Welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Ioneer Ltd. My name is James Calaway, Executive Chair of the company. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome all shareholders and guests to the 2026 Annual General Meeting of Ioneer Ltd. The meeting is being conducted virtually through the Lumi online portal. I note that a quorum of shareholders is present as required by the company's constitution. I declare the 2026 Annual General Meeting open. I will ask our Company Secretary, Olga Smejkalova, to provide instructions on both how to ask questions and how to vote during the meeting. Olga?
Thank you, James. For all shareholders and proxy holders online, I will quickly run through a number of slides explaining how you can participate in a meeting. To ask a written question, select the messaging icon, type your questions in a box towards the top of the page, and press the send button. To ask questions verbally, click the Request to Speak button, confirm your name, and enter the topic of your questions. Submit your details and select Join Queue and follow the audit prompts. Online voting. Shortly, the chair will declare voting open on all items of business. At the time, if you're eligible to vote at this meeting, the resolution and voting options will appear on screen. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. Your vote is automatically recorded. There's no need to press a submit or enter button.
If you change your vote, you can change your vote up and until the time the Chair declares voting closed. I will now pass back to the Chair. James, over to you.
Thank you, Olga. Please also note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until the relevant time in the meeting. Your questions may be moderated or, if we receive multiple questions on one topic, amalgamated together. Finally, due to time constraints, we may run out of time to answer all of your questions. If this happens, we will endeavor to answer them in due course after the meeting. I would like to remind you that online attendees who have submitted their proxy prior to today's meeting and who have now logged on as a voting shareholder will need to resubmit their vote online. You'll have the ability to change your vote up until the time I declare the voting closed. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business.
I now declare voting open on all items of business. The voting tab will soon appear on Lumi. Please submit your votes at any time. I will provide you with a warning before I move to close the voting. I propose to take the Notice of Meeting of the 2026 Annual General Meeting of Ioneer Ltd, dated 20 April, 2026, as read. I will now proceed with the items of business. The agenda for today is on the screen. We'll have a number of presentations before undertaking the formal business of the meeting. Time will be provided during the meeting for questions. Before the presentation, I'd like to introduce your board. Bernard Rowe, our Managing Director, and our Non-Executive Directors, Alan Davies, Rose McKinney-James, Margaret Walker, and Tim Woodall. Thank you, all of you, for your service.
Also at this time are Siobhan Hughes of EY, the Company Auditor, and our Company Secretary, who I've already introduced. I will now provide the Chairman's letter to the meeting. I am pleased to report that Ioneer is in a favorable position to move the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project to final investment decision. Since we last spoke, our sole focus has been on achieving our critical financing milestones and doing it in a way that maximizes the potential risk-adjusted return for shareholders. Because Rhyolite Ridge is shovel-ready, we continue to see considerable interest in our project. The project is uniquely positioned to contribute to onshoring U.S. critical mineral production and create U.S. jobs at a time when both are urgently needed. General market conditions are bringing new support for large construction-ready greenfield projects like ours.
With prices higher, the case for making large capital investments like Rhyolite Ridge are easier to support. We are deeply engaged in working with the private sector, the U.S. government, and critical trading partners to secure the resources to build our project and lead the effort to build end product production for both lithium chemicals and boric acid. Our work will help reduce the world's reliance on China for processing and support the necessary geographic diversification of the critical mineral supply chain. By the middle part of this year, we believe we have a favorable prospect for closing the financing of our project. Our strong, cohesive team is leading the technical effort to build end product production for both lithium chemicals and boric acid and finalizing plans to maximize our ability to deliver Rhyolite Ridge on time and on budget.
We are also encouraged by the recent Nevada District Court decision to fully uphold the federal government permit for Rhyolite Ridge, rejecting all arguments against. Our project opponents have filed an appeal. We are confident that we will prevail once again and do not believe their efforts will delay commencement of construction. After years of successfully growing Tiehm's buckwheat, one of your favorite subjects, in our dedicated greenhouses, we are pleased to receive a federal permit to outplant our buckwheat plants into the wild. We look forward to demonstrating that they can be grown on public lands outside the Rhyolite Ridge project area. Establishing self-sustaining populations will enhance redundancy, representation, and resilience of the species. Our team continues to aggressively work to reach FID. I want to thank Bernard Rowe for his remarkable and sustained energy, and the team he has built for their optimism, persistence.
I also want to thank the Board of Directors for their guidance and counsel. They're always asking the right questions and freely providing invaluable knowledge and experiences so critical to our continued success. I'd like to now hand it over to our able Managing Director, Bernard, for the Managing Director's presentation. Bernard?
Thank you, James. Thank you everyone, and welcome. I'll run through a quick, short presentation for everyone's benefit. Next slide, please. Please read the disclosure and disclaimers there before making any investment decisions. Next slide, please. Some key investment highlights relating to Ioneer and Rhyolite Ridge. Our project has strong and resilient economics from both the lithium and the boron. With our updated and shortened leach times, our NPV for the project stands at $2.3 billion, with an internal rate of return of 23.2% levered. That's taking into account the $1 billion loan we have closed with the Department of Energy. Those project economics are based on a 265 million ton ore reserve, proven and probable. That equates at a production rate of 3.4 million tons per annum to about 77 years of mine life.
We say Phase 1 operation because we firmly believe on a large project like this, it makes perfect sense in the future as demand growth plays out, that there will be additional phases to this project. The all-in sustaining cash cost of $4,628 per ton of lithium carbonate is in the bottom quartile of the global lithium cost curve, and that number is largely in that bottom quartile because of the boron that we produce that offsets a large part of our costs. Approximately five tons-seven tons of boric acid are produced for every one ton of lithium, driving that lithium cost down to that low number. It's fully permitted. It's shovel-ready, as James has already mentioned. Our binding bankable offtake agreements are in place, and we have a very low cost, long-term, 20-year term U.S. government loan through the Department of Energy. Proven expansion potential.
I mentioned that Phase 1 is likely to be followed in the future with additional phases or different additional trains to increase production. That's made possible because we have a 540 million ton mineral resource that includes the 265 million ton reserve. So the resource is roughly twice the size of the reserve, measured, indicated, and inferred. As I think all the audience knows, we're actively working through a partnering process to secure the equity required to sit alongside the government debt to allow us to make a final investment decision and commence construction. Next slide, please. Rhyolite Ridge is very different than any other lithium or boron deposit globally.
The reason we say that is that the unusual and rare mineralogy that's in the rocks pictured here on the left allows us to do something that no other hard rock mine in the lithium world does today, and that is make refined chemicals at the mine site. That is purely a function of the unique mineralogy. We can take this rock, process it, and make these 99% ± pure chemical products, both lithium carbonate and boric acid powders, at the mine site. That makes it a very rare project in the lithium world and the boron world. Next slide, please. It's the boron that really makes it special because it's that. I mentioned the mineralogy. It's the boron mineralogy that really drives that. It makes this project the only known vat or heap leachable lithium deposit globally.
We can do that by crushing the ore and leaching it in 1.5 days, which is an extraordinary short time for acid leaching when you compare it to other mining projects, including copper, for example, or gold, that are leached in a sort of similar way. This leaches very fast. The other thing it does is as it leaches the lithium and boron from the rock, the rock does not disintegrate. It does not break down. It remains fragments of rock. It retains its integrity. You can see this in some of these photos where we say this is the silicified ore, the boron-rich ore, before we leach it and then after we leach it. Apart from some slight color changes, it remains pretty much the same. That means that we can leach it, drain it, and free drain it.
We don't have to worry about filtration. We don't have to worry about clays. It's a very porous material, and that makes it very simple to do this acid leach process. Again, there is no other lithium deposit that's known globally that can make those same claims, and that's what makes this deposit so special. Next slide, please. Quick snapshot of that processing plant. This is something that we've developed as we've been working on this project over the last nearly decade. It's all proven and known technology. There's nothing new in any of this process. It's putting them together and applying the same methods to a very unique deposit. It's all been done before, and there's no new technology. It's a vat leach system. Those open tanks that are shown there are loaded with crushed ore that's about 20 mm. The vats are loaded.
They're leached with a mixture of sulfuric acid and water. It takes one and a half days to leach. Then that material is washed to make sure we keep our recoveries very high, and then we unload the vat. That whole process takes about 5.5 days, of which 1.5 days is leaching. The rest of it's the unloading, loading, and washing. Again, no other lithium deposit in the world can use that same method that we know of. It's all because of the unique mineralogy of this rock. You've got a sulfuric acid plant that sits alongside the project that allows us to convert sulfur, elemental sulfur, either liquid or solid, into sulfuric acid. That generates a lot of steam, a lot of heat, we can run a steam turbine, generate our own electricity.
That means that this project does not need grid power nor gas or any other form of external energy. It's all self-generated. We use that acid, as I mentioned, to leach. Following the leaching process, we then have a liquid that doesn't require filtration. That's very important. Again, clay deposits, as a comparison, require extensive filtration once the leaching has happened. This does not need that because of this coarse material and unique mineralogy. We then use a series of evaporators and crystallizers to remove the boric acid, remove the impurities, and ultimately produce the lithium carbonate. Boric acid comes out first, then impurities, and then lithium carbonate. That's the design of the Rhyolite Ridge flow sheet. This entire flow sheet has been piloted by us.
Over a period of time where we ran that pilot plant a couple of times, took learnings, made adjustments, and very much de-risked this process plant. As I say, no new technology involved here. Next slide, please. I'm just going to take a minute just to talk about, particularly in the context of the U.S., the demand drivers for lithium and boron in the United States. It's actually not electric vehicles that's going to drive the demand growth, particularly in the short to medium term. It's actually gigafactories and data centers that are going to drive U.S. demand. The U.S. already consumes approximately 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate or lithium chemical equivalent to carbonate per year for electric vehicles.
It's projected that by next year, there's going to be more than that, around about 125,000 tons required just for the energy storage, BESS, Battery Energy Storage Systems. Gigafactories and data centers. Hence, there's going to be a total demand of in excess of 200,000 tons, and that's going to grow quite rapidly, particularly driven by that usage in data centers and energy storage solutions. You put that in the context of domestic production as of today in the U.S., it's 5,000 tons. There is negligible domestic production of lithium, and yet there's hundreds of thousands of tons of demand, and that's not future demand, that's demand today. Rhyolite Ridge is going to play a really important part in providing a stable, secure, long-term supply for domestic U.S. demand that's only going to grow and grow strongly.
Some other information that I'll leave you to read at your leisure. As I said, there's strong growth projected, and Rhyolite Ridge will play an integral role in supplying that. Next slide, please. Whilst boron is used for various different applications, the story's slightly similar in that there is very strong growth projected both globally but also importantly in the United States. The reason for that is boron is used in, unlike lithium, it's actually used in over 300 applications. It has very diverse use. About 70% of all boron produced is actually used for industries that need large volumes. The glass industry, borosilicate glass. The ceramics industry, glazing on tiles. Detergents and fertilizers. It's a micronutrient in agriculture. They're the large users, large volume users.
It's also got a very, like lithium, a very strategic component to its use as well, even though the tonnages are smaller, and that includes the nuclear industry, the defense industry. It's used in armor plating. It's used in Kevlar body vests for soldiers. It's used in communications. It's used in missiles and aerospace systems. It's used in the semiconductor industry. It's a very strategic material that the United States needs to ensure that it has a very stable, long-term, secure supply of domestic supply. Today, the U.S. consumes about 350,000 tons per annum of boric oxide, B2O3. Rhyolite Ridge will produce initially around about 100,000 tons-150,000 tons of boric acid, but we will ramp that up to about 200,000 tons of boric acid over time, which is about 100,000 tons of B2O3.
It's a very strategic material, just like lithium, and the U.S. consumes a lot of it, and there's very little domestic supply outside one mine in the United States, and there's actually very restricted supply globally. It's 73% or 74% of all reserves of boron are found in Turkey, and there's no other large producing mines anywhere in the world other than Turkey and the one mine in California. Next slide please. How does Rhyolite Ridge Or how is it positioned to take advantage of that growing domestic demand and need for secure and stable supply for defense and national security? Well, it's because it's how advanced it is, has a large part to do with it. The fact that it can supply two critical materials, of course, is also very important.
Don't underestimate the advantages that come with having invested more than $230 million in this project over a decade. It's absolutely the most advanced critical minerals project that we're aware of pre-production in the U.S. It's fully permitted federal permits, fully permitted state permits in place as well. It's shovel-ready. The engineering is at its maximum level that you would do prior to actually commencing construction. There's always some engineering that gets done once you're in construction. We're at the maximum level at 70%. That's been done by Fluor and a number of other industry-leading partners in the project. Our offtake agreements are in place. They're bankable binding offtakes with Tier 1 customers like Ford, EcoPro, the large Korean cathode maker, Prime Planet, which is a joint venture between Toyota and Panasonic, and Dragonfly, a local Nevada company.
We've also got sale agreements signed on our boron. The low-cost debt from the Department of Energy, a two-year due diligence process that we did several years ago now. That loan closed last year, early last year. It's for just under a billion dollars. Low interest, long tenor, 20 years, U.S. Treasury rates, government loan. That obviously is a huge advantage to a large project like Rhyolite Ridge to have that backing and support from the federal government. Next slide please. I talked about expansion potential, and it is an important fact here because, in fact, I was giving a presentation earlier today and someone asked me, well, why did we pick 3.4 million tons per annum of throughput? The answer to that is pretty simple.
As Phase 1, it's because that's the design, the sensible design for one train of including those vats and the evaporators and crystallizers. If you wanted to do more, you wouldn't make them bigger. You would simply build a second parallel train. The reason why this project can contemplate doing that in the future is because we have a very large resource in the South Basin. It's shown there shaded. You can see the South Basin is not completely covered with resource. That's because we haven't drilled it yet. We expect that 550 million ton resource in the South Basin there shown will grow as we drill out the rest of the deposit. We'll be doing that once we've made the FID decision and gone into construction. We will also then go out and drill the rest of that area.
In addition to that, we have a second deposit, the North Basin, which we own 100% of as well. That was drilled in the 1980s and early 1990s. We have all of that drill hole data. There is no resource calculation. The same style of mineralization, lithium and boron is present there. It is at the surface. It is a very thick layer of both lithium and boron mineralization. That will also then provide significant tonnages for extending the mine life, even when we build a second and third and fourth train on this project over time. Next slide please. The partnering process. There is no question that the backdrop during which time we have been working on this partnering process has become increasingly favorable. I just wanted to sort of point out what we mean by that beyond simply commodity prices.
There's no question that lithium prices moved up strongly in the last six to 12 months. It's a lot more than that. For a start, boron was listed as a critical mineral by the United States government in November 2025. The military at the time came out and said that they intended to build refineries to convert boron materials such as boric acid into boron carbide for use as domestic supply of armor plating and body armor. At around the same time, the U.S. and Japan and the U.S. and Korea were in trade negotiations. That has culminated in agreements that will see the U.S. sorry.
Japan invest up to $500 billion commitment into projects in the U.S., Korea are approximately $350 billion investments as part of those trade agreements. That's of interest to us because part of that funding or projects that are eligible, potentially eligible for investment include critical minerals projects, both mines, but also downstream processing. We've already seen several deals announced that involve that funding. We're certainly in that process and see it as a viable option for funding of Rhyolite Ridge. The U.S. government also announced late last year or mid to late last year in the second half anyway, direct investments into critical minerals projects, starting with rare earths, but also indicating that they would look to expand that into other critical minerals, not all at once, but working through a priority set.
We believe that boron is in that priority group, and hence that makes this project of significant interest to the nation. We also have seen that there's a strategic sale process going on with that only other producing boron asset in the world outside of Turkey of significant size. That's also going to have implications for the future of the boron supply chain ex-Turkey. We're watching that very closely. I mentioned that lithium prices done very well, tripled really over the last 12 months from lows of down around $8,000 a ton, which were completely unsustainable, but they've rebounded strongly. We've also seen a very stable pricing continuing for boric acid of around about a thousand dollars a ton. You put all those things together, and that's obviously have worked in our favor with our timing and as we've been working through this strategic partnering process.
Next slide, please. I'm just going to finish with a couple of things that are actually extremely proud of for Ioneer and my team, because really this is critical when you're bringing new projects, new mining projects, through the permitting and ultimately through the execution phase. That is to have strong engagement and strong support from the local community. Really, if you don't have that, then projects are going to struggle. We're fortunate. We've got a wonderful community to work with down in Fish Lake Valley, in Dyer and that area, and the Esmeralda County. We put a lot of effort, my team puts a lot of effort into working very closely with that community and all stakeholders, tribes, farmers, local people.
We've got strong governance measures, practices in place to make sure we adhere to those, and we make sure that our team adhere to those strong governance to ensure consistency and integrity and transparency with everything we do. We've got great team of people. They're very well known in the community. We're down in the community, and we interact a lot with the community. We're very supportive. We hold regular sessions to keep the community aware of everything we're doing, to listen to the concerns that they have and try and address them as best we can. We've made very strong environmental commitments to safeguarding not just flora and fauna, but things like water efficiency and conservation efforts, and that's at the core of everything we're doing.
I think that has paid huge dividends, that approach and the level of integrity that we use when we're doing this sort of work. My team deserves a great compliment for all of those efforts. Next slide, please. An important part, of course, it's not just about supporting various local endeavors and communication. It's also about the economic benefits that projects like this bring for the longer term. Just we're highlighting a few of them here. Employment opportunities, AUD 800 million in direct local investments, 1,400 indirect and direct jobs, AUD 247 million in salaries and wages. Tax revenues of AUD 33 million per year on average into the state and local government tax coffers through taxes and regulatory fees. Economic activities and numbers are mentioned there.
Obviously, it's a very long-life project. There's AUD 23 billion estimated in regional activity over the first 25 years of operation of this project. Again, something that I'm extremely proud of that we've been involved in this is the charitable support in the community, which includes scholarships to local students from high schools, including those from nearby tribal nations, for young people who are studying and they want to continue those studies. We've been very supportive of that by issuing these scholarships, and we have lots of interest in it, and we've been doing it for a number of years now. Next slide, please. Just to finish off, key takeaways. It's a unique deposit. I hope everyone appreciates that. It's the unique mineralogy.
It's the combination of lithium and boron, it's the ability to make those end products outside and do a lot of that value adding which other lithium deposits, hard rock ones, simply can't do. The dual revenue is a huge benefit. Roughly 30% of our revenue comes from boron and 70% from lithium. It's shovel-ready, I've mentioned the advantages of that, particularly at this point in time, having two critical minerals from a project and being shovel-ready so that construction can commence immediately is a huge advantage for us. It's got very robust economics, it's got wonderful long life with expandability, all really critical things as we take this project forward. Equity financing, we're obviously working on that with the partnering. An FID decision. Construction will take us about 36 months.
We're hoping to kick that off towards the end of this year and first production then, based on that 36-month timeline, would be 2029. Next slide. I just want to thank James Calaway, the Chairman, for his guidance and friendship as we close out another year or have closed out another year working on this amazing project. To the support from the Board, the full Board, thank you. Again, to my wonderful team who do an absolutely amazing job in having done something that not many companies have been able to do, and that is take a project from first drill hole, through to fully permitted and ready to commence construction. I'm very much proud of my team for being able to know that we've done that and done it successfully and responsibly. Thank you, James.
Great. Thank you. Thank you, Bernard. I remind shareholders and proxy holders that you have the ability to ask questions via the Lumi platform. We will hold questions specific to the resolutions to the formal part of the meeting. Are there any questions on the Chairman's address, the Managing Director's presentation, more generally on management of the company, or questions submitted online ahead of the meeting? Olga, do we have any questions?
Thank you, James. We have received a few general questions. Question number one is from Christopher. Is Goldman Sachs still being paid a retainer in the search for an equity partner?
Bernard, do you want to take that one? Why don't you take that?
I'm sorry, Olga. I didn't actually hear that properly. Is who being paid a retainer?
Goldman Sachs.
No, there's no retainers. There's success fees. Our partnering process is based on success fees. There are no retainers being paid. They're not being paid now, and they have never been paid. It's entirely success based.
Thank you, Bernard.
Next question, Olga.
Next question from Christopher. Have there been any offers made by potential equity partners? If so, will shareholders be notified of the offers and why they haven't been rejected? Sorry, Why they have been rejected?
We're not in a position right now to discuss the discussions that we have right now related to the partnering process. Those are highly confidential conversations. They're very active.
Thank you, James. Next question is from Andrew. Will the first drawdown on the DOE loan be taken before the deadline that it has?
We certainly anticipate that. Bernard, do you want to take that?
Yes. Yes is the simple answer to the question. We have plenty of time to do that. We have to spend the equity before we have the first drawdown on the loan. We don't see that as an issue. Yes, we will draw down within the time frames that are allowed under the loan conditions, which is the end of next year.
Next question is directed to you, Bernard, again, and it came from Vollman Assets. Could you please expand on why you believe that our deposit is so important to U.S. supply chain for both lithium and boron? If it is so, why is the partnering process taken the length of the time it has?
Yeah. Thank you for the question. Firstly, to expand on what I've already said in my presentation, the U.S. consumption of both lithium and boron is actually fairly high already, and it's going to only grow rapidly in the future. Against that backdrop of demand, strong growing demand, there's actually very limited production. For lithium, it's 5,000 tons of production versus about 200,000 tons of demand. There's a big gap. For boron, there's more production today, but it's from an aging single mine. We're talking about decades, multiple decades into the future, then that demand is going to only grow for boron and there needs to be additional sources developed to allow the stable, secure domestic supply. The reality is there's just very few options.
There aren't other boron deposits of any significant size being developed in the U.S. for the longer term that can compare with Rhyolite Ridge. There's very limited lithium deposits being developed. There are some, but they're limited and there's growing demand as I've outlined. Secure, stable, domestic supply is critical for defense and national security, and that's very much the focus of the current administration, and hence we're part of those conversations. Why the strategic partnering process is taking some time? I sort of touched on that as well because really we started it in the sort of second half of last year. That was against a backdrop of low lithium prices. It was against a backdrop of active trade negotiations between the U.S. and various countries, including Japan and Korea.
Japan and Korea is where our offtakes are with, and so they're very much involved in our project and have been for many years because of that. We also saw the addition of boron onto the critical list, and we saw the rising price of lithium. There was a lot of moving parts around that were directly relevant, changing and moving around, directly relevant to our project in the back half of last year. I would say the partnering process really did not get fully underway until a lot of those things were sorted, which was basically the early part of 2026. Really, the process hasn't been running that long at all, even though formally, yes, we kicked it off in the second half of last year.
Bernard, I'd like to just add one thing to that last part of your answer. Look, it took a lot of courage on our part to not try to take tough, bad deals that would've been bad for our shareholders. There were people who were very interested in coming in in the bottom of this cycle and trying to put on very complex, very expensive capital deals on us. It would not have been favorable to our shareholders. We, despite how much we wanted to get on with building this thing, we had the courage to say, we think things will get better, and that we think that the trends are in our favor. I think I'm fairly confident that that's going to turn out to be true. That was another part of the equation.
Okay. Thank you both.
Further questions?
There's a question from Craig. I'm a shareholder holding in excess of a million shares and have been an investor since 2000. Can I ask why you do not personally answer the emails that I have sent to investor relations? Second questions, what is management doing releasing quarterly reports and having to make corrections to the report? Third, as the MD, what controls and governance do you have in place?
Firstly, it doesn't make sense that there would be a shareholder from 2000 because the company listed in 2007. Anyway, I'll take that there've been this question is coming from someone who's been a shareholder for a long time. It takes a long time to develop projects like this. We drilled the first hole into this project in December 2016. The reality is, it takes a long time to drill out a project, to do all the engineering work, to piloting the estimations, and the permitting. That's just the reality of big projects like this, unfortunately, but that's what it is. There's many examples in North America of projects that have some comparison to this Rhyolite Ridge in terms of scale that have taken much, much longer than that. We're well below the average.
I think it's just a function of what we're doing here with a project like this. Remembering it's not just a mine, it's a large chemical processing plant that had to be studied, engineered, piloted, modified, piloted again, and that's just a function of these sorts of deposits. In terms of the quarterly report, that was an unfortunate circumstance, no question. We had a transition from a number of several of our staff. New people coming in and people that left the company on favorable terms. Nevertheless, we lost a couple of people and we had to replace them, and it came at a very busy time, and there was just some things that got overlooked. Hence, unfortunately, we noticed those, and we corrected them accordingly. We do have processes in place.
People were coming up to speed, new people in the company, new processes. Unfortunately, we made a couple of mistakes there. We're doing things to make sure that doesn't happen again, and I'm sure it won't. I'm confident around that. Then in terms of responding to shareholders, well, we endeavor to respond to shareholders. Sometimes there's information that's in our ASX announcements and in our quarterly reports. Well, we're not going to repeat all of that every time we get an email question. We are relying on people reading the information that we disclose publicly but if there's clarifications and et cetera that are required, then we do endeavor to reply.
Thank you, Bernard. Next question is from Mark. Where does the U.S., by its present needs, to meet its current demand? Will this Ioneer project with critical domestic supply approval from government provide a preferred supplier status? Do the offtake agreements take all the proposed supply for Phase 1? What is the equity need to meet the CP terms of the loan facility? What dollar equity has been committed raised to date? I assume the government loan accommodates all Phase 1 cost, with co-invested equity. Will shareholders be provided with financial projections of what cash flow and profitability is expected from Stage 1, assuming FID is made, and when FID is expected?
I'll answer the last part of the question first while I remember it, because there was a lot of questions there. We have disclosed that information. We have made public our feasibility study and then our updated economics based on the increased reduced leach times. That's all been disclosed. We've disclosed through submittal of S-K 1300 reports on the NASDAQ as well. All of that information relating to projections, cashflow analysis, financial returns, has all been made public already by the company, on multiple occasions. In terms of the offtakes, the offtakes are for approximately 18,000 tons, so there's about 8,000 tons of lithium that's not under offtake agreement, and that was a deliberate strategy. We were holding that back so that that could be part of the strategic partner discussions. Where does the U.S. get its lithium and boron from? All over the world.
It imports boron from Turkey of the order of 100,000 tons of B2O3 a year, by USGS estimates. Lithium comes from all over the world, from South America, from China. A lot of it comes from China because a lot of spodumene gets converted into lithium chemicals in China. Will there be preferred status? That's something that this administration is definitely working on. One of those initiatives, as an example, is Project Vault, and we are involved in those discussions. There has been no outcomes of that yet, but it's early days. The government are incentivizing or encouraging end users to support domestic production of these critical materials. I don't know. James, do you want to add anything to that?
No, that's good.
Thank you both. Next question is from Craig. Will the partnering process be completed in the first half as previously notified by management?
Our guidance right now is the middle of the year, but we feel like we'll get it done.
Thank you. Next question is from Mark. Will new equity raised be pro-rata with the current shareholders?
I'm sorry, which new equity raised? We're not raising equity. We've raised equity. We have approximately $70 million in the bank. There's no intention to raise further equity through capital raisings in the market. The equity for the project that we refer to will be through a sell down at the project level with a strategic partner or partners. That information has all been disclosed publicly.
Thank you, Bernard. Mark appreciates your response. We also have received two questions that were submitted online before the meeting. The first question is, when will the joint venture partner be announced? I believe this one has been already responded.
It'll be announced when it's announceable. We are currently focused on getting the project deal done in the middle of the year. Obviously, as soon as we can announce it, we will.
Thank you, James. There's another question we received in advance. How does the board intend to address the erosion of investors' capital over the next three years based on a time value of money?
Well, the way we're going to do that is we're going to execute a project very well, hit our milestones, deliver a functioning, well-running facility, and have dramatic increase in the value of our company through that process. That's the only way we can do it. Be very mindful of what we spend. When we travel, we travel cheap. We pay very close attention to how we're using the money. When we spend money, it's only to further our ability to execute this project.
Thank you both. I confirm there are no more questions at this stage.
Okay, great. All right, now we will move to the formal business of the meeting. The Notice of Meeting was lodged with ASX on 20 April 2026. It has been sent to all members and can be found on the Ioneer website. All voting today will be conducted by way of a poll. As already noted, voting is open on all resolutions. For each item of business, the company secretary will display the full resolution to be considered and the total number of valid proxy received in respect of each resolution. In accordance with the proxy form, which forms part of the AGM pack, I intend as Chairman to vote all eligible undirected proxies in favor of Resolution 1 through 9 and against Resolution 10. We will now move to the first item of business as set out in the notice of meeting.
To receive and consider consolidated financial statement for six months ended 31st December 2025. The company's financial statements and reports have taken as released to ASX in the annual report. Olga, are there any questions or comments on the company's financial statements and reports, or questions for the Company's Auditor?
Thanks, James. No questions. There are no questions.
Thank you. The first resolution is to consider, and if thought fit, pass that the remuneration report for the year ended 31 December 2025 be adopted. The remuneration report is contained in the annual report. Note, your vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the directors of the company. Number of proxies received on this resolution are shown. Should 25% of the vote be cast against this resolution, this will constitute a second strike for the company for the purposes of the Corporations Act 2001. Olga, are there any questions or comments on this resolution?
We have not received any questions, James.
Okay. Thank you. Let's see. The next item of business is Resolution 2, is to consider, and if thought fit, pass that Rose McKinney-James, who retires by rotation and being eligible, be reelected as a Non-Executive Director of the company. The number of proxies received for this resolution are on the screen. Your Directors, excluding Rose, unanimously recommend voting in favor of this resolution. Olga, are there any questions or comments on this resolution?
There are no questions or comments on this resolution.
Okay. The next item, given my personal interest in the next two items of business, I will hand you to Bernard to chair the meeting for these two resolutions. Bernard?
Oh, thank you, James. The next item of business, Resolution 3, is to consider, and if thought fit, pass that James D. Calaway, who retires by rotation and being eligible, be reelected as an Executive Director of the company. The number of proxies received for this resolution are on the screen. The Directors, excluding James, unanimously recommend voting in favor of this resolution. Olga, have we received any questions or comments on this resolution?
We have not received any questions or comments on this resolution, Bernard.
Thank you, Olga. We'll move on to Resolution 4, approval of issue of performance rights to James Calaway in lieu of Director's fees. The next item of business, Resolution 4, is to consider, and if thought fit, pass approval of performance rights to James Calaway in lieu of Director's fees on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. The number of proxies received for this resolution are displayed on the screen. Olga, have we received any questions or comments on this resolution?
We have not received any comments on this resolution.
Thank you, Olga. I will now hand you back to James to resume chairing the meeting.
Thank you, Bernard. Next item of business, Resolution 5, is to consider, and if thought fit, pass approval of performance rights to Alan Davies in lieu of Director's fees on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. The number of proxies received for this resolution are displayed on the screen. Olga, are there any questions or comments on this resolution?
James, there are no questions or comments on this resolution.
Thank you. The next item of business, Resolution 6, is to consider, and if thought fit, pass approval of performance rights to Rose McKinney-James in lieu of Director's fees on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. The number of proxies received for this resolution are displayed on the screen. Olga, are there any questions or comments on this resolution?
There are no questions or comments, James.
Thank you. The next item of business, Resolution 7, is to consider, and if thought fit, pass approval of performance rights to Margaret R. Walker in lieu of Director's fees on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. The number of proxies received for this resolution are displayed on the screen. Olga, are there any questions or comments on this resolution?
We have not received any questions or comments on this resolution.
Thank you. Next item of business, Resolution 8, is to consider, and if thought fit, pass approval of performance rights to Timothy R. Woodall in lieu of Director's fees on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. The number of proxies received for this resolution are displayed on the screen. Olga, have we received any questions or comments on this resolution?
There are no questions or comments on this resolution, James.
The next item of business, Resolution 9, is to consider, and if thought fit, pass ratification of the prior issue of 400 million placement shares on the terms and conditions set out in explanatory memorandum. The number of proxies received for this resolution are on the screen. Directors unanimously recommend voting in favor of this resolution. Olga, are there any questions or comments on this resolution?
James, there are no questions or comments on this resolution.
The next item of business, Resolution 10, is consider, and if thought fit, approve that subject to and condition on at least 25% of the votes validly cast on Resolution 1, adoption of the remuneration report, being cast against the adoption of the remuneration report the year ended 31 December 2025, set out in explanatory memorandum. The number of proxies received for this resolution are displayed on the screen. The directors unanimously recommend voting against this resolution. Olga, are there any questions or comments on this resolution?
James, there are no questions or comments on this resolution.
Thank you. That concludes our discussion on the items of business. I will close the poll shortly. Please ensure you have cast your votes. Voting is now closed. Results of these votes will be released to the ASX later today. Thank you for your attendance today. We look forward to working hard on your behalf to ensure the development of Rhyolite Ridge and the success of Ioneer Ltd. Thank you very much and all the best to everyone. Bye-bye.