The announcement, which was released on ASX this morning regarding the Rhyolite Ridge Project Reserve and economics update. It's a pretty significant announcement, and I'm going to hand it over to Bernard now to discuss this. There'll be room for some questions at the end of the webinar. Over to you, Bernard.
Yeah, thank you very much, Peter. Thanks, everyone, for joining. A very exciting day for Ioneer to be able to update our reserves and project economics. This is really the most major update for the project since we completed a definitive feasibility study back in 2020. The project has not been without its challenges, as many of you would know, but what you're seeing today is testament to the truly remarkable nature of this deposit, both in terms of scale and overcome those obstacles as we've progressed the project forward over the last four or five years. Please read the disclaimer before making any investment decisions. Just a bit of a highlight snapshot. Today, we've announced that we've more than quadrupled the reserve. Back in 2020, we had a 60 million ton reserve in the feasibility study. Today, that number is 247 million tons.
Truly amazing number to have in the reserve. That underpins a mine life of 95 years at a mining rate of approximately 2.6 million tons. That's averaged over that timeframe. Goes up and down a little bit, but that's an average. The updated economics confirm the strength and resilience of the project, even in prevailing weak lithium prices. A lot of that's got to do with the boron element of this project, which you'll hear from us again. All-in sustaining cash costs placed the project in the bottom quartile of the global lithium cost curve, just as we were back in 2020. That has not changed despite all the work we've done, despite various increases across the whole mining sector in costs, both in operating and capital costs.
We are still in the bottom quartile of the lithium cost curve, again, thanks to the significant credit that comes from the boric acid. We've de-risked the project. It's permitted, fully permitted. It's shovel-ready. The engineering is at a level way beyond what would be typically required to actually start or commit to funding and then start construction of a project like this. We have binding offtakes in place, and we have just under $1 billion of debt from the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office as a closed loan. It truly is de-risked and ready to start. Importantly, and this large reserve and large resource speak to this. It's large, it's long life, and it's got lots of expansion potential.
When I look and hear of a project with a close on 100-year mine life, I am immediately drawn towards, well, what's the opportunity then to expand that production? Obviously, there's lots of opportunity to expand production at Rhyolite Ridge in the future beyond the stage one project, which the stage one project, though, is very much what we have maintained a laser focus on in terms of engineering it, funding it, and planning around it. Partnering process is obviously an important element now as we move forward with all this work completed, and we're well advanced there. We've been through due diligence processes before, as you all know. We're very well set up for that in terms of virtual data rooms, etc. We have Goldman Sachs working alongside us and have done over a number of years now.
In fact, they were involved in the first permitting process as well. We are really in a good position to quickly move forward with that now that we have finished this very important work that was required in order for us to have fulsome discussions with potential partners. The reserves, large number, as I said, 247 million tons. Another thing, though, that I want to make sure everyone understands is there are really two parts to this deposit. One part is that which is very high in boron and lithium. It is boron and lithium together. Then there is another part which is low in boron, still high in lithium, but significantly lower in boron. We have just pulled that out on this slide to show that there is approximately 90 million tons of high boron lithium mineralisation, and then there is about 150 million tons of low boron lithium mineralisation.
What we've been able to do in the mine plan that we've developed for this study that we're releasing the economics for today is prioritise that high boron material. I mean, it's pretty rare to have a mineral deposit where you have reserves of hundreds of millions of tons, and then you can split that into different parts and prioritise one over the other. Obviously, we're doing that in response to the low lithium price environment that we're seeing today and going after essentially that high boron lithium ore. That doesn't mean that we don't think there's tremendous opportunity with the low boron. There is. In fact, our recent work, which I'll touch on later, has actually demonstrated that there's some opportunities around that low boron material for future expansion opportunities. Some compelling updated economics lists shown here.
I'm not going to go through every number, but I'll touch on some of the highlights. The unlevered NPV8 is sitting around $1.37 billion, $1.37 billion. A levered number because obviously we have got the debt. That debt from the Department of Energy, if we take that into account, increases that levered number to around about $1.47 billion. The average life of mine revenue from the sale of both lithium and boron is around about just under $500 million a year. Now, if you look at the slide here and it shows there are two numbers, there's also a second number for years one to 25, which is around $620 million per annum. That's because of the prioritisation of the high boron material in those early years. That boron contribution is an extra $120 million a year versus the life of mine average.
You can see that reflected in the lithium production. It does not change a great deal between life of mine and years one to 25, but the boric acid changes a lot, and that is because the back part of the life of mine has a much reduced output of boric acid production. We are seeing 116,000 tons per annum of boric acid in years one to 25 average versus a much lower average of only 60,000 over the life of mine, given that life of mine is 95 years. The EBITDA, the average annual EBITDA for the project over life of mine is $319 million versus for the first 25 years, $406 million. Almost $100 million more in those early years, again, reflecting the increased revenues generated from boric acid. The capital costs are $1.668 billion. That is an AACE Class 2 estimate.
For those who are not familiar with AACE Class 2, it's a much higher level of accuracy compared to a Class 3 estimate. A Class 3 estimate is what we completed back when we finished the feasibility study, the first in 2020. Class 3 is typically what's required for an investment decision by most companies. Class 2 is typically what you do in order for cost control and comparison of actual spends to budget and then change management when you're actually in production or in construction, rather. We have done that, and for various reasons, we thought it was the right decision for this project. We also had the time to be able to do it while we were working through the permitting process, etc. The unlevered IRR is at 14.5%. The levered IRR, taking into account that DOE loan, is 18.3%. Payback period is eight years.
Again, remarkable for a 95-year project. The confidence level around our estimates is at P65. The CapEx reconciliation, many of you will recall that back in 2020, we came out with a CapEx estimate of $785 million for a Class 3 estimate. Obviously, that's a long time ago now, and we've given various guidance along the way to show that that had increased, although we had not completed a full updated estimate until recently. This waterfall just shows some of the key changes. We have not changed the flow sheet, okay? The flow sheet, the basic process is the same as it was for the feasibility study. Some of the big areas of change have been around, which is reflected there as changes of $311 million relate to commitments that we had to make in order to qualify for the DOE loan.
That included using Davis-Bacon labor rates. It included U.S. flagships on equipment being bought in and a number of other elements, but a lot of it did relate to that, making sure we met the conditions to qualify for the DOE loan. The equipment and material costs, if you put the two of them together, both the quantities and the cost of that equipment is obviously significant. That relates, a lot of that anyway, relates to pre-stripping and additional equipment required to do that pre-stripping. We moved the pit from the western side of the deposit over to the east. There was a significant amount of additional pre-stripping required. We capitalized that, so that's in there. Because you're doing more pre-stripping, both in terms of overtime and volumes, there's also an additional need for the equipment to be able to do that.
That is captured in there. I would also then add that through the Class 2 estimate process and various other internal reviews that were conducted, including RAM analysis and some other things that we did over time, we also took a more conservative approach on redundancy, maintenance shutdowns, things like that, so that we actually included some additional overflow tanks, piping, things like that, so that we could shut parts of the plant down without affecting the overall running of the operation. They are captured in there as well. They are the big ones. Ultimately, that shows you how we have gone from 785 through to 1.67, basically, with a fair part of that being escalation and contingency. Operating costs, our operating costs are largely driven by the processing plant. You can see there is really only 14% of costs that relate to the mining operation.
Really, this is about the processing. For the processing facility, which accounts for 86%, more than half of it is actually in relation to both the supply of reagents and the transportation of those reagents. That is a super important part of this project. Again, I'll touch on that a little later as well in that the cost structure is very much driven by your ability to manage and optimise reagent consumption. Obviously, the transportation costs are reflected in that, in the transportation of those reagents. By reagents, I'm talking about sulfur for sulfuric acid. I'm talking about lime for impurity removal. I'm talking about soda ash, which is what's added to produce lithium carbonate. The soda ash, sodium carbonate, is added at the end of the processing, and that precipitates out the lithium carbonate.
They're the three big ones, those three. Now, if we look at our all-in sustaining costs, you can see there for years one to 25, we're around about $5,745 per ton of lithium carbonate equivalent. So well below the average, well within the bottom quartile. That is because of the large contribution credit from the boric acid production, which I'll show you in a minute. There's something around six tons of, on average, six tons of boric acid for every one ton of lithium carbonate produced in that first period of one to 25 years. Again, an incredibly important economic driver around our costs is that production of the boron that comes with the lithium. You can see here over, this is just showing the first 25 years, and you can see both boric acid and lithium product.
Now, the reason why we say lithium product is that in the first two years, we'll be producing lithium carbonate, and then we will install and have running in the third year a plant that can convert that lithium carbonate into lithium hydroxide. I'll also remind you that when you convert carbonate into hydroxide, there's an approximate 10% increase in volumes simply because lithium hydroxide has a bit less lithium in it than lithium carbonate. What you can see here is in the first years of production, first full year of production, 2029, we're at 20,000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent. In this case, that will be lithium carbonate. We're at about 32,000 tons of boric acid. We're starting mining in an area where there's good lithium grades, but the boric acid grades are a little bit lower.
That is referring to the zone we refer to as the shelf zone over on the eastern side of the deposit. It is shallow. Lithium grades are great, but the boric acid grades are just a little bit lower. It has something to do with the geology and the fact that it is shallow. We typically see that the boron grades drop off as you are mining the material that is shallow and closer to the original surface. Present-day surface does not matter; it is the original surface. By, say, 2032, we are at 22,000 tons of lithium carbonate. That will be actually lithium hydroxide. You could actually add 10% to that to see what the volume of lithium hydroxide would be. We are at about 108,000 tons of boric acid.
There you can see it's sort of around that level of five or six tons of boric acid for every ton of carbonate. The variation you can see is in the boric acid, the bigger green bars. That's just the zonation within the deposit. It's all high boron ore, but depending on whether you're in the shallow or deeper part of the deposit, depending on whether you're on the edge or in the centre, you'll see that variation. That's why it's sort of a nice predictable and sort of smooth variation. It's the zonation through the deposit. Whereas the lithium, you can see it varies very little, other than in the first few years where you're above 20, between 20 and 23, that's the shelf zone. Why is boron so important to this project?
It creates an incredible economic contribution, but it's more than that. It's because it provides a stability in revenue source that lithium does not have. Lithium is obviously very volatile. It's one of the more volatile in terms of pricing commodities, as this graph shows. Versus boric acid is at the other end of the scale. It's actually very low volatility. And the two are uncorrelated. Having them together in one deposit is a huge advantage because you've got something that's really quite volatile versus something that's not volatile at all. They are uncorrelated. There's no relationship between that volatility, high or low, between those two materials. Having them together in the one deposit and extracted through the same single process is a huge advantage. The project is substantially de-risked. It's permitted. We received our full permits back in October of 2024.
That does relate back to this changed mine plan that we've announced today because we had to move the pit from where it was back in 2020. It was on the western side of the deposit. It's been moved over to the east. It's mining a completely different part of the deposit in the early years. That was instrumental in receiving that record of decision last year. We have been through the permitting process, NEPA, passed all the tests that were required, including the Section 7 consultation from the Fish and Wildlife, and fully permitted. Shovel ready, 70% of the engineering design is complete. That's well beyond what's required to start construction on a project like this. It's been a very, very technically led approach. You've seen some evidence of that today in our increased level of conservatism around maintenance and redundancy and recoveries.
We've actually lowered those numbers simply because we've studied and spent a lot more time and effort on looking at all those things and taking a more conservative approach through that, including the Class 2 estimate, $200 million invested in this project to date to underpin that technically led approach. Offtakes are in place. We have signed lithium and boron offtake agreements. They are bankable binding agreements. For lithium, they are with Ford, EcoPro, Prime Planet Energy Solutions, which is related to Toyota and Panasonic, and Dragonfly, a local battery maker based in Nevada who make batteries for mobile equipment. We've also got signed offtake and sale agreements for the boron. Low-cost debt, $996 million. That's a closed loan with the Department of Energy. We closed that at the beginning of this year. It was a process that took several years. We did several years of diligence.
We had a conditional commitment about two years ago, but we had many of the conditions needed to be closed before we could close the loan. The big one, of course, was the permitting. Really, having that permit in October of last year then set in motion the final steps of closing the DOE loan. We were very pleased that we got that done at the beginning of the year. Probably no need to go through all of these items, but suffice to say that we've been working on this project for quite some time. We drilled the first hole back in 2016 when President of the United States was Obama. In that period, the eight years from then until now, we've obviously progressed this project significantly.
We've also changed the name of the company and the focus of the company, etc., to Ioneer to reflect that change of focus. We started the permitting process in 2019 with baseline studies. They typically take two years. That first two years was all about collecting baseline information. We then, of course, had a listing of Tim's buckwheat as an endangered species to deal with, which we were able to do by essentially moving the pit and committing to have no direct disturbance on buckwheat. The buckwheat just grows on the western side of the deposit, not over the deposit, but on the margin. It was not ultimately a difficult thing to do. It just took time. It required further drilling, and it required a new resource and a new mine plan and a new reserve and new studies, etc., which you've seen the culmination of that today.
The permitting after the two years of baselines, really the final year was the NEPA analysis through the EIS publication of an EIS and NEPA analysis. That culminated in the permit being awarded in October of last year. This year has obviously been a number of highlights that we were extremely pleased with, the loan being the big one, of course, but now an increase in the mineral resource to 500 million tons. Today, these are updated economics and a 240-plus million ton reserve. We are really well positioned. We are by far the most advanced lithium project in the United States, along with one other that is just starting construction. We are about at that same level, ready to go. Next steps, obviously, are to secure the equity component required to build the project. We are going to be running a process with the aid of Goldman Sachs.
We are aiming to secure that equity by bringing in one or more partners into the project at the project level. Once that partner or partners are in place, then the company will be in a position to make a final investment decision and commence construction of the deposit. Very detailed engineering. These are actually rendered images from our engineering EPCM Fluor design, detailed design. Everything is pipes, bolts, nuts. Everything has been incorporated here and recorded in these engineering models and incredible level of detail. We can walk through a virtual walkthrough of the plant and look at all sorts of elements required as you sort of do the practical design and layouts of these sorts of plants in virtual reality. Just a very quick step through of what it would look like and an overview, really, of the flowsheet.
I will point out that I said this amazing deposit. It truly is because it is the only lithium and boron deposit with this mineralogy known anywhere in the world. We know that with a high, and we can say that with a high degree of confidence. It is a truly unique deposit. One way to express that or to convey that is to say that it is the only VAT or heap leachable lithium deposit in the world. That is 100% correct. We do not know of another one. That means that you can have a chemical processing plant sitting alongside a mine, and you are making lithium chemicals at the mine site. To do that, we crush the ore down to about 20 millimeters. We put it in a series of VATs. They are the circular tanks there. There are seven of them.
The VAT cycle is seven days, which includes loading and then unloading. It includes leaching three days, and it includes the washing to make sure we maximise the recovery of both the lithium and boron and, importantly, any residual acids as well. VAT leaching, ambient temperature, atmospheric pressure. There is not another lithium deposit in the world that has a flowsheet that looks like that. This is all proven, known, commercially tested, viable technology that's been in use for many, many decades in other mining industries. The other key components of this processing plant are the sulfuric acid plant. That's really where that's the heart of the operation because it generates the sulfuric acid, but it also generates heat and electricity that drives this whole thing. There is no connection to the grid, no gas pipeline.
It's all through that sulfuric acid plant and the conversion of sulfur to sulfuric acid. The other parts of the process at the back end are very similar to other lithium operations, including brines, where you have evaporation and crystallisation. We do not have evaporation ponds, but we do do evaporation. We do it in tanks. We use the steam, the heat that comes from the sulfuric acid plant to concentrate the solutions to drive up the level concentrations of lithium and boron in those solutions by evaporating. We use crystallisers to crystallise out both the boric acid, the impurities, and ultimately the lithium. No new technology in any of this. This is an amazing plant for an amazing deposit. Partners are shown there. Great team that have helped us and been with us for many, many years as we have developed this project.
I won't go through their names, but suffice to say that there's been a tremendous team effort, very much helped and led by our EPCM Fluor. Just quickly, I mentioned the size. The scale of this deposit is something that's a real highlight. 500 million ton resource and 240 million ton of reserve and this high and low boron. What optionality does that give us for the future? Lots of optionality. These are some examples. We haven't costed any of these. They are not incorporated into any of the economics that we're presenting today. Basically, a couple of options would be to duplicate the stage one plant and just put another high boron plant in to double lithium and boron production. That's possible.
Also, what's possible is to have a dedicated low boron plant where we, instead of blending any of the high and low boron into the single plant, actually send high boron to stage one plant and have a second stage, third stage where we are processing only low boron material. That actually comes with some real advantages, which we've been working on just recently. I mentioned the reagents and how they drive costs. We've been doing a lot of work, particularly in the last 12 months, on optimisation around the reagents. One of the things we've seen is that if we can reduce the leach time, we use less acid, but we can, what we call, improve the acid yield. That's the amount of lithium that comes with a ton per ton of sulfuric acid.
We have a given ton of sulfuric acid, how much lithium can we produce for that one ton? What we have found is we can increase that amount of lithium, that yield, by actually reducing the leach time. If we reduce the leach time, then we have, for the same plant, the same seven VATs, that means we have capacity to put more material through. We can actually increase the capacity without changing the size or scale of the plant, without needing additional sulfuric acid because that is already determined by the sulfuric acid plant. What our test results have shown is that we can produce about between 7%-14%, depending on which pore zone we are in, higher quantities of both lithium carbonate and boric acid. That is not included in today's economics.
It's an opportunity for the future, but we are going to include that in the next round of our economic analysis because we've finished the test work. Really, all we're waiting on now is an updated mine plan that will have a higher throughput because we're going to be mining higher quantities and pushing more through the plant. We need a revision of our mine plan, and that work's ongoing as I speak. Hence, we will be including that in the future. Partnering process with Goldman Sachs, very much a process that's in action. We've been working, as I said earlier, with Goldman for many years, and we have a very well set up data room, virtual data room, all the information that's required. We're ready to launch that process in a formal way.
We've sort of been preparing for it for a little while now, but waiting on these results that we're putting out today to really get going on it fully. That's about to happen. We think that it'll take about four months to run that process, and there'll be gates as we go through it over the next four months. That's what we're aiming for, and we're ready to start that process pretty much immediately. Next steps, secure the equity financing to sit alongside the government debt. That's going to be the partnering process. Once that's in place, we can make a final investment decision with the equity and the debt. Construction is 36 months, including about six months of ramping and preparation, but it also includes long lead time.
The build time is about 30 months, but the total construction would be 36 months, including the six months lead up. First production would be then 36 months from FID. Obviously, we have a number of different pathways to future growth that we are evaluating. Takeaways, I think one of the big ones, I'll step through these very quickly and then take some questions, but one of the big ones to remember is where this project is and what it is. It is in the United States. It is the largest lithium and boron reserve in the world. It is the only heap leachable, VAT leachable lithium deposit in the world that we know of. That allows us to build a lithium chemical processing plant at the mine site, something that no one has done before and no other lithium deposits have lent themselves to that.
It is solving a lot of things that the U.S. is asking for, domestic lithium production, but also downstream processing and bringing onshoring that manufacturing of the downstream lithium chemical processes. That is what this project is going to deliver for the United States. It is the unique mineralogy; it is the sedimentary lithium and boron. It means that we do not need to be sending this as a mineral concentrate somewhere else. There is an integrated mine and chemical plant. There are high recoveries. There is low energy input, small footprint, low amounts of water required to do this. We have spent $200 million, including a pilot plant, developing, defining, testing, modifying, improving that over the last six years. Dual revenue, you can slice and dice that in a number of ways, but it has dual revenue. The boron is over the life of mine, averaging around 25% of the revenue.
Obviously, you've seen that that can swing around depending on which part of the deposit you're mining. There's uncorrelated pricing between the two. And there's lots of synergies that come with the concept of expansion of this project with that high and low boron ore. Shovel ready, it's permitted, it's engineered, the offtakes are in place, the government debt's closed and ready to be drawn, subject to the final conditions. And we have all of our water rights in place. Very robust project economics, even in times of low lithium pricing, very resilient, very low, all-in sustaining costs, bottom of the cost curve, and very much expandable, as I've already described. I'm going to take some questions.
All right. Thank you, Bernard. Very comprehensive. Congratulations on the report and the new economics. They're really quite outstanding.
You've covered most of what many of these questions are looking for, but for the benefit of clarity, I'm going to run through some of these that stand out for you to cover off. Firstly, looking for an equity partner, what's the sort of interest you've had? What sort of companies are you talking to? What's the sort of range of companies that you're being introduced to?
Remembering that we have been through one of these processes before a few years ago. We have a very well, I guess, thought-out list of potential partners, and that list has changed a little bit over time, but many of the names are still on there, and many of the names are companies that we've continued to have discussion and dialogue with over the last four or five years, including some of our offtake partners, for example.
There's more than 80 names on the list. It'll be a methodical process assisted by Goldman. We will go through the first couple of months and give all of those companies the opportunity to review the initial information and then come back to us with their level of interest before they progress through a gate into a second phase where they'll have access to much more detailed information. There's a very wide range, as you can imagine. It's mining companies, it's chemical companies, it's oil and gas companies, it's investment companies, trading companies. There are many, many different groups or types of companies that are involved in that process. We're happy that it's a very broad-ranging group to begin with. What we want to do over the first two months of the formal process is to narrow that down pretty quickly.
The new economics, Bernard, will be part of that discussion process with Goldman's and its prospective partners for you. Will that commence from today with these new figures, or is that something that's ongoing?
The formal part will commence with the completion of this work that you're seeing today. There has been some planning and some preliminary discussions, yes. We have been contacted by a number of companies that were aware that we're looking for a new partner because we've obviously made that very clear and public. There have been some initial discussions with a number of groups. The formal part of it was really waiting for this work to be completed so that we could just grant access to this information to everybody at the same time. That is what we'll be doing.
Thank you. This is a question that's come up a little bit.
The DOE loan closeout, is it being ordered by the Trump administration? Is it absolutely secure? If there's an audit process underway, what's the timeline on that?
My understanding is that all loans from the DOE are being reviewed, okay, just as a part of the new government. We knew that that would be likely to happen, and it is. I guess it's important to differentiate our loan is a closed loan. It's not a conditional commitment. There's a lot of talk about commitments that have been made under the Loan Programs Office, but many of those are conditional commitments. Ours is a closed loan. Yes, there are conditions that relate to first draw of that closed loan, but we're confident around meeting those. Obviously, the main one is having the equity in place.
Obviously, our board needs the equity in place as well before we can make a final investment decision. We're comfortable with that. The exact timing of it, let's see. I was in Washington a couple of weeks ago, and I was told that most of those reviews are close to being completed.
Bernard, is there an expiry on the loan?
There's a first draw on the loan, but again, that's not until well into next year. We're comfortable that that's not a concern for us. Yes, there's a first draw date requirement under the loan.
In reference to a project partner, ideally, what sort of percentage are you willing for the final partnership to look like? How much are you looking to give away? How much would you want to control in the future as Ioneer?
We're maintaining flexibility in these discussions for various reasons, but we want to maintain control of the project. It'll be a minority interest. As I mentioned earlier, it might be more than one party. Otherwise, Ioneer intends to keep majority interest and keep control of the project. It is keeping a very open mind as we have these discussions as well.
On those discussions with a partner, are there early works you can commence given that if you qualify and can with the closed-out loan, are there early works that you can commence before you get the equity component? Early works in terms of I'm assuming the question relates to early works on the ground. We won't be doing early works.
I mean, we're permitted to start construction right now, but we won't start construction until we've made a final, our board has made a final investment decision. That will mean that we have the debt and the equity are in place. It'll be equity, meet the conditions of the debt, final investment decision from our board, commence construction. That'll be the order in which we will do these things.
Moving on to the stripping and production, a study mentions that the significant stockpiled ore will be processed post-year 2025. What mining rate is envisaged pre and post-year 2025? Does the pre-strip generate any run-of-mine stockpiles?
It's not just post-2025. There's stockpiling that goes on immediately because basically, and then we put some cross-sections in some of the announcements, in the JORC announcements on the reserves.
By the way, we'll be releasing a more detailed summary over the coming weeks with additional cross-sections. What you will see is that the ore body comes to the surface underneath a gravel in the area of the shelf. That's where we're going to start mining. Yes, as we strip the gravels away and we start mining, some of that material will be stockpiled immediately. The intention is that we, again, we're going to backfill this pit. We will be mining quite a lot of that low boron material whilst we are mining the high boron and feeding the high boron into the processing plant. There will be a lot of stockpiling going on right from commencement.
What that means is if you looked over the full 95 years, there is very little mining going on in the last 20-30 years for that reason because the processing plant can just be fed from the stockpiles. We have mentioned that we think there is a tremendous opportunity to have a second processing plant dedicated to the low boron material to process that rather than be stockpiling it for such a long period of time. We have seen very encouraging results in being able to upgrade that low boron material. Whilst it has lower boron value and lower revenue because of it, what we have found is that we can do what is called beneficiation using gravity separation to upgrade it. We can, in some cases, get up to about double the grade of lithium by doing that beneficiation before we leach.
That's something we're going to continue evaluating, but we think that's a tremendous opportunity given that so much of that material currently under this plan is stockpiled.
Bernard, can the 36-month construction phase be shortened if that means increased construction costs to reduce the time to first production?
Highly unlikely. Again, given the level of detail that we've done on this project, Class 2 estimate, all of the analysis that we've done, etc., it would be highly unlikely that we would be able to reduce that significantly. Remembering, it's not 36 months of construction. There are six months built into that of just simply ramping up, ready to go to the field to commence construction, which will be necessary for a project of this size.
We haven't started ramping up yet, and we won't until we have that partner in place and close the equity and the debt. No, I don't think there's much opportunity for reduction of time.
Bernard, there are many large-scale lithium projects which are probably looking less likely given the longer-term outlook for lithium at the moment. You at the bottom quartile for lithium hydroxide production is looking like one of the standouts in the marketplace. Given the U.S. narrative around critical minerals and supply chain, what's your feeling and what are you hearing from your discussions in Washington about that particular subject? Surely that must increase the likelihood of Rhyolite Ridge as a tier one, very important project in the United States.
Yes, without a doubt.
As mentioned earlier, I was just in Washington a couple of weeks ago and met with senior people from the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, the State Department, the White House. Our project is very, very much front and center in discussions in Washington around critical mineral supply. Importantly, the buildout of downstream processing lithium chemicals is what's important. It's not just about producing lithium. It's about producing downstream lithium chemicals. Of course, having the boron element to this project just elevates that even to a higher level because the United States is very much a large consumer of boron. It's used in a whole myriad of applications. It's essential for everyday life. Plus, it has military applications. The U.S. is very much aware of the restrictions in global supply of boron. It's 70+% of world's reserves are located in Turkey.
Rhyolite Ridge is a very important project for the United States. I would say it's seen as being a very important project for the country by those government agencies and the White House. There's definitely very much an emphasis on critical minerals. I heard that in every meeting I went to when I was there a few weeks ago. Our project is one of the very, very few that is ready to build, is permitted, and has debt approved with a closed loan. We're in a very, very strong position to be the critical key supplier of both these materials into the U.S. for many decades to come. I'm confident that we will.
Located where you are, you're not in a rainforest. You're in a pretty good historical mining district. You've covered off the environmental issues quite comprehensively.
The transportation costs compared to other lithium projects globally would be much more reduced and much more secure too.
Yeah, that's right. I didn't really talk about logistics, but I mean, this project, the image you can see behind me here, obviously, actually, I'll stop sharing for a second. We are in the desert. It's an ideal place to build a mine. The community, both the community of Fish Lake Valley and the tribal communities, have been very, very supportive of this project all the way along. We've had very early engagement with them, and they've been very, very supportive. Yes, it's a great location for building a mine just because of the lack of competition, I guess, for land use, etc. We've got all the water I mentioned, and that's come from the local farmers.
Clearly, the local farmers are more than happy for us to be there. On logistics, despite the fact that we're out in the desert, hardly anyone lives out here. We're 500 km from several big ports. We're 300 km from Las Vegas and Reno, where there's big railway lines. We've got very, very good logistics considering how relatively remote this location is.
Bernard, it was a significant and comprehensive announcement today, quadrupling the reserve, a mine life of 95 years, which gives you optionality, surety. With the closed loan, it puts you in a tremendous position right now. Four months processed with Goldman Sachs will be looked on intently by the market. If people are looking for lithium supply into the future, Ioneer has to be very much at the top of the list. There were many questions in there today.
We may not have got to all of them. People can email in to yourself or peter@nwercommunications.com.au to have those answered. I think that this video will be available as a recorded product later this afternoon, which people will be able to pick up from your website or have emailed out. In leaving the audience today, Bernard, any takeaways to leave the audience with?
I think it's exciting times ahead. We've overcome the hurdles that were in front of us. Convincingly, we've got a much larger mine life than we had before. Yet, we've had some hurdles to get over. Thank you to my team. They've done a tremendous job. I mean, they're an incredible hardworking team, technically brilliant. Our partners, of course, alongside us, we really couldn't have got to where we are today without all of them. Thank you to them as well.
Exciting times ahead. I think we are the premier lithium and boron deposit in the United States. We look forward to advancing the project into construction in the near term.
Thank you very much, Bernard. Thank you, everybody, for joining us.
Thanks everyone.