for us to transfer the Neo Performance Materials shares, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, transfer that to Wyloo so that Wyloo, as they have interest in Canada already through their Noront nickel investment, it made a more strategic move to just move a few pieces on the chessboard so that we position Yangibana and Hastings ready for the concentrate production in WA. Beautiful. Just on the note there of production, I've had a few questions just come through as you were speaking. You've got all the equipment. It seems like everything's very, very close to being there. Obviously, you're still doing due diligence.
When do you expect that production to start? What's the guidance there moving forward for the rest of this year? Yeah. There are two sets of equipment, one for the concentrate plant, otherwise called the beneficiation plant, and then the other is for the hydromet plant. As far as the concentrate plant is concerned, we are looking to, over the next 12 months, to come to FID and therefore start construction. As I said earlier in one of our slides, we are looking at a late 2027 production. In terms of the hydromet plant, the hydromet produces the carbonate, and the carbonate is still an intermediate product. It has to be brought into an oxide separation plant in order to get the rare earth oxides like neodymium oxides or praseodymium oxides. What we have to do is that where will it be best situated?
What is the economics? What's the cost? Also the strategy of it simply because rare earth, as we all understand, is somewhat played into the geopolitical space. Being a geopolitical football, we, Wyloo and ourselves, are very careful and very strategic in how best to position this hydromet plant and set ourselves up for a stronger downstream ability to deliver the carbonate into an oxide separation plant. Neo Performance does have an oxide separation plant in Estonia. They also have just started to commission their permanent magnet manufacturing plant in Estonia. We have to weigh a number of options. As I said, we are fully permitted to build the plant in Onslow. We have signed an MOU with the Saudi government in November last year.
The Saudi Arabian government is very interested to build a renewable energy industry whereby rare earth and downstream rare earth production into magnets is one of those parts of that strategy that they have. They signed that MOU with us with a very keen interest that we bring the concentrate from Yangibana to Saudi Arabia whereby they will help fund the hydromet plant and the oxide and then into a magnet facility as well. There is quite a lot of discussions that will and need to take place as well as has taken place. We need to put all these things together once we complete the joint venture.
Ye. Yeah. There's a lot of pieces to the puzzle, a lot of being done, and there's still a lot to go . With so many things in the pipeline, so many things to do, what are the key challenges that you see, Charles, that could potentially delay or potentially really, really impact the progress you guys are making? What would mean this does not go in your favor? What are those challenges that you have looked at and how are you going to combat that?
That is a good question, Harry. The reason why we saw an opportunity to go into Whiteheads to complement what we have in Ark and Darcy is that originally our plan is that once we have got the joint venture done, we will then start to do exploration drilling to define the resource at Ark, which is right next door to Yangibana, or at Darcy, which is sitting within the entire Brockman area.
However, for exactly the reasons that in your question, we saw an opportunity that we should look to diversify our revenue base and try and accelerate that diversification. By accelerating, we looked for some time over the last six months at opportunities that we can immediately monetize and bring cash flow into the company. That would be projects within an 18-month to two-year timeframe that we could monetize. As it turned out, again, we were very fortunate. We were very blessed. Whiteheads came along, and the Great Western Gold vendors saw that as an opportunity to work with Hastings to accelerate the development at Whiteheads and bring cash flow into the door. It turned out to be very complementary, and the timing looks right. The challenges of the rare earth space, as you understand, are complicated by politics.
These complications can be very positive for the commodity itself. For us, we have been staying on track over the last 10 years to try and bring the product into production, bring the project into production. That remains unchanged.
Yeah. Beautiful. I mean, by the sounds of it, just on what you've just said, the key to make sure the challenges that do come, to make sure it doesn't override the positives, you're just going to de-risk, and you're going to make sure that there's safety nets in place. Yes. Beautiful. Tim, just over to you really quickly, obviously, as the Chief Operating Officer, how do you, over the next two years before you get to that production stage, how do you plan to provide shareholder value? Hope the whole idea is for shareholders out there and shareholders listening to see that share price go in the right direction. How do you look to keep those loyal shareholders involved and maintain a little bit of confidence out there given the role that you're playing?
Thanks, Harry. The key focus area there, I think, is to maintain that focus. Firstly, at Yangibana, we've got to be showing that we're moving forward with any refresh studies that we're doing there. As Charles mentioned beforehand, we do have a lot of technical people who remain with Hastings who will be in and about that area. On the rare earth side of things, we're very, very focused on providing that support into Wyloo. We'll continue to do that. We'll continue to provide some of the opportunities that we've already seen there to benefit that project.
When we talk about getting up to Brockman, again, we do have that long history of rare earth processing in this business. We are retaining that. We're not releasing all of that knowledge into Perth. We are keeping it. It's a part of our critical aspect, which we have foreseen on this and we have planned for, is we must maintain capability in rare earths in the business. We have done that. The second side out of it is where we get into and fast track our goal. Charles mentioned beforehand about why Whiteheads fits us right now. It fits us right now because it's small, it's compact, it's in Kalgoorlie. Knowing the gold mining business in WA, there are very many different consultants who are available to come in and help us.
We're working with one company at the moment on some geological information for Whiteheads. It's one of those opportunities. I'm sure you know, Harry, when you've been in Perth for many, many years, you've got a lot of relationships. That's when it comes to fore. Picking up the phone and getting consultants in, picking up the phone, getting drill rigs in, picking up the phone, getting people to come in and help you on short-term contracts is the way many, many juniors work in the gold space in WA. That's how we're going to be doing it. We're certainly not going to beat ourselves up. We're not going to get fat. We're going to be very much a case of be very, very focused, use consultants, and get in and do that work.
Just to mention that early stage gold production that we're looking at right now, again, it's 5,000 ounces that we're looking at. I said before, 125,000-140,000 tons. That's a very, very small mine. That's a four-month dig ratio in Kalgoorlie. We're going to dig it out of the ground very quickly. It's going to be contractor mining. It's going to be small kit, available kit. We're not talking about an 800-ton excavator on this. We're talking about a 50-tonner. We have very, very clear plans and understand what we're trying to do in the short term. That's dig a hole in the ground, get some ounces out, monetize it. That leads us into some cash flow where we go further exploration and build that gold resource and then build that opportunity in reserve. We grow. It is going to be growth through finding more gold on the tenements we have at those three different projects.
Yeah. Excellent. I think that is a perfect response there, Tim. I mean, that is what shareholders are going to want to see. Hopefully, the share price will follow the good news that is going to potentially come out and unfold. Just on the topic of just the gold space in general, obviously, we have just seen the price of gold completely go through the roof over recent months. Do you see the trend there, in your opinion? Obviously, there is no guarantee. It is just an opinion base. Where do you see the price of gold going over the next 12 months?
I'm probably not going to jump up and say where it's going to go, Harry, but when we track the gold price over all the years that we've been in, there are some short-term corrections, but there's never been that huge major fall of a cliff episode, which has been going on. When I've been doing the numbers with a Chief Geologist sitting next to me, when we've been doing the numbers on it, we've been doing the numbers on a significantly lower gold price because I don't want to put Hastings in a situation that says, "I've got to be at AUD 5,000 an ounce to make money out of this thing." We're running the numbers, getting down to AUD 3,500 an ounce.
If we're going to make money at that point, then that gives me the confidence to say to Charles and the shareholders, "We are going to be able to monetize what's in the ground, and we're not going to lose money on it." That's our backstop. Anything over that's just a benefit, right? That's right. That's right. I mean, you've been around mining a long, long time to say if you pitch your operations budget on a $5,000 an ounce gold price, you're going to come unstuck. You've always got to come underneath it, and you take the cream off the top. Yeah, exactly. I think that's a great idea.
I guess that goes back to that last question, one of the questions I asked Charles, how do you look to de-risk and combat any challenges that do come moving forward? Because they will certainly arise, and you've got to sort of navigate that.
Just quickly, one of the last questions I will ask is a question I like to ask everyone I sort of interview and have these webinars with. If there was one reason, and Tim or Charles, you can answer, if there was one reason why someone should become a new shareholder into Hastings or existing shareholders should continue to be a shareholder, what is that excitement and what is the factor that drives you both? And why should they continue or become a shareholder of Hastings, do you think?
Tim, you want to go first?
I can go first on that. I think fundamentally, Charles mentioned when we talk about rare earths and you look at how electric vehicles, how wind turbines, how robots are going to continue to grow into our everyday lives, that's not going to go away. The whole world is you're looking at the political situation in Australia, and we've got politicians saying, "We need to get more renewables." That's where you're going to need magnets to drive a lot of that sort of stuff. I just don't see the demand going away from magnets anytime soon. As soon as you have that demand that keeps on going, and you look at an ore body like Yangibana, and you look at the life of that ore body, it's a 17-year life of mine at the moment, but it's only one-third of the strike length of the ore body that's really been drilled.
It's a multi-generational project at Yangibana, and we are a 40% owner of that project. As you saw on the cost curve earlier on, we are on the right side of that cost curve. It's a high-grade deposit. It's open-pit, and it's relatively simple to process it into a concentrate. It gets a little bit more difficult downstream. I understand that, and I'm sure the listeners do as well. It's a really, really good project. That's how we get some swings and roundabouts as we progress that through. Through the deal with Wyloo, it's been de-risked from a Hastings shareholder's point of view. It has been significantly de-risked. In that space, when we looked at what Hastings is going to do, we don't want to be a one commodity junior. We've got to branch into other areas.
That is why we've been working very, very hard in the background. Charles alluded to six, seven months, looking at where we can find that right entry into the gold space. We've looked at many, many different opportunities, and some of them may be there in the future. We've got to get some runs on the board. Whiteheads is going to be that opportunity for us to go out there and do that. We can generate some cash flow very, very quickly at Whiteheads. You look at the gold mining history that's there. It's in the right trend. I don't want to go into a geological structural report onto it, but we're bounded by east and west faults. If you know anything about Kalgoorlie, gold's in the fault zone. That is where we're focused. That is not through accident that we've done that. We've done that specifically for that site at that price entry. I think we've got a great opportunity both in rare earths and gold into the future.
Thanks, Tim. Charles, over to you. Your one reason, what would it be?
yeah ,Tim has answered the question very comprehensively, and those would also be my core points to emphasize on. If there's one more or two more things I can say is, number one, I'm heavily invested in the project. Myself and the family office holds about 14-15% shareholding in the company after all these 11 years. You'll find in the ASX record that I have been constantly buying more shares through placements as we fund the project. On top of that, you'll find in the ASX disclosure, I haven't sold one share.
I have just been constantly investing into Yangibana, and I will continue to invest into Whiteheads as well. I'm very excited about Whiteheads simply because it diversifies our risk. It brings cash flow into the door much sooner than we expect. Rare earth is a very exciting commodity. It's never going to go out of fashion so long as super magnets are needed. There's no substitute for neodymium and praseodymium to make a super magnet, a permanent magnet. Of course, gold stands the test of time. Gold has been around since the year dot. As a Christian, I'll tell you, gold is mentioned in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, the first chapter, the last chapter of the Bible. I believe that it will not stop at $3,300 an ounce. It'll probably go higher. Yeah.
Gentlemen, I really, really appreciate your time. I think that has been an excellent little brief. I mean, more than a little brief. It has been a great discussion. Hopefully, a lot of people listening have got the value they are looking for. As I mentioned, it is recorded. If you have missed a few things, feel free to get on our website and look at the recording on our YouTube channel. Charles and Tim, their contact details, I am sure you will be able to reach those gentlemen and ask them some questions. I am one of the senior advisors and Head of Desk here at ShareWise. I do appreciate your time, gentlemen. Next time, hopefully, we can do another webinar.
Thank you. Thank you, Harry. Thank you, Harry. Thank you to all the listeners. Thank you. Thank you.
Enjoy the rest of the afternoon, gentlemen. Okay. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.