Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you've joined us for the third day of our Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The next presentation of the day is from Ionic Rare Earths. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking Book a Meeting. At this point, I am very pleased to welcome Tim Harrison, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Ionic Rare Earths, which trades on the OTCQB Venture Market under the symbol IXRRF, and on ASX under the symbol IXR. Welcome back, Tim.
Hi, Lily. Thank you for having me. Good afternoon, everyone, and yeah, good morning from Australia. So at Ionic Rare Earths, we are, as Lily said, an Australian-listed company. We've recently commenced trading on the OTC Market. And we're focused as a business on the rare earth supply chain. More so, focused over the past four years in the back end of the supply chain now through recycling the production of rare earth oxides, ultimately flowing into the Western supply chain. Just our cautionary statement. So as I mentioned, you know, our focus as a business has really been around the back end of the supply chain, now producing the materials for newer, Western capacity alternative to the existing Chinese capacity to come online.
We're looking at building a resilient, integrated supply of magnet rare earth oxides that can be facilitated into new metals, alloys, and magnet capacity, and that's certainly an area of tremendous focus at the moment in the West. We're certainly seeing a lot of investment and allocation of funding at the moment in the U.S. around new magnet capacity. But new magnet capacity is predicated on the availability of magnet rare earth oxides, and we do see recycling as being the fastest mechanism to provide those materials to unlock and to see the new capacity that's being built today. We have a 100% owned subsidiary in the U.K. called Ionic Technologies, which has developed a rare earth separation technology.
We're applying that technology in refining of both primary supply, but over the last few years, we've really focused our efforts on recycling. The recycling enables us to provide material domestically within the Western countries, sovereign capacity, traceable material, secure supply for separated neodymium and praseodymium oxides, dysprosium oxides, and terbium oxides. In addition to that, we're also looking at producing some other heavy rare earth oxides, which are becoming increasingly more important on the back of export restrictions that were put in place last year. As I mentioned, we do see recycling as the fastest mechanism to bring new supply to the West. With the technology that we're developing in the U.K., we're now charting the path to hyper scale the technology, whereby we're looking at replicating what we're doing in Belfast now in the U.S.
We have an MOU signed with a partner in Missouri, and we're also evaluating a number of other opportunities in the U.S. In addition to that, we're in discussions with groups across the European market, the Asian market, and we also have a joint venture that we're developing down in Brazil called Viridion, which will look at the ability to take our technology on rare earth separation, apply that to primary supply, but initially to recycling. Finally, to round out our offering, we have a heavy rare earth deposit in Uganda, which is a development-ready asset. We are mine permitted, environmental permits.
We've completed a feasibility study back in 2023, and we're now in discussions with a range of strategic partners, looking at facilitating the funding, financing to develop the project for the material to flow into the U.S. supply chain. Certainly last week, or over the last fortnight, we've seen a lot of focus around public statements in the U.S. on Western supply chains. One of the new initiatives or rebadged initiative is FORGE, which is a Forum of Resource Geostrategic Engagement. It's important to understand this was previously called the Minerals Security Partnership, so it's been around for a few years now. However, it's just been, it's gone through a rebadging. Importantly, Ionic now has two assets that sit within the FORGE program, and classified as s trategically important projects under that FORGE initiative.
Our recycling technology with Ionic Technologies has recently been added to that initiative, and it joins Makuutu, which has been there now for a couple of years. So we've got two assets looking at the supply of heavy rare earths into the Western supply chain, and a mechanism whereby we're looking to facilitate initial supply into the West via recycling and the ability to produce multiple recycling plants, followed by ultimately the development of the Makuutu mine and refining capacity to produce separated rare earth oxides into the U.S. and Western supply chains. So if we look at what we're doing as a business, our differentiating factors, we are a business that's focused on magnet and heavy rare earths. Now, the distinction here is that the heavy rare earths are the elements that China have obviously put the export restrictions on.
But when we look at primary supply, i.e., the mines that are producing today, the bulk of those mines in the West are light rare earth assets, i.e., they produce a lot of lanthanum and cerium, which are very, very low grade, low value elements, in excess supply. And maybe they produce around 20% of their basket as neodymium and praseodymium. When we look at Makuutu, Makuutu is about 71%, magnet plus heavy rare earth. So if we look at the, the NdPr plus the heavy rare earth content, it's a very distinctive project, and it's very differentiated from the, the Mountain Pass, and the Mount Weld supply chain that's providing a, a bulk volume of change coming to the market today. So that's the, one of the big distinctions. You know, and our supply chain is looking to have zero reliance on China.
So we have established relationships across metals, alloys, and magnets. And through that, we're looking to build a more robust, resilient supply chain that can facilitate the secure, traceable alternative supply that can flow into ultimately, you know, a number of these strategic applications, whether it be military and defense, but certainly we've seen over the course of the last six months, a huge focus now starting to emerge on AI, data, robots. And again, they become massive drivers on the demand for rare earths into the future. So now I just want to talk a little bit more about our recycling technology, and that's Ionic Technologies. And what we like to think of it is taking a previously used material and upcycling that.
So taking it from an end-of-life material, typically, you know, the, those magnets made in the past have now been superseded by new blends, new ratios of rare earths. And so we're trying to extract those high-value, heavy rare earths out to be able to deploy that on new capacity, new generation magnets, that will facilitate wind turbines, EVs, and a number of military and defense applications, for example, plus support the magnets that'll go into the robots that are gonna power a lot of the future industry.
As a technology, and as a business, we acquired this IP in late 2021, finalized the acquisition in early 2022, and we've worked through lab scale, pilot scale, demonstration scale, and we've completed a feasibility, and now we're securing the financing to build a commercial plant, which we're aiming to have up and operational by the end of next year. That plant is set to be, that first plant is set to be in Belfast, where we've recently secured a cornerstone commitment from the U.K. government for GBP 12 million on a GBP 85 million development. The technology that we're developing is hydrometallurgical separation of rare earths. So it's a bit different to a number of the other recyclers in this space.
And the value add that we're producing is our products being separated, which can be redeployed for ultimately the magnets, the next generation of sintered magnets. They're separating the materials into high purity individual elements. We've demonstrated neodymium and praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. We're making material, we're selling material. In addition to that, we've tweaked the circuit, and we're now adding capability to separate out a number of other heavy rare earths that we commonly see used as substitution in magnets over the last 30 years. And so adding the ability to separate out samarium, europium, gadolinium, and also holmium. And in addition to that, looking at the technology and application of that technology to separate samarium cobalt magnets and also yttrium products.
And we know recently that there's been a huge focus and huge escalation in the prices of those heavy rare earths, ex-China. So effectively, we're producing the products that are now really seeing extreme increases in price and very tight supply. In the U.K., we've developed a completely insulated closed-loop supply chain, whereby we are recycling materials on behalf of a range of different partners. Upstream, a partnership with EMR, which is the U.K.'s largest metals recycler, which also has a very large footprint in the U.S.. We're recycling material from them and then producing separated rare earth oxides, which go to Less Common Metals, our metal and alloy partner, who produce the materials that go to our magnet subcontractors, being Vacuumschmelze and GKN Powder Metallurgy.
Those magnets that they're producing then flow into three different partners that we're working with as part of this initiative, Ford, Bentley, and Wrightbus, to produce the magnets that are going into ultimately the, the EVs and a range of different other applications. And in addition to that, working on the overall life cycle analysis. Now, this is an initiative that's been sponsored by the U.K. government and is a part of a mechanism that we're using to validate our supply chain as part of our plans to commercialize our business in the U.K.. Looking at another way at the technology, and where we've come from 2022 at lab scale all the way through now to plans to be commercial production by the end of next year, we've worked through a number of programs with great support from the U.K. government.
We've worked closely with the Advanced Propulsion Centre, systematically working through a process to de-risk the technology, and we're currently sitting at a technology readiness level 8, moving to TRL 9, which is effectively commercialization. So we are one of the most advanced, if not the most advanced recycler in the production of separated rare earths, separated rare earth oxides, globally outside of China, and now looking to facilitate that technological advantage, that time advantage to hyperscale technology from the U.K. into the U.S. market. The feasibility study we completed in Belfast had a capital development of GBP 85 million and a payback of roughly two and a half years when we look at numbers applied from November 2024.
Fast forward 18 months, and the world's now a very different place, where a lot of those pricing estimates that were used in that feasibility study have been exceeded. We're now seeing much, much larger and dramatic prices on dysprosium and terbium as the West scrambles to find this material in order to be able to make the magnets that it's projected to need over the next decade and beyond. And so we're seeing, you know, the disconnect between China's prices and now what's happening in, in the West. If we look at dysprosium, we're looking at almost five times the price of China's dysprosium, if we look compared to a Western dysprosium. And on the terbium oxide, it's approximately four times.
So there is a massive disconnect, between the markets simply because the West needs dysprosium and terbium, and there's very, very little production of that outside of China. Based upon the EBITDA of the project, which roughly generates circa $90 million per annum, as I mentioned before, a payback of around about 2.5 years, and this is based on a 20-year life of operation. What we know about recycling is that it's very different to a mining business. A mining business is based on a reserve that depletes over time. Recycling is the inverse. That reserve increases exponentially, and so we see the opportunity to roll out a number of these recycling plants across key, key markets, especially the U.S.
If we look to, you know, a number of the discussions that we have going on right now, our MOU and our partnership that we're working with with U.S. Strategic Metals in Missouri is a key pillar of that growth. But in addition to that, we're starting, and we've been doing a lot of other discussions with different opportunities, partners in the supply chain. So we do see the opportunity now to move with a number of recycling plants in the U.S. over a very short period of time. Recently, we have secured the offer in principle of GBP 12 million from the U.K. government via the Automotive Transformation Fund administered by the Advanced Propulsion Centre.
If we go back to a couple of slides, you know, the APC, the Advanced Propulsion Centre, has been a very strong supporter of the technology we've been developing and the materials going into ultimately a supply chain and an employee, a production base and a revenue center for the U.K. that is significant. The U.K. has approximately 1 million people employed in the auto sector, and a lot of those jobs are transitioning away from internal combustion engines to eDrives. The production of eDrive is predicated on magnets, and so the U.K. has been very focused on supporting the development of this opportunity. We see the same opportunity emerging now in the U.S., the same opportunity emerging in Europe.
As governments and industry moves away from internal combustion engines towards electric vehicles and eDrives, there is simply a requirement for these magnets to be able to produce the motors that are competitive with those Chinese EVs. And so with the support that we've received from the U.K. government via this initial grant offer in principle, we're in discussions with the U.K. government, other branches of the U.K. government, for additional funding, which will increase the overall support from the U.K. government. And we're expecting to have our capital stack completed by the middle of this year to reach a final investment decision, with the plan to then move swiftly into construction, and ultimately the production of separated magnet rare earth oxides next year. Life cycle, recycling, and the technology that we have produces a dramatically lower carbon footprint.
That carbon footprint is important to a number of the customers that we're working with today, especially those customers in Europe focused on their carbon and CO2 emissions. And so we continue to have a lot of engagement with customers now looking at that as a driver. But I would say over the course of the last six months, the focus now has moved beyond that pure impact on carbon. The focus now is: I need material, I can't get material, and recycling is the mechanism to get that material. Our strategic location in Belfast. Belfast is the epicenter of the rollout of offshore wind, and has been for a number of years now. It's got deep water infrastructure, deepwater port, and that port effectively is the result of decades of strong historical shipbuilding.
And, and so that infrastructure now is prioritized to be part of a massive push on the rollout of offshore wind, and the U.K. as a nation is projected to be a 12% consumer of global magnets, magnet demand by the end of this decade, driven by the rollout of offshore wind, but also the adoption of electric vehicles. So we see the U.K. as being a very strategic location for the commercialization of our technology. If we cast our eye now to what we're doing in the U.S.A. and our MOU with U.S. Strategic Metals, you know, that is a incredibly important initiative for, for Ionic, and collectively, ourselves and U.S. Strategic Metals are engaging with various different branches of government to secure the support to rapidly deploy our technology in the U.S. market.
The U.S. Strategic Metals site in Missouri is a 1,800-acre site that's fully permitted, that has infrastructure and buildings that we can move swiftly to, to deploy the technology. So we do see this as being a very quick strategic move to accelerate our position in the U.S. market and be part of a solution now for U.S. sovereign capability. The application of the materials that we're making and the prioritization of those materials into, let's say, for example, the defense sector in the U.S., is significant. You know, one of our plants could produce enough to supply the defense needs. However, what we're seeing is, and what we're hearing is that those defense needs are escalating dramatically as technology is advancing at a rate of knots.
So beyond what we see here, and a lot of these numbers sort of come from demand in a report back from 2021, we see huge opportunity now to have multiple plants in the U.S. to support the need on those strategic needs. But beyond that, you know, we've been inundated by a lot of requests from U.S.-based advanced manufacturing that can no longer get access to dysprosium and terbium. And in addition to dysprosium and terbium, we're having discussions with groups about our technology and the application of that technology to produce a range of other heavy rare earth compounds. Next, I want to talk about our Brazilian joint venture, Viridion, which we see as a huge opportunity for the company.
Whereby we're looking to develop a refinery and magnet recycling to separate mixed rare earth carbonate from the Colossus Project, which is Viridis' Colossus Project. But ultimately to be able to deploy the technology and to look at building U.S. refining capacity as well. Back last year, middle of last year, through Viridion, we sourced magnets out of Brazil, and then recycled them at Ionic Technologies' facility in Belfast, and then delivered that material back to Brazil. And this is part of an effort there with partners that we've established on building a magnet supply chain in the Brazilian market. We see this as being hugely accretive for the business long-term, as Brazil has very large resources and the potential to support a growing industry in decades to come.
Through Viridion, Ionic is very keen to stake an initial position in that emerging market and be part of a clear directive from government there around building the supply chain. To that point, last year, we secured support via an initiative, a $1.4 billion initiative by the Brazilian government, administered via BNDES and FINEP, whereby Viridis and Viridion were selected as the only rare earth projects to secure financing as part of that initiative around value addition in Brazil. As we continue discussions in Brazil and progressing plans on now commercializing and developing technology, demonstrating technology, and producing separated products, you know, we've really positioned ourselves strongly with support with Brazilian stakeholders on the establishment of that value chain.
Finally, just sticking with Viridion, in September, we received land from the Passo Fundo municipality, whereby Viridion will now be developing a facility that will not only recycle magnets, but also build a refinery pilot plant, so that we can demonstrate the separation of rare earth oxides from the Colossus Project and be able to facilitate that supply chain. Finally, just to touch upon our Makuutu Project. Now, Makuutu is in Uganda. We own 60% of it, but the asset is operated through our Ugandan entity, Rwenzori Rare Metals. We have 300 square meters, 300 square kilometers of tenements that stretches roughly about 37 kilometers long. So the tenement and the deposit itself is actually larger than the island of Manhattan....
We have a resource defined. We have an ore reserve estimates from a feasibility study completed in 2023. We have excellent infrastructure available to the project. We have environmental permits, and the mining license was approved in early 2024. We built a demonstration plant. We've produced mixed rare earth carbonate, and we're now working through a range of discussions with strategic partners. But what differentiates Makuutu from other projects in the rare earth space is the proportion of heavy rare earths in our basket. I mentioned earlier, 71% magnet rare earths plus heavy rare earths. If we look at the NdPr, it's about 26%, which is considerable compared to a raft of other light rare earth projects that are in development or in operation today.
But what highlights the strategic appeal of Makuutu is the presence of heavy rare earths. And if we're looking from samarium around to yttrium, it's about 45% of our basket as heavy rare earths, with 26%--over 26% being yttrium. And the case in point, what we've seen over the course of 2025, with the export restrictions from April through to the end of last year, yttrium started 2025 with a price of around about $5/kg. By the time we got to the end of 2025, if you had yttrium, you could sell it for $1,000/kg in the U.S. market and the Western market. Such is the appetite for a raft, and, and yttrium is just one of the examples on the heavy rare earths.
We talked about the escalation in the prices for Dysprosium and Terbium, but there is a range of other heavy rare earths that are now in such strategic and tight supply that the escalation in prices is very dramatic and highlights the insatiable need from Western advanced manufacturing to get access to this material. Feasibility study from Makuutu from 2023 had a capital development of $120.8 million. So if we assume the escalation, we expected development of $150 million to develop the project today. And a payback that was, you know, a few years in order to pay back the project. It generates an appreciable NPV, but an increasingly strategic value for that asset. Finally, just our corporate snapshot.
As of middle of this week, trading at about AUD 0.48, market cap of AUD 108 million and 225 million shares on issue. We consolidated capital at the end of last year and finalized that earlier this year. So we're now positioning ourselves towards significant growth into the Northern Hemisphere markets. So as we finalize with the key takeaways, the validated technology platform, you know, we've demonstrated the tech, and we're now looking to scale. We've got positive sector momentum. I think it's undeniable the focus that's been brought to rare earths and the disconnect that's now emerging between Western demand and Chinese capacity, and Chinese export restrictions. A compelling economic profile demonstrated in Belfast, with the ability to replicate that and improve that in a number of Western geographies.
We've established strategic partnerships on the supply chain. We've got key partners and a range across the supply chain, metals, alloys, magnets, and customers. We've got a clear growth roadmap, where we're looking to firstly develop what we're doing in Belfast, but now rapidly deploying the technology in other target markets. And we're building out our board and management team. We've recently added a couple of strategic advisors, and the business will continue to add resources as we look to expand our footprint in our target markets. And so with that, we can now move on to some questions, appreciating that quite a bit to go through. So first question I've got here now is: You now have or are planning touch points in the U.K., U.S., Brazil, and Uganda.
How does that geographic spread position you to benefit from different regional incentives, tax credits, and Inflation Reduction Act style policies over the next 5-10 years? I would say that our big focus, if we look at the U.K., U.S., and Brazil, if we focus on the U.S., I think what we're seeing right now is the deployment of capital in a way that facilitates new capacity build-out. Capital or financing being provided to de-risk the investment from public equity markets has been tremendous, and I think we're perfectly positioned to be able to capitalize on that with government support.
You know, if we look at what's happening in the U.K. with the capital grant that we've received and further support that we expect, we also expect further discussions that we've been having with strategic advisors to move very swiftly now on the financing of the remainder of the build-out. So I think, you know, that financing piece is very important. Appreciating there's quite a number of other questions here that have come through, and I've run out of time, so I'll have to look to get back to individuals directly to answer those questions. Thank everybody for their time today.