Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Lynas' quarterly results briefing. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press *11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Lynas. Thank you.
Good morning, and welcome to the Lynas Rare Earths Investor Briefing for the December 2024 quarter. Today's briefing will be presented by Amanda Lacaze, CEO and Managing Director, and joining Amanda will be Gaudenz Sturzenegger, CFO, Pol Le Roux, COO, and Daniel Havas, VP Strategy and Investor Relations. To ensure that all analysts have an opportunity to ask questions, please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up question. You can then rejoin the queue if you have additional questions. I'll now hand over to Amanda Lacaze. Please go ahead, Amanda.
Good morning, everybody. Happy New Year. I think we're still allowed to say that when we're only halfway through January. I trust that everybody who managed to have a break over the Christmas period had a fabulous time. For those who celebrate Christmas, that Santa was kind to you. Santa was a little kind to us, as you will have seen from our report in delivering some chemicals on Christmas Day. Sometimes in your stocking, you get the things that you want, and sometimes you get the things that you need. Anyway, the quarter, as we saw it, was definitely a quarter of some positives and also some negatives. On the positive side, our sales revenue was up compared to the prior quarter and indeed the previous corresponding quarter. This was basically off the back of volume. Our Kalgoorlie facility was officially opened.
It was a terrific day, actually, with the Resources Minister and other dignitaries in attendance, and really gave our people a chance to show off what is quite a significant achievement. The other positive, that Kalgoorlie is now producing very close to the target volumes that we have set, so producing on volume. The Mt Weld expansion continues to progress well, with phase one now fully commissioned and tied in with current production and working as designed and already delivering benefits for us in terms of our Mt Weld operations. The other positive is that after a lot of intense work and reassessment of alternatives, we have found a pathway through to deal with some of the permitting issues that we had previously flagged at Seadrift and continue in very positive discussions with the DOD now on how we execute against that newly defined pathway.
Unfortunately, there were also some negatives, and I think that everyone's read the report and understands those. December production was lower than we were hoping that it would be. As I said, Kalgoorlie is producing at very close to our target volumes, but not yet at target quality. And so there's some impurities in the Kalgoorlie mixed rare earth carbonate that we need to deal with, at least at present in Malaysia. In the medium term, the solution is clearly that we deal with those in Kalgoorlie. As I've indicated in the report, this is certainly not unexpected with new processing, that there will be a period of time in the first instance where, and this is sort of sequential, where you have to get your volume throughput working in the way that you expect it to.
But we are dealing with a new process, and all natural resources have some level of impurities. And the way that they have presented and the way that we need to manage them is not unexpected but has certainly been a challenge, particularly during December 2024. The other negative, of course, is the continuing low prices in the market, still sitting sort of around or just under $50 a kilo for NdPr. And we look forward to the market starting to pick up again as we see activity in China improving. And that's not just for inside China consumption, but also as we look at some of their export figures, particularly in automotive. However, at present, the pricing continues to be subdued. So I guess the good news is that most of the negatives can and are being addressed.
The work that we did in December on truly understanding the various different impurities in the mixed rare earth carbonate and their effect in the way that they deported through the process in Malaysia has been very productive, and we have a series of actions identified, which we are currently implementing. Slightly harder to fix, of course, is the issues around the market, but we are focusing a lot of our effort in terms of sales and market development on not just how do we sell to the highest value customers on the best terms that can be achieved, but also what more can we do alongside other market participants to support the ex-China market development, because we see this is critical for us in the longer term.
While, yes, none of us were particularly happy with the NdPr production, particularly through December, we do see this as a sort of a short-term issue that we have the skills, experience, and competence to be able to address it. And we see that we should be able to move forward with more focus on the positives and rather less incidences around the negatives. So with that as sort of some introductory comments, I can see that we've got many questions in the queue already. And so to ensure that we're able to get this done in plenty of time, let's just move across, and I'll take questions now.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. As a reminder, please have one question and one follow-up question per person. If you have more questions, please requeue. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. First question, we have Paul Young from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Amanda. Yep, happy New Year. Amanda, first question is on the challenges with processing the MREC from Kalgoorlie up at LAMP. I mean, I'm just wondering if you can provide a little more color and detail around those challenges and maybe how things have been tracking in January, and maybe the first question is really around these impurities. And I understand that you at CAL and also at LAMP at the front end there, you actually do drop out a solution, iron, aluminum, and phosphorus. They're the main impurities. So can you maybe just expand on which impurities are high and how you're actually addressing those impurities?
Sure. And I'll put it sort of historically as well, because I remember sitting with some of these same sorts of challenges a decade ago when we were first starting up the Lynas Malaysia facility. So our material comes through, and in addition to the rare earths, yes, iron, phosphate, but also zinc and aluminum as other elements within that material. And in the very early days at LAMP, we had high, well, they weren't high, but we had impurity levels there, which created further challenges for us downstream. Our technical team implemented a number of some things that we would see as definitely our own IP on being able to remove those impurities cost-effectively as early in the flow sheet as possible.
I think on the very original design, they tended to be sort of removed once we got to finishing stage, but we've been able to find ways to remove them earlier in the process, so as we look at the material that comes out of Kalgoorlie, and we review this on the quality on a weekly basis, when we started, the level of some of those other elements was higher than is desirable. Very pleasingly, we're seeing them come back much closer to being within the range that we need them to be. However, some of that early production, which is on-site in Malaysia, we have had to deal with those impurities. The other thing is that as part of the process, we have sulfate in the material.
Once again, actually, I think it took us quite a long time to get to producing a low-sulfate material when we originally started up the LAMP. We are now on a pathway to being able to do that, but we still have to have a sulfate removal step at this stage with respect to MREC processing in Malaysia. So those are the sorts of things that we're dealing with. As I said, none of them are impossible, and certainly we have the technical know-how to do them. But just because it's going through a different initial process step in Kalgoorlie, they present slightly differently, and we just have to learn how to manage them. And we are doing that as we go. I'm happy if Paul wants to add anything more to that. But essentially, the process improvement team is very focused on this.
And the interim step, which sees us with a chemical treatment for dealing with that, will definitely only be interim because we do see a pathway to being able to solve these issues at source, which is actually in Kalgoorlie. But for the material that we already have on-site in Malaysia, we have to do the additional treatment.
Yeah, okay. Thanks, Amanda. So it sounds like just optimizing that neutralization step in Kalgoorlie. So yep. And then the follow-up question is actually just on that throughput constraint you have at the kilns in Malaysia. I must admit I wasn't aware of a throughput permit level on the Mt Weld concentrate on throughput in the kilns. I thought there was an NdPr production cap or permitting limit. But just on that throughput, I know the kilns, I think, are rated at 65,000 tons per annum of concentrate. Is that the number that we should be thinking about? That's what you're permitted to in Malaysia, 65,000 tons of concentrate throughput through the kilns?
No. Actually, it is an unhelpful anomaly of our licensing in Malaysia, which we've been living with for some time now. So we have an import license, which is higher than our processing license. We haven't disclosed this explicit number on that, but sufficient to say that certainly we have a license to import sufficient to be able to produce at what we used to call the Lynas Next rates. But for a whole variety, and that's awarded via what's now called ATOM, which was the AELB, and that has been in place since 2018. There are multiple reasons, many political, which have seen the matching permit from the DOE not actually come through. We've always been cautious in the way that we manage this.
When we have hit this processing limit previously, we've basically used the time to do things like major maintenance that we would not want to disrupt production through the rest of the year. This year, we thought that with the addition of the MREC, that we would be able to sustain production through December. And without going back over it again, we've already discussed why that was not the case. We're currently doing a further EIA in Malaysia, which we believe will allow us to address that processing limit, which remains in place.
Okay. Thank you, Amanda.
Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Austin Yun from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Morning, Amanda and the team. Just one question on that impurity again. I'm trying to understand you have an interim step to try to resolve the issue. But if for the next six months, does this kind of hiccup impact your timeline to demonstrate the 10.5 thousand ton production capacity by the end of financial year 2025? Thank you.
This is a good question, Austin, and one which is certainly exercising Paul and his team's minds every day. We have a plan which sees us be able to demonstrate because we've said for a long time our target is 10.5 thousand tons capacity. And by that, we mean 10.5 thousand tons operable capacity in FY 2025. And so we believe that the series of initiatives that we're taking means that we will still be able to deliver that performance this financial year.
Okay. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. After the 10-day maintenance at the Cracking and Leaching Facility in Malaysia in December, how should we think about the ramp-up profile in the March quarter? Has that plan been fully ramped up now?
In terms of the ramp-up in the March quarter, we've taken some actions in terms of flow sheet for the MREC, which is seeing it move through the system more efficiently. We still have two kilns offline because, as I said, we always take the opportunity when we have the kilns down to do major works of one form or another. It's worth remembering that they're now 10 years old. This actually gives us a little bit of headroom to be managing the MREC as well. We expect that those kilns will come back online of course during this quarter alongside the more efficient mixed rare earth carbonate processing that we're progressing at present.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please. Next question comes from the line of Al Harvey from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, Amanda and team. Happy New Year. Just wanted to get a sense. In the release, there is a mention of you guys are now looking to produce two different types of concentrates out of Mt Weld just to, I suppose, optimize the feeds to Malaysia and Kalgoorlie. Just wondering if there's any relationship with that decision on the impurity issue. I suppose just want to get a sense of what will be the difference between the two feeds. Is it around lowering that lanthanum in the feed that goes to Malaysia or anything like that? And I suppose extension of that is what's the impact on the Mt Weld cost base? Is there any extra kit or productivity impact of producing two different types of concentrate?
Oh, Al, I wish we were not quite yet as sophisticated as being able to remove lanthanum and cerium at Mt Weld at some stage. That will be something that is certainly on the list of things that would be excellent for us to be able to do. At this stage, what we're basically doing, however, it's not elemental. It's not based on elements, the difference in the cons. It's a difference in grade and moisture as relevant. So clearly, if we can get lower moisture product, and this is one of the big benefits of bringing in the dewatering circuit that was part of the expansion, it allows us to have a lower moisture product going to Malaysia. The less water we ship, the better, of course.
Also, as we look at sort of process and the way we optimize recoveries and grade, once again, higher grade con to Malaysia makes more sense in terms of sort of logistics costs as well. Not yet really quite as sophisticated as you're talking about, but definitely on the to-do list.
Yeah, understood. I suppose just, what is the benefit of the two different concentrates? If you get those benefits from dewatering grade, why not send them to both plants?
Look, it's just at this stage an operational decision, and the kilns in both facilities actually do work slightly differently, and so just ensuring that whatever we're doing with con is most closely correlated to what we're seeing in terms of kiln operation and recoveries is really what we're trying to do. We're just trying to make sure that we match. It's not a significant cost impost in Mt Weld, and it's just recognizing that if we can tailor-make the con for the kiln that it is feeding, that that's going to give us a better outcome.
Great. Thanks, Amanda. I'll cue up again. Cheers.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chen Jiang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Happy New Year, Amanda. Hope you had a great holiday and festival season. One question from me, please. Under the scenario, if Lynas have the chemical inputs available for the additional treatment of the Kalgoorlie feedstocks, the production won't be impacted for three or four weeks from November to 25th of December. Is that right?
Yes.
Thanks for that. If Malaysia Cracking and Leaching is down, like what happened in December this quarter, will the Malaysia plant capable of processing the carbonate from Kalgoorlie as an alternative feedstock without the recurring chemical processing issues going forward? Thanks.
It will be in the future, right? So there are two, in fact, there's about three different approaches that the operations team is implementing at present. The first, which is what we're talking about now, is the least desirable, which is that we have material produced with impurities that need to be corrected later in the flow sheet, and we are correcting them with this additional chemical treatment. The second is to find a more efficient process flow in Malaysia to do this without necessitating the additional chemical treatment. But the third and the sustainable solution is the one that sees us bring the process under control in Kalgoorlie to produce materials which do not have the troublesome impurities in them. We have action plans which are associated with each of those pathways.
Right. Thanks for that, Amanda. Really appreciate you outlined those three different, I guess, approaches to tackle the issue. Maybe just a follow-up. So the sustainable solution is still on Kalgoorlie to, I mean, lower your impurities. But at the moment, Lynas is working on additional chemical treatment because the impurity levels are still relatively high.
That's right. That's right. But we can see a pathway. And the team has a plan. I'm just not going to tell you the day it's going to happen because, I mean, these processes always have opportunities to throw up new challenges. But we have a plan ultimately to produce within spec on a variety of these impurities so we don't have to do the post-treatment, essentially, in Kalgoorlie.
Sure. That's very clear. Thank you so much, Amanda. I'll pass it down. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next, we have Daniel Morgan from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Amanda. First question, just you said in your outline that Kalgoorlie is producing on volume. Is that at the 9,000-ton per annum capacity for the plant, or is that at your budget for the quarter?
Oh, no. No. We didn't think that within six months we'd be at full capacity. No. It's producing on our target. I said close to our target volume. So we know that we're aiming to get to 10.5 thousand tons per annum production this year. You can do the arithmetic given how much of that's going to come out of the Malaysian kilns and how much of that's going to come out of the Kalgoorlie kilns. And we will. This is all about sort of produce at a low rate, get it stable, step it up, produce at a slightly higher rate, get it stable, step it up, produce at a slightly higher rate, get it stable, step it up. The decision then on how we balance the capacity across those two facilities will simply reflect market conditions and sort of cost considerations as we move forward.
But no, we're not producing at equivalent 9,000 tons in Kalgoorlie. We're producing in Kalgoorlie at a rate that if it's combined with what we produce in Malaysia, we can demonstrate the 10.5 thousand tons of NdPr production.
Yep. Thank you, clear. And then just to follow up, I mean, you outlined then the end market softness, which has been the case for a while. And you obviously outlined several months ago that your strategy is not to run at full capacity, which I understand. But given that you lost a month of production more or less in December, you're not yet at full tilt in January. Would your plan be just to catch up what your budgeted production you were thinking for the year for the rest of the fiscal year? So might you really run hard at the end of this quarter and into next? Or have we lost that production and it is lower production this year than you would budget?
Does somebody actually share with you our weekly sales and operations planning, Daniel?
No. I don't have a model.
Because, yeah, certainly our plan and our with a relatively good level of confidence is to run hard as we move through this quarter and we get both of the kilns back online and certainly run hard into the end of the financial year. So we think that we can recover the production that we've lost. We think it is important, notwithstanding that the market pricing remains fairly low. I mean, we've still, as we've demonstrated in December, been able to sell successfully into that market. And we have had some drawdown of inventory. I mean, we're not quite where we were for many years where we'd finish the quarter with sort of 20 tons in inventory. But we would like to see ourselves with a little more finished goods inventory available. So yes, we will be running hard every day.
Okay. Thank you very much. I'll go back and then queue.
Thanks, Daniel.
Thank you. Our next question comes from a line of Regan Burrows from Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Hi, Amanda Lacaze. Thanks for taking my question. One of my questions has been to ask potentially one on the product mix. Obviously, the achieved price is higher than what I think everyone sort of thought it would be. Just curious, I mean, do you have sort of contractual obligations to sort of fulfill larger quantities of other REOs, I guess, in the periods coming up? And do we sort of see a scenario where you have to sort of reduce your NdPr that you're selling in the future periods and potentially that achieved price comes down a little bit over the next couple of quarters?
Yeah. It's a good question, Regan. Yes, product mix does have an effect in the fact that we have certainly prioritized and continue to prioritize NdPr and SEG. I mean, within the product mix in the quarter that's just passed, there's NdPr, but there's also SEG, which is contributing to that higher price. And it will sort of bounce around a bit, and we will have some obligations that we need to meet on lanthanum and cerium. So we have identified that in the report that we do, and we have got benefits from mix. And we've also got benefits from sort of currency as well. So we recognize that other quarters we have penalties associated with it. But we would expect that we will have additional sales of non-NdPr products in the last two quarters of the financial year.
Got it. Thanks for that. And potentially just one sort of quick one. Capitalization of the processing cost of Kalgoorlie, do you sort of have an idea as to when we'll start to see those costs show up in the cash flow on a quarterly basis outside of the CapEx spend?
We think having reached a position where we are able to produce what we say we're going to produce in terms of volume now gives us the platform for that transition, and Gaudenz and his team are working with the auditors to get sign-off on the various accounting measures that need to be ticked off to make that change.
Great. Thank you for that. I'll go back and queue.
Thanks, Reagan.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Shannon Sinha from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, Amanda and team. Maybe my first one just around Malaysia. So the maintenance that was done during the quarter and replacing the kiln bearings. Is there any other maintenance that could be required basically over the next year or maybe a few years that would require a longer shutdown?
Yeah. The kilns are big and complex mechanically and chemically. But we're pretty sort of knowledgeable about how they operate. But there are always sort of the potential for maintenance challenges. We've stepped up our preventive maintenance schedule and sort of the systems that we use to get that preventive maintenance targeted in the right places. The bearings, we had one bearing failure. So we're now sort of addressing that on each of the kilns rather than waiting for another failure. We have various different elements that we are addressing. We don't have a plan at present for sort of a major shut because we have been able to use this time where the kilns have been shut down both last year and this year to address many of those major issues.
But I'll invite Pol to comment on that as well if you had anything further that you wanted to say, Paul.
As much. We did really, and we are still doing actually, very intense preventive maintenance exercise on our kilns, including replacing bearings on two of them. So yeah, in this period of time when the demand is not very strong, we found this is the best moment to really get our kilns ready for maximum production. Now, there are always things you don't expect, but at least we're doing everything possible for going for a long period of time at maximum capacity.
Thanks.
Thank you. Perfect. Thanks. Maybe the next one, I was just wondering if you could provide any details around how the Heavy Separation Circuit is progressing as well? Thanks.
Yeah. It's good. It's going according to plan. So once again, I'll invite Pol to sort of answer this. But the substantial works, too. We have all of the equipment on site that's being installed as we speak. And we have a plan for selling that and being in the position of having separated material around about the middle of the year as we indicated when we briefed on it. So Paul, did you have anything else that you wanted to say on that?
As you said, in terms of hardware, we are almost done, so it's more a matter of priority management in operation, and as you understand, our objective is to produce dysprosium terbium within this fiscal year, and we'll do. Now, in terms of priority management, number one is fixing the quality issues in Kalgoorlie. Number two is to produce more NdPr. Number three is dysprosium terbium, and that would be, by order, roughly the focus we'll give, so dysprosium terbium will start in due time, but at the moment, it's not on top of my priority. It's ready to go, but it's just a matter of priority management.
Okay. Perfect. Makes sense. Thanks. I'll pass it on.
Thanks, Shannon.
Thank you. Our next question comes from John Sharp from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Amanda and team. Just a quick question on CapEx. So it was a little higher than expected this quarter. It's close to AUD 270 million for the year. Are you confident in staying within the AUD 400-500 million guidance? And if you are, is there anything that has sort of been pushed to next year?
Yes, we are confident that we're staying within the AUD 400milion- AUD 500 million guidance. The difference to date has got to do with the fact that we are still capitalizing those Kalgoorlie costs. And that's the reason why. And I remember at least one or two of you saying, "That's a very big sort of range that you've given us." But of course, that range we provide it because it's dependent upon when we move Kalgoorlie from the capital account to the operating account. All other major capital projects are proceeding as planned and on budget.
Okay. So you'll get everything planned that you're planning to get done this year with that and stay within that guidance?
Yep.
Okay. Great. And just a quick question on the U.S. project, the wastewater solution. You've said you've identified the solution. Does it require design changes, or is it just purely compliance-related? Maybe just some more detail on that and what design changes are needed, what are their cost implications?
Yeah. It's design changes, and we're working through that with the DOD, so we will brief exactly what they are in due course once we have agreed them with our project sponsor, but we believe that the solution that we've identified is not only a good solution in terms of dealing with permitting, but it's also a good solution in terms of the design of the facility.
Okay. Thanks, Amanda. I'll pass it on.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Dim Ariyasinghe from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good day, Amanda. Good day, team. Thank you very much. I guess maybe the first question was just on the solutions or the variety of solutions that you're discussing with these impurities. Does it change or does it have capacity to potentially change the CapEx envelope that you've talked about for this year or what you were anticipating for next year, especially if you were to go down the ideal route of fixing it at Cal?
Not substantially. I think that I think everyone who is on this call who's ever observed a major chemical factory being started up, that process control and ensuring that you manage within your identified limits in a stable fashion is always your first challenge, and so when you start, you tend to get sort of excursions above and below your target limits, and as you become more experienced in operating your circuits, you manage within those, so this is more about controls, maybe a little bit of capital, but not substantial capital is required on these matters.
Yep. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Thank you. That helps. I guess the next one, we haven't talked about it for a while because it hasn't been an issue. And it's a much improved relationship. But can you remind us when the Malaysia license, I'm assuming it needs to get renewed again, is that 2026? Do we start hearing about that over the course of this year? Yeah. Maybe you could help us think through that.
Yeah. The situation that we are—I think that your interpretation, where you haven't heard much about it, it's operating on a more normalized basis is true. I mean, we operate with a lot of licenses of one sort or another across all of our sites from the mines in WA and certainly from the Malaysian government via the various departments. So we will start that. Generally, the license renewal process commences with an audit, and that will be generally started somewhere around about the middle of the year. We don't expect that there's going to be any significant issues associated with the renewal of the license. We continue to engage with the government on the importance of having a longer-term license to give us confidence in any future investment programs in Malaysia.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I feel like it's a bit of a formality these days. A longer term would probably make sense. Maybe I'll stick with one last question, if that's okay, just for maybe Paul. So I guess the next catalyst for the broader market is first half quarter, if you guys have heard anything about that or what your expectations for that number is. That would be great. Thanks.
Pol, did you want to?
Yeah. I'm not so much into that anymore. But there are rumors that, I mean, the information we have is that the Chinese MIIT is quite concerned about the oversupply versus the demand that remains sluggish. So Lunar New Year is the end of this month. It's early this year. So we should get the quotas released in a few weeks' time or possibly even this week. The question will be whether imported raw material or production ex-imported raw material will be included in the production quota management or not. And there are many people saying it will, and I think it would be much better. But yeah, it's the key information missing in our market environment understanding for this coming year.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
Coming soon.
Coming soon.
Yeah. Yeah. No. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt Hope from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks very much. Just another couple of questions about these impurities. So just wondering for this chemical processing step, does this add much in the way of costs, or does it become insignificant perhaps because you're going to treat less of this material?
We don't like any increased costs, clearly. But the answer is no, it's not significant.
Okay. And just I guess the other question about this material is, I was just a bit surprised that you got caught out without the chemicals knowing that you already knew the quality of the MREC that was being produced in Kalgoorlie. So was this an impurity that you didn't expect? Was this something unexpected that actually caught you short on the chemicals?
No, but our usage rate surprised us.
Right. Okay. All right. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please. Next, we have Al Harvey from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the follow-up. I suppose you did mention in your opening remarks, Amanda, just around wanting to aim to work with other players on developing the China supply chain. I suppose just looking through the broader Aussie market since we've last had a call with you, we've had Iluka progress their rare earth strategies, Arafura getting a little bit closer. So I suppose I'm wanting to get a sense of how you and the team are kind of looking at risks and thinking in terms of, I suppose, key staff, the IP that's embedded in your staff, and yeah, how you're seeing risks if we do indeed have another two Rare Earth refineries ramping up over the next, call it, five years or so.
So I guess that we look at this like this, which is that if the world ends up being like everybody's spreadsheet says, then happy days, everybody's going to make bucketloads of money, and there's room for many successes. If not, then and in a bigger and brighter world, we still retain our first mover advantage and will ensure that we get our fair share plus some of whatever that growth is. In a world where we don't see the enthusiastic pricing included in some of those business cases, then we think that once again, we're very well positioned as first mover, low-cost provider with the sort of IP that we have.
In terms of whether the people who work in our business, who get a huge amount of satisfaction out of running a successful business and delivering production and production growth, wanting to go and sort of into a startup, our assessment would be that the best way for us to deal with that is to be an excellent employer and ensure that we keep our people well challenged, well sort of recognized and rewarded for their efforts, and ensure that Lynas remains the employer of choice. Yeah.
Thanks, Amanda.
Ultimately, you can't mandate what people's decisions on their own careers are, but what we aim to do is to make sure that we're a better place to work than anywhere else, and I think we do reasonably well on that.
Yeah. Understood. Maybe just one more on the impurities. I suppose just wanted to get a sense, are you guys seeing any difference, I suppose, as you expand Mt Weld, any differences in the impurities or anything like that that flows into the concentrate? And is there any cause that potential that that's the cause of issues that you're seeing? And I suppose as you do fully ramp up Mt Weld, might we see some more issues around more unexpected impurities? I know you're going to be adding a phosphate circuit in. Are there risks there given you've had impurities, sulfate impurities? Could we see some phosphate impurity issues down the track too?
I don't. Well, I guess it's always a risk, isn't it? The known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. We know as we move through the ore body and move into different types of ore, we actually do know about those and their potential effects. And part of the way that we've designed the expansion is to deal with the new ores that we will get as we move through the ore body. The sulfate issue is a processing issue rather than a geological issue. But there are certainly changes as we move through and as we move out of CZLI ore into some more apatite-style ore. We understand that that will behave differently both through the float circuit in Mt Weld.
By the time it leaves and it's a con, the kilns aren't going to recognize whether it's a con that's being produced from apatite or from CZLI. So we know those things, and we have designed them into the expansion. I would be foolish to say that there will never be anything that surprises us, but we've done all of this drilling and metallurgical test work over the past couple of years to be confident that we know what's in the ore body and we know how to process it. It will change for some of the ore types.
Sure. Thanks, thanks for the extra color, Amanda. Appreciate it.
Thanks, darling. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Morgan from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Amanda. I thought I'd get around there again. Just a quick one, obviously the sulfuric acid issue. Is there any update you'd care to mention on that?
Sure. So the sulfuric, isn't that a classic case of, you know what I was saying, the unknown unknowns? I mean, certainly when we made the decision to invest in Kalgoorlie and write that original contract, I don't think anyone imagined that Nickel West was going to shut down. Our first focus has been to ensure that we have continued supply of sulfuric to the Kalgoorlie facility, and we have implemented new logistics processes to assure that. BHP has been helpful, filled the acid tank for us, and we are drawing down on that as required. In addition, we have worked with BHP to effect an import solution and with other logistics partners to deliver that material to Kalgoorlie. We have some additional work to do around some of the commercials and ensuring that we sort of further improve the cost of the solutions.
But the first most significant task has been to ensure that we do actually have physical solutions to deliver acid, and that has been achieved.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Daniel.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question. We have Chen Jiang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, Amanda. Thank you so much for taking my follow-up question. So for the annual processing limit in Malaysia for Mt Weld concentrate, which led you to use more feedstock from Kalgoorlie, I'm wondering this processing limit, has this happened previously or is this the first time? I'm just trying to assess if this will happen again because Kalgoorlie feedstock is not completely ready and you are still using chemical input to reduce the impurities. Thank you.
We don't think the processing limit, as I indicated, we have steps on that, including doing an additional EIA to address that particular license condition. But we have hit that processing limit many times in the past. We had not specifically flagged it this year because we were working on the basis that the additional MREC would allow us to sustain production. And for all the reasons that we've discussed extensively already, that was not the case. So certainly two paths here. One is to make sure that we're to do everything we can to get that limit lifted. But the second path is certainly we have capacity in Kalgoorlie, and by the time if we don't manage to get that lifted, by the time we hit it again, Kalgoorlie should be well and truly have hit its stretch by that stage. So yes, we've seen it previously.
This year, we didn't quite bridge the gap that we thought that we would do, but it's another year until there's any chance that we're going to be facing the same issue. And so therefore, we would expect that we will certainly be in a position to deal with it by that stage.
Sure. Thank you. Appreciate the color, Amanda. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Chan.
Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Regan Burrows from Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Thanks, but just a quick one, just following on from Daniel's question before on the sulfuric acid. So I guess the way to sort of interpret that is there's no sort of impact to the volume of sulfuric acid over the near term, but there's probably a little bit higher costs until you sort of revise those commercial arrangements. Is that the way to sort of think about it?
Absolutely. You nailed it, Regan. Yes.
Perfect. And then just on the apatite zone processing, just remind us, when are you sort of anticipating you start hitting that area?
We have apatite. We've already mined apatite, so we have apatite ore sitting on the stockpile. We won't be significantly processing that until we bring in phase two of the Mt Weld expansion.
Okay. Got it. Is there a sort of a risk that I guess some of these impurity issues come up again when you start processing that apatite, or do you have a sort of good understanding of how that's going to perform?
Life is full of risk. However, as I said before, we've done a huge amount of geological and metallurgical test work. It was absolutely sort of a key input to design considerations for the Mt Weld expansion. We understand how the apatite floats. We have actually run it through the existing system, but recoveries were not sort of acceptable, which is why we've made some of the design changes that we've made. So yeah, I mean, there will be some risks associated with it, but the risks will be related to particularly to recoveries at Mt Weld as opposed to any effect further downstream.
Okay. Got it. All right. I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.
Terrific. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes the Q&A session. Now I'll hand back to Amanda for closing remarks.
Thank you all for coming. I'm sure some of you have actually joined in, even though you're probably still on annual leave. We look forward to. I think everybody in Lynas has started the new calendar year fully energized and look forward to speaking with you again in the near future. Thanks all.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.