Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Stephen Cole, and I'm Chair of Neometals. Excuse my voice; it might get a little bit croaky from time to time, but I'll hang in there. I'll just grab my water. Sorry. We are meeting here today on the traditional border of the Wadjuk people of the Noongar Nation, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. On behalf of the board, I welcome everybody to the Neometals 2025 Annual General Meeting, and we're pleased that you've taken the time to join us today, whether in person or virtually via the video streaming. Thank you for your ongoing support to the company.
Today's AGM is being streamed live via our website, and I welcome those viewing from around Australia and around the globe, all part of Neometals' strong commitment to shareholder and stakeholder engagement wherever you may be, despite the challenges of distance. Joint Company Secretaries have confirmed that we have a quorum present, so I formally declare this Annual General Meeting open. Notice of the meeting was sent out to all shareholders on the 24th of October, 2025, and with your approval, I'll take the Notice of Meeting document as having been read. Make life a lot quicker for us all. I'll take that as a yes. Before we start the meeting, if you have a mobile phone, please just ensure it's on silent or it's turned off for the duration of the meeting. Please don't use any cameras, video, or sound recordings during the meeting.
We are streaming it live, but that's the official records that we do have. Now, my pleasure to introduce to you our Board of Directors, Chris Reed, our Managing Director and CEO of the company. Doug Ritchie, Non-Executive Director, joined us during 2016. On the screen, on my, on our left, Jenny Purdy, Non-Executive Director, who joined us during 2018. She's the one on the second from the right. Greg Evans—oh, sorry—Les Guthrie, who joined us in 2018. Les on the far right-hand side there as we look at them. Greg Evans, Non-Executive Director, who joined us just last month to fill a casual vacancy and is standing for re-election at today's meeting. Chris Kelsall—Chris, just stand up. Say hello to everybody.
Our CFO, Mark Boyne, stand, our General Counsel and Joint Company Secretary, along with Giulia, Giuliano Giordani, our Chief Accounting Officer and Joint Company Secretary as well. Also with us today are a lot of the Neometals team from the executive ranks, from our geologists, from our admin team, and right across the board, our finance people. After the session, we're going to invite you all for drinks downstairs. Please feel free to have a chat with any of them at any time you like. Do not just hear it from us at the board level; hear it from them direct from the horse's mouths as well. Please, please feel free to speak with them. We've got Doug and Jenny are attending online, but also Les, who's attending online. He's a special apology under doctors.
He's in Melbourne, and under doctor's instructions, he's not allowed to fly at the moment. He's joining us online as well. Also in attendance, we have representatives from Deloitte, the company's auditors, and from Herbert Smith Freehills. They keep adding an extra name to their name. Our company lawyers, and from Computershare, the company's share registry. I'll now deliver the formal Chairman's address, which was lodged with the ASX announcements platform this morning. The past year was testing both for your company and I especially acknowledge for you as our shareholders, with our share price disappointingly trading recently in the single-digit range.
Despite our being named as one of AFR's most innovative companies, which we believe we still are, our commitment to sustainable resource recovery and recycling from the projected emerging lithium battery market was challenged by a number of factors, especially the massive deterioration in global battery metals commodity prices, the slowdown in projected Western EV production and market penetration rates, the significant ascent of lower-cost LFP batteries and Chinese EVs, and delays and cancellations of anticipated Western battery demand. Notwithstanding that, we still have confidence in that longer-term thematic. This, in turn, drove lower and later recycling volume projections, as well as negative capital market sentiment for the sector, testing the ability of recycling developers and operators to fund the increasing development and working capital required until positive cash flow from their endeavors.
Notably, insolvent administrations and corporate reconstructions of many battery recyclers in Europe and North America have ensued, anecdotally including two in the last month or so. Against this background, your board strategically reviewed the company's position and project portfolio mix, including assessing the future quantum and timing of working capital requirements for the commercialization of the Primobius JV and the likely timing of future dividends and royalties, resulting in the board ultimately taking the difficult, but we believe very prudent decision to negotiate an exit from our Primobius interests and the associated interests. A divestment decision, which we appreciate, disappointed some shareholders, given that their, our exposure to this promising project may have been part of the rationale for their investment in Neometals.
On the brighter side, the divestment saw Neometals not only realize significant upfront cash proceeds, as well as retaining upside exposure to the sector through a trailing royalty entitlement, but importantly relieved us of significant ongoing capital commitments and future project risks in a dynamically uncertain climate for the sector, at least in the short to medium term. Secondly, we undertook a significant organizational restructuring to right-size the business, materially reducing our overheads, including our headcount, by more than 40%. Hard decisions were taken. This approach reflects the company's focus on capital-efficient, lower-risk business models and a lean management structure to optimize value accretion and realization from its business endeavors. On a brighter note, the company's other critical mineral processing technologies remain essential parts of our strategic asset portfolio mix, achieving progressive, albeit slower than strategically desired, outcomes through the year.
With respect to our ELi lithium processing technology, ELi, after the completion of a two-year pilot program, we signed an MoU with Rio Tinto in June 2025 to facilitate and support funding of ELi's industrial validation in a potential demonstration plant. Especially given Rio's interest and that of other significant players in the lithium global supply chain, we remain confident as to ELi's longer-term development and value for the company and its shareholders. Our 30% shareholder in the intellectual property, Mineral Resources, also remains committed and supportive to the continuing development and ultimate commercialization of that technology. With respect to our Finnish vanadium recovery project, as recently announced, we received the confirmation for EUR 48.7 million grant funding from Business Finland for the project, conditional, though, upon commitment of the remaining necessary capital funding for the project.
In September 2024, we welcomed the EU-funded EIT Raw Materials as an equity holder in the project vehicle, which is by the name of Recycling Industries Scandinavia AB, or what we call RICE AB, in which we hold 86.1%. They made their investment at a EUR 50 million pre-money valuation. They were also granted options to increase their holding up to 19.9% by subscribing a total of up to EUR 10 million. EIT has since subscribed for additional shares in February and is now holding a 2.2% interest in the project vehicle, with another subscription from them anticipated in the near term. The debt-raising capital process for the project is well advanced and is expected to be complete reasonably simultaneously, or at least once the equity has been sourced.
Commitments for the equity phase have been slower than we would have hoped due to the historically low vanadium price, although noting that the European vanadium price has increased each month this financial year, driven by emerging prospective commodity supply constraints, developing static battery commodity demands, and continuing Euro geopolitical tensions. With the gold price rising around 50% since the last AGM, a decision was also taken to focus on the gold mineralization with the company's already held Barrambie tenure, mining tenures. In September 2024, the outstanding potential of the area was identified with a maiden exploration target of between 335,000 and 775,000 ounces of gold at a grade between 1.3 g and 2.3 g per ton.
Of the multiple targets and historical mine sites reviewed, the Ironclad Prospect was prioritized for its potential for near-term development and cash flow generation, having been the subject of a proposed open-pit mining and plant development in 1988. Our initial modest RC drilling program resulted in our first JORC-compliant gold resource, enabling us to lodge a mining lease and commence the native title process. In parallel, we have completed diamond drilling, preliminary metallurgic test work, waste characterization, and a further 82-hole RC program for 8,457 meters drilled. This included a 42-RC hole infill and extension program in the Ironside deposit.
Our immediate objective is to expand the resource and improve the confidence to support the development of Ironclad under a production joint venture with a mining contractor and toll treatment at a regional third-party mill, thus containing material CapEx and OpEx investment for Neometals in exchange for a share of operating profit and allowing our geology team to focus on accelerating the next tier of brownfields and greenfields prospects at Barrambie to generate, we hope, a multi-deposit long-term mine plan over the broader mineralized area. In addition, and as has just been announced, with a joint venture party, we have executed an exclusive option agreement to use a significant suite of existing inactive oil and gas well infrastructure and geological data to explore and potentially prove up, extract, and produce subsurface critical mineral-bearing brines in the Paradox Basin, Utah, U.S.A.
This is an exciting initiative presenting a staged and capital-light opportunity to develop a significant new enterprise in an investment-supportive jurisdiction, with prospects of value accretion for Neometals from the environmentally friendly direct extraction of lithium, potassium, and associated minerals from the vast Paradox Basin, Paradox Basin place of brine fields. The initial, this initiative leans into the company's unique set of globally relevant skills and experience in lithium and related minerals extraction and processing. We got that opportunity because of that global reputation that we do have. Before closing, I wish to acknowledge all valued Neometals team members who have contributed throughout this journey, including directors Doug Ritchie and Dr. Jenny Purdy on our screens. Thanks, Doug and Jen, who retired from the board at the conclusion of this 2025 AGM.
To add to the team, Greg Evans was recently welcomed to the board, and subject to his re-election at this AGM, we will lean on his deep corporate finance experience as we continue to leverage our capabilities and knowledge towards generating corporate and shareholder value. In closing, I just wish to acknowledge our shareholders and broader stakeholders, whose support has held firm with the company, or most of whom have held support firm with the company through the ups and downs over recent years. Your ongoing support is very much appreciated, valued, and it is your board's commitment to honor that support as we set about re-establishing strategic value in your investment in Neometals.
Our Managing Director, Chris, will give you a more detailed update on the company's activities over the last year after the end of today's formal business, at which time shareholders will also have the opportunity to ask general questions of the board. Let me now start the formal business of the meeting. A couple of procedural matters I'll just touch on to start with. This is a shareholders' meeting, and only shareholders, their proxies, attorneys, and authorized representatives are entitled to speak or to vote. As it's not a virtual or a hybrid AGM, those joining us via video stream will have had to lodge their proxies in advance of the meeting to vote on the resolutions. They were also invited to post to the company any questions that they may wish to raise at this meeting so that we can respond to those.
In the interest of the meeting, I ask that questions be confined to the relevant business of the meeting then being addressed. Please save most of your questions, I think, until we reach the relevant item of that business on the agenda. General questions may also be asked following the Managing Director's presentation later in the proceedings. There are lots of opportunities there. On registering your attendance at the meeting, you should have received an admission card. If you have not registered, please see our Computershare representatives at the back and now do so. The green card indicates you have the right to speak and vote at the meeting, including voting either in person or by way of poll. A yellow card indicates you have already voted or are attending as a joint holder and also have the right to speak at this meeting.
A remind, attendees have received a white card as visitors and therefore are not entitled to ask questions, except with the leave of the chair, and I retain that discretion. In line with contemporary recommended corporate governance practices, all resolutions will be voted upon by way of poll at the end of the meeting. A casting vote by way of poll, you will need to use your green admission cards provided to you. Polls on all resolutions will formally be taken after the last resolution being considered on the day to speed up the process. Otherwise, we'll get bogged down a little bit. Before I put each resolution to shareholders, details of the proxies, votes received will be displayed on the screen behind me, and I'll just comment on those, and we'll consider each resolution in turn.
All resolution, all outcomes will be tabulated by Computershare during the Managing Director's presentation, with the final results of the polls hopefully announced before the close of the meeting. If there should be any unforeseeable delay arising, we will do that following the meeting and post that to the ASX announcement and on our website as soon as possible. I inform the meeting that the meeting Chair intends to vote any open proxies held by the Chair in favor of each resolution. We look forward to your engagement today should any issue of concern or any aspect you'd like to cover arise. I note that several questions have been received by the company from shareholders in advance of the AGM, and I'll read out all of those questions, and we will respond to them at the appropriate time during the meeting's proceedings.
Let's move on to the financial statements and reports. The first item of business is to receive and consider the company's financial statements and reports for the financial year ending 30 June 2025 and the reports of the directors and the auditors, all as found in the annual report, which a copy is available to everybody. There is no voting on this item, but shareholders are invited to ask questions or make comments as they wish. Nick Gordon from our auditors, Deloitte, is with us today, and questions relating to the audit, the auditor's report, or the company's accounting policies and the auditor's independence may be directed to Nick through me as chair. Any questions relating to the company's remuneration policies and practices should be raised when we discuss the remuneration report.
Any questions not relating to the financial statements and reports can be raised later at the appropriate time, particularly following our CEO's address. There will be ample opportunities for questions, r ight. On some questions which have been received from the shareholders, some of the shareholders are a little bit terse in some of their questions, but I'll read them out to you and give you the appropriate response. These do tie into information coming through in the financial statements. How has the company managed to spend nearly AUD 300 million without generating any profit revenue? I'm not sure where the AUD 300 million figure is derived, so I'll assume it's over the 22-year life of the company since 2002 or 2003.
At times, the company has derived project revenue, including by way of exiting projects at favorable pricing based on economic fundamentals, as part of its business model, and has accounted for its proper share of tax on those earnings as well. The company continues to progress its business model of finding business opportunities with prospective value and seeking to advance them by way of value accretion for shareholder benefit. Full disclosure of all financial matters has been made over the company's life in its audited annual and its half-yearly and quarter-yearly reporting. I think that's all I can say without knowing more about the question. Another question. What was the total dollar investment in Primobius, and why were you unable to fund it going forward? Were institutions not willing to provide funds given the board's track record with other projects?
I think I've already spoken in my chair's address as to why the decision was taken to exit, and to realize our investment there, and not to continue to fund Primobius. In specific response, over AUD 17 million in cash calls were made to fund the Primobius joint venture directly. This information can be derived from publicly available information, through the company's various financial reporting on the ASX. An additional round about AUD 14 million may also reasonably be attributed at internal Neometals level to Primobius and the LIB Recycling Technology, which would not otherwise be as apparent from the financial records. Just over AUD 31 million in total has been invested in that venture based on our accounting, on our audited accounting records. There were a couple of some questions. The next question was relating to Barrambie.
Why hasn't Barrambie been sold as it has been an asset held for sale for more than 18 months? Have you had any bids for it at all? Will you have to write its value down to $0? How much have you spent on the project so far? I'll assume the question relates to the Barrambie, vanadium and titanium assets and not to the gold interests as well. The CEO may make further comment also in his address at the end of the meeting on this. What I can say, though, is that despite its apparent scale and resource, this long-held asset has been challenging to realize value against, including due to its remote geographical location, challenging metallurgy, constrained global commodity prices, and a limited market for people interested in these commodities and their processing.
In all, around $50 million has been expended over the long life of the project, with the project currently sitting in the currently published annual accounts of the company at around $12 million. I think that's right. Thanks, Jules. The asset remains held for sale with active interest being shown in it. We will keep the market informed appropriately, should there be any change to that circumstance. In the context of contingent liabilities, there's a couple of questions relating to mainly the two litigation cases that are currently on foot that involve Neometals. The question, there is a trial or a statement, there is a trial that is due to commence on the 27th of January in the Supreme Court of Western Australia.
In the interest of transparency, can you advise shareholders and the market of the dollar size of the claim you face, and what are the consequences for the company and its shareholders should you lose? Only response, given that the matter is scheduled to be before the courts in early 2026 and is therefore sub judice, I'm constrained in what I might say on this matter. However, to paraphrase from our 2025 annual report, note 26 under contingent liabilities, it states the company is defending legal proceedings in the Supreme Court, but commenced by Roseland Capital and Mr. Murray Ward, known as the Ward parties. The Ward parties claim relate to fees claimed to be payable to them with respect to the Mount Marion Lithium equity investment by Ganfeng Lithium in 2015.
The company denies any liability and denies that the Ward parties are entitled to the relief claimed or any relief at all. Although the amounts claimed are material, and I note in a prior announcement that we made to the market in 2020, the notional liquidated quantum of the alleged residual claim is around AUD 6.5 million after early amendment to the Ward pleadings discontinuing a collateral part of its original claims. The company considers that the Ward parties' claims do not have merit. The trial is scheduled to commence in late January and will be vigorously defended by the company. The company will again keep the market progressively informed in accordance with its ASX announcement obligations so to do. Finally, question relating to the Rishi litigation, which was also mentioned in the contingent liabilities note to the annual report.
The original hearing, Justice Littrell of the Federal Court found wholly in favor of Neometals on all counts. Rishi has appealed that decision on certain technical and personal grounds, and the appeal court's decision is now outstanding. Accordingly, the matter remains sub judice, so I'm constrained in what I may say. However, on some of the substantive assertions that were made as part of that, I'll quote to you certain paragraphs from Justice Littrell's about 200-page judgment, which is quite extensive and comprehensive, which is on the public record, in case you've not taken up the opportunity at bedtime to assist with your insomnia. It might give you a better appreciation so you can make your own judgments on matters. First of all, the proceedings were dismissed. Secondly, at paragraph 112, as to the veracity or otherwise of some of the evidence given by Mr.
Secondly, at paragraph 112, as to the veracity or otherwise of some of the evidence given by Mr. Rishi, noting that no other witnesses were called, on behalf of Mr. Rishi. Overall, my impression was that Mr. Rishi was a witness whose recollection of events was influenced by his perceptions about those events and his interest in advocating his position as he saw fit for the benefit of his case. Therefore, where Mr. Rishi's evidence involves matters of controversy, I've approached it with caution and considered contemporaneous documentary evidence or oral evidence of other witnesses to be more reliable. At paragraph 224, concerning one of the allegations was about some alleged, reverse engineering of intellectual property. For the reasons already given, Mr. Rishi's evidence in support of his reverse engineering allegation was no more than an assertion. I infer that as of July 2024, Mr. Rishi did not consider he had reasonable grounds to suspect that there had been any likely infringement of Spintex intellectual property rights.
Finally, at paragraphs 247 and 467 concerning forgery allegations, at paragraph 224, there were not objectively reasonable grounds to suspect that Ms. Gray, who was the senior executive at the time, signature on the acceptance document had been written on that document without her authority. It goes on, I have concluded that from April 2024, Mr. Rishi no longer had reasonable grounds to suspect that Ms. Gray's signature was written without her authority. I think that sort of clears the substantive issues that were otherwise arising. Are there any other questions arising on the financial accounts that I can maybe invite our CFO or CEO to respond to? All right. I did want to go through those questions because they were raised in advance by shareholders who are probably live streaming, and I just want to give them a reasonably fulsome answer to those.
If there are no further questions, we'll accept those company's financial statements and reports for the financial year ending June 2025 and the reports of the directors and the auditors as received and considered. We'll now move to the items requiring you to vote. As I said, polling will remain open until the meeting has considered all the resolutions, and you'll be given due warning before the polls close so that you can complete your green admission card, following the last resolution. If you require assistance at any time, please put your hand up, and one of the very helpful Computershare representatives will come and assist you. The next item then moves to resolution one, which is a non-binding advisory vote on the adoption of the remuneration report.
The company's annual report for the financial year contains the remuneration report, and it sets out the company's remuneration arrangements for all directors and other key executives or key management personnel. The Corporations Act requires that listed companies put a non-binding resolution to shareholders at its general meeting to adopt the remuneration report for that financial year. The vote will be advisory only and will not bind the board or the company. However, obviously, any discussions arising will be duly considered by the board in its ongoing remuneration practices and policies. I now move that the remuneration report for the year ending 30 June 2025 be adopted. I do note, before I open it for questions from the floor, a shareholder question. How can the company justify the MD's salary given the litany of failed and or sold projects undertaken since the sale of Mount Marion?
First of all, I take issue with the question being founded on a false premise, in its reference to a litany of failed or sold projects undertaken since the sale of Mount Marion. That's just, I just don't accept that. Although I accept that the Primobius JV has been exited for the sound reasons already expressed, I'm not aware of any litany, although I do accept that from time to time the company has undertaken prudential due diligence on some business opportunities presented, which it has chosen not to proceed with, for sound commercial reasons. That is the nature of the company's business model. With respect to the CEO's remuneration, it is reviewed annually against industry benchmarks. The Neometals remuneration structure is typical for many or most ASX-listed companies, with around about 50% of the total remuneration being base remuneration.
That's what you get in your pay packet at the end of each fortnight or month. 25% by way of short-term incentive, by way of targets and KPIs, and 25% against long-term incentives based over a three-year period, seeking to align with shareholder interests and to incentivize performance outcomes against agreed KPIs. The KPIs we set, I can assure you, are hard, and they're not soft. I've seen many KPIs in a lot of companies; they're soft. These are hard KPIs, and they are rigorously applied, I can assure you. Based on aligning REM with shareholder outcomes, I can say that virtually no STIs or LTIs have recently been awarded, leaving only base remuneration. The headline number is quite illusory, and the real numbers are closer to the base remuneration only. I think that's where we've got to there.
Can we then move to, resolution, the actual resolution? If there is anyone here who wishes to speak on the resolution or raise any questions relating to the remuneration report. If not, the results of the proxy votes hopefully are up there, showing, around about 85% in favor of the resolution, particularly when we add on open proxies from the chair, which would be added to that number, around about 15% against. Based on those proxies, it is likely, and depending on how many votes we get from the floor, that that resolution will be carried, but I will declare that at the end. The results are tabulated, and I will be voting any open proxies in favor of the resolution. I now put that resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution and call for a poll on it.
Please enter your votes on resolution one on your green card, and we'll collect that after the end of the last resolution upon which we're voting. Right. Before proceeding to resolution two, I just wish to raise a further question from shareholders. We had six, actually, questions come in from shareholders. This deals with the board generally. Isn't it time for a complete renewal of the board and chairman, given its abject failure on every decision made since the sale of Mount Marion? I think some of these questions might have come from the same person. I'm not sure. Again, although I dispute and question the underlying premise expressed upon which the question is based, I acknowledge everybody's entitled to their view.
The board is engaged in a prudential board succession program, and I note that Doug and Jen, on the screen, are retiring at this AGM. Greg has recently been appointed by way of a casual appointee and is proposed to be re-elected at this AGM. Les Guthrie and myself, we've been serving on the board for some years now, myself for many years. The subject's been on the agenda for several years as to board succession. It was delayed due to COVID times, difficult to get people coming up in COVID years, and the dynamic state of the company's interests in Europe, especially Primobius, which has now been resolved. I don't think anybody wished to desert the ship until we had that settled down.
I think shareholders can expect some further movement at board level over 2026 and beyond, as the company seeks to align the right skills at board level with the company's future projects and outlook to take the company forward over the next five to ten years. On that note, I'll move to resolution two, which relates to the re-election of Greg as a director of the company. In accordance with our constitutional requirements, being a casual appointee, he retires at this meeting, but does offer himself for re-election and justice as well. Otherwise, we would be very disappointed that we shouldn't have put him as a casual appointee. Greg's biography and qualifications are set out in the explanatory memorandum sent with a notice of meeting, and he has the unanimous support of his fellow board members for his re-election.
I'll just invite Greg to come and say a few words before moving that he'd formally be re-elected as a director of the company. Greg, would like to say a few words.
Thank you, Stephen, and good afternoon, everyone, shareholders online. After 30 years of investment banking and capital markets experience, I'd like to think I've probably built some skills, some experience, and certainly some networks, and a few battle scars as well to support the board, Chris, and the team in executing on strategy, delivering growth, and really delivering some strong governance on behalf of the shareholders and the company. I'd be very happy to take some questions from people afterwards or even during the meeting if that's appropriate. I think, you know, there's a great opportunity.
I think some really hard decisions have been made by this board and this management team, and the company's well poised with its gold and lithium assets to progress. As I said, happy to have a chat afterwards. Thanks for your support. I look forward to meeting you all.
Thanks, Greg. I now formally move that Greg Evans be re-elected as director of Neometals in accordance with the terms of resolution two, set out in the notice of meeting. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on the resolution? If not, the results of the proxies are up there with 96% is the golden boy, coming through. Accordingly, again, I intend to vote in the open proxies I hold in favor of this resolution. I now put the resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution and call for a poll.
If you've not already done so, please enter your votes of resolution two on your green card, and we'll move to the next item of business, and your cards will be collected later. Resolution three deals with the approval of the performance rights plan, called a PRP, originally established by the company in 2011, and I think served us quite well over the last 14 years. The plan's been refreshed and updated with AGM shareholder approval at least every three years since its original adoption to comply with regulatory requirements so that the shareholders have a progressive right to review it. The terms are set out in the notice of meeting and the company explanatory memorandum. Approval of that PRP will allow the company to issue performance rights as an exception to the board's 15% discretionary equity issue constraint under listing rule 7.1.
As you may be aware, and as covered in the notice of meeting, the board has got discretion to issue up to 15% of the company's equity from time to time, but above that needs to go back to the shareholders for approval. By approving this, any shares issued under the PRP won't be counted as part of that 15%. That would leave open that 15% for external placement purposes. I now move the resolution to approve the PRP in accordance with the terms of resolution three, more formally set out in the notice of meeting, and I put that to the shareholders. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on this resolution? I've got no questions from the shareholders on that. The results should be able to be tabulated up there, showing a reasonably strong percentage again in favor of the resolution.
Again, any open proxies will be exercised in favor of that resolution. I now put the resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution, so please enter your votes on your green card, and we'll move on to the next item of business. Resolution four then deals with the approval of granted performance rights to Chris Reed. Under Chris's employment agreement, as part of his long-term incentive remuneration structure, the company has agreed to invite him to apply for tranches of performance rights over the next three financial years in accordance with agreed principles and subject to agreed performance conditions. As Mr. Reed is a director, the Listing Rule 10.14 requires shareholder approval for the issue of securities under such performance rights. The performance conditions to the vesting of such performance rights are set out in detail in the notice of meeting.
In short, vesting of 40% of the performance rights depends upon Neometals' relative total shareholder return against a comparator group of like companies, vesting, and a vesting of a further 40% of performance rights depends on the company exceeding an absolute annualized total shareholder return threshold, with the final 20% of performance rights depending on fulfillment of various other more specific strategic and business plan objectives. I move the resolution to approve the grant of performance rights and the issue of securities under them, subject to vesting, to Mr. Chris Reed in accordance with the terms of resolution four, more formally set out in the notice of meeting, be put to shareholders. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on that resolution? No. The results of the proxy votes are tabulated, again with a strong 80%+ proxy in favor of that, before votes from the floor.
I now put that resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution and call for a poll on it. If you've not already done so, please enter your votes on the green admission card, and I will be voting open proxies in favor of that. Resolutions five to seven then deal with the approval of granted performance rights to non-executive directors. This is for NEDs holding office following this AGM, in the terms of the PRP and any grants of performance rights and securities issued upon vesting of them over the next three years. To comply with sound governance practice, separate resolutions for each of the current NEDs will be considered in turn.
The inclusion of NEDs in the PRP is intended to encourage and help facilitate current and future NEDs holding a base level shareholding in the company and also offer ongoing incentives to align their interests with those of shareholders by linking their remuneration with the performance of the company. NEDs will be invited to elect to be granted performance rights under the PRP by way of salary sacrifice, of part of their fees for their services NEDs in exchange for the performance rights, and we cap that at up to 50% of the director's fees otherwise payable. I stress that participation in the plan does not require the NED to forgo cash salary entitlements up to the designated percentage, sorry, does require the NEDs to forgo.
If the salary was 100, then if you took 50%, you would receive 50% salary only and then participate in the Performance Rights Plan for the other 50%. There is no free lunch for the NEDs, with shares being issued at prevailing market rates at the time in exchange for a corresponding reduction in the company's outgoing cash expenditure. The first resolution then is to approval for Greg Evans under resolution five. This resolution is also effectively conditional upon the passing of resolution two. Otherwise, he will not be a Non-Executive Director following this AGM concerning his re-election, when the poll is finally taken and declared.
I move that the resolution to approve the participation of Greg Evans in the Performance Rights Plan and the issue of securities under it, subject to and upon vesting, in accordance with the terms of resolution five, more formally set out in the notice of meeting, be put to shareholders. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on this item? I have no questions from other shareholders in advance of the meeting. The results, tabulated therewith, showing a 85%+ support for that resolution on the proxies. I will now put that resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution and call for a poll. Please enter your votes on your green admission cards, and we will move to the next item of business. Resolution six. I move the resolution to approve the participation of Les Guthrie in the plan.
Similar comments I made with respect to that for Greg Evans, although Les is already a director and is continuing to do so over the next period. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on this resolution? If not, the results have been tabulated on the slide, and again, 85%+ in favor on the proxies. I'll now put that resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution, call for the poll. Please enter your votes on resolution six, and any proxies, open proxies will be accorded in favor of that resolution. We now move to Item 7. As I have a personal interest in the passing of this resolution, I'll recuse myself from the chair and invite our CEO to chair proceedings while this has been deliberated upon. Thanks, Chris.
Thanks, Stephen. Resolution 7, the approval of Stephen Cole's participation in the Performance Rights Plan. I move that the resolution to approve the participation of Stephen Cole in the Performance Rights Plan and the issue of securities under it, subject and upon vesting, in accordance with the terms of resolution seven, more formally set out in the notice of meeting, be put to the shareholders. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on the resolution? The results of the proxy votes have been tabulated on the slide. I now put the resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution and call a poll on this resolution. Please enter your votes for resolution seven on your green admission card, and we will move to the next item of business. I will now pass the chair back to Stephen.
Thank you, Christian, for your indulgence in that sort of formality. Right. Moving on then. That is the last formal resolution. As all items have now been discussed, please just check your green voting cards, make sure it is completed, and complete that, and then hand that to the Computershare representative, who is now walking around with a lavender box to receive everybody's card. If there are any questions concerning how to fill it out, the ladies will help you explain how to go about things. Let's pause for a minute or two till that comes in. Is there anybody who still has a voting card that they would wish to deposit or have not completed? If not, I will then declare the poll closed, and I will now declare the meeting temporarily adjourned for approximately 20 or 30 minutes, during which time our Managing Director, Chris Reed, will give you a presentation.
This is the more interesting part of the meeting rather than listening to me drone on for a while, following which I'm sure I'll be delighted to respond to any other questions and comments that you may have. Chris, over to you, and we look forward to your presentation.
Thank you very much, Stephen. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for coming along to our AGM. Gold critical materials are best of both worlds, or how are we going to make Neometals great again? There's a speed reading test that we must put in for publicly listed companies. Mining and exploration and processing are in our DNA. We've been gold miners, lithium developers, gone back to our roots in gold, and more recently optioned up some lithium. You know, how are we going to make Neometals great again?
One, we need cash flow. The surest source of cash flow for us is to develop cash flow from Barrambie, and particularly the Ironclad deposit. You know, this time last year we had the exploration target out. What have we done since? We've done a maiden drilling at Ironclad. We put out a very small resource, enough to get a mining lease down and start that native title process. We've then gone back, we found more historic drill results. We announced 61 RC results that were drilled in 1988 that we couldn't find the results, but the boys found them. We've just finished 42 infill and extension holes. How are we going to do that is, at this stage, like we can't go out and debt fund. It'll just take too long in doing studies.
We're more inclined to work out what we've got to get a mining contractor to do a production joint venture where they fund the exploration, they fund the mining toll processing, and then we split the gold at the end. That'll limit any dilution. For one, cash flow for us and the critical metals for growth. You know, where we found ourselves, like middle of the year, you've got lithium prices, everyone crying in their beer. Now the lithium prices are up 50% from the mid-year low. Everyone wants to get back into lithium. You know, we started looking at, we were invited to look at a lithium asset in the U.S., in February of this year. We were a bit preoccupied with Primobius, but now we've optioned that up and, completing our due diligence.
In terms of the downstream lithium, you know, there's not too many lithium miners that develop the technology. We've now got the world's second largest mining company and who will be the world's largest lithium producer, within a decade, funding the industrial validation of that technology. We have the vanadium project, up in Finland. That's a world's highest grade vanadium. We took that through from an idea through all of the studies, environmental approvals, and that's now in the financing. That's just sitting there. We've had the European Union, come and support that. They've funded that pretty much over the last year and they'll continue to fund that, into 2026. Corporate dashboard. You know, like it or not, we have a very, very strong correlation with the lithium price and that's been still very, very hard to shake.
How do you get, you know, linked to the gold price? You've just got to make cash out of gold while the prices are high.
The team, we've got Stephen, myself, Les, Greg's now joined us. We'd like to thank Jenny and Doug for their outstanding service to the company, over almost a decade. Our key management, we've got Darren Townsend, our COO, Chris, our CFO, Mark Jürgensen, who's not here today. He's our Chief Technology Officer, and Clay Gordon, our General Manager of Geology. He's up the back there with the dark jacket, so you can come and interrogate him and Travis, who's sitting in the back corner.
Our values, you know, we stick to our values. The battery recycling, and look, that's been the most disappointing part of the last financial year. Y ou know, one, everything sort of moved against us. So you've got the commodity prices have crashed 80% for lithium. You've had nickel in the toilet. Cobalt's gone down. That's recovered. Battery recycling is a high-cost business. And so when the basket of commodity moves down and there's no money to be made into the plants, no one rings you up and wants to buy a plant. Fortunately, we had Mercedes-Benz come in and fund the industrial validation. That's been taking longer. And so, you know, with, with the market, the way it was, when we were going to make positive cash flow, that moved out. We just couldn't go back and keep diluting the shareholders trying to bridge that until that turned cash flow positive because none of us actually have a crystal ball to when that happens.
We had a fundamental disagreement with our guys at Primobius, our partner SMS, on which direction to take. Ultimately, we took the position that we'd need to negotiate our way out of it. We negotiated, we're not going to recover AUD 31 million. We've got AUD 10 million up front. We'll get an indexed AUD 12.5 million out of sales commission. We've just had to make the best. I mean, if you sat down there and tried to fight a multi-billion dollar company, you're going to end up with a diner. We couldn't do that. We just had to take our medicine and get two thirds of our money back in two halves. Where we've applied some of that money is into Barrambie and to get that.
To put Barrambie into context, you've got about 45 strike kilometers. That's the equal distance from Kalgoorlie to Kambalda. It's a lot of territory, historic old mining center, sort of mined from 1906 to 1911. They had a 10 head stamp battery, you know, three compartment shaft down, sort of, 300 ft, three levels, mined at almost an ounce, but it stopped because it ran out of water. Now, no one's really ever done any work. We certainly hadn't done any work until our maiden drilling, which was in February this year. So Clay and the team have come up with a really good exploration target. We've come up with the first mineral resource estimate. God willing, this time next year, we'll actually be digging dirt.
I'll save you the time with the flyover because that's going to take too much time and you've been, I see some of you looking at your watch now. For us, target number one is to get Ironclad into production, right? We don't have to build critical mass. We're not going to build a plant. Basically, we just want to do enough, take out a couple of golf divots, get it in a nearby mill and rebuild the balance sheet and confidence in the future of the company. Our latest drilling has gone to Barrambie Ranges, a little bit more along the Ironclad mystery and beneath Mystery. The brownfields and greenfields, not this year, maybe not even the first half of next year, but a fantastic, fantastic sort of project in terms of the size and the scope.
What we've got is we've got gold in every rock type and on every contact. You know, there's just fantastic opportunity for us going forward. You know, the most, we know there's gold there. It's not a case of finding it. We just need to understand why it's there. The guys have done that. The previous explorers have left us with fantastic thicknesses, good grades. We've been replicating those. It'll be a standard open pit, pretty much all from surface, no wild sort of strip ratios. The boys have done a fantastic job. We understand why the gold is where the gold. We have these north conduits and every time there's a northwest shear, you've got old shafts. What we're doing is we're going to extend Ironclad with these black holes of the drill hole.
We're going to make it wider, hopefully longer, connect that up to Mystery and then start to work down to Sugarstone. We've got an exploration target. That's roughly where the new mining lease is. It's a little bit bigger than that, but there's an exploration target of about 200,000 ounces on that mining lease. This is what it looks like in section. That's the old mine. There was only a tiny little mine at Ironclad. This is what the pit optimization looks like at 5,000. That'll grow bigger if the gold price is 6,000 something. These blue holes are the drill holes that were completed and the assays were probably January, I'd say, I'd say sort of early January, early to mid-January, we should be able to get some of those out into the market. The first lot was done at Barrambie Ranges.
We've gone down to Barrambie Ranges. It's about 8 km to the south. This is where all the historic mines were, the golden treasure. You know, we've got about 4 km of strike there. In terms of assays, we put back out the first 75 km. We've got about 3,000 assays to come back from this area. We've got the first 75 km. We've had to rush those so that we can have some results for you. It is what it is. It's consistent stratigraphy. It's narrow, high grade, exactly what it was. These are some of the drill holes. We've still got all the rest of it pending. Yeah, look, we're pretty happy as a first pass with what that is, but the priority is getting Ironclad into production, making money. Then we can look at reinvesting some money in the rest.
In terms of brownfields targets, like I said, you know, we've got Kismet, we've got good grades, Silver Lining, thicker grades, sorry, thicker, lower grade, Woodies actually sitting out in the, in the sediment. But, you know, as old George Compton said, there's no such thing as a wrong rock as long as you can make money out of it. Then we've got some fantastic. At Kismet, Kismet East, we've got a quartz load that sort of occasionally pops out of the surface and we get fantastic grades out of that. In terms of the indicative timeline, sort of all roads are leading to new mineral resource estimate in the March quarter. We'd like to get into a production joint venture and then move into production with, if we get all the approvals, in the second half of next year.
In terms of ELi, we've had this for a while. Like Stephen said today, we've done two years of piloting. We've been able to attract the world's largest, second largest miner and to be the world's largest lithium producer. We piloted that on their Rincon brine. We basically said, look, the technology works. We've done numbers of study. Let us prove it. We'll pay to prove it. You pay to take it to the next stage in return for a discounted royalty. This is why they're interested, because we can halve the production cost of lithium from lithium chloride for the brine producers. This is what is needed to take second tier deposits down to become first tier deposits. There is a capital cost saving and a massive carbon footprint saving. All of the technologies we've developed are low cost and very, very green.
The MoU with Rio Tinto, they've had, you know, management changes. Things have slowed down in the last quarter. We expect them to pick up next quarter. Essentially what originally we piloted it on Rincon, and we'll probably look to start working on Phoenix, which is their cornerstone operation in Argentina. The Utah brine project, we announced that yesterday. In short, we have one of our friends in the U.S. has got a large amount of tenure in this Paradox Basin, which is about 600 km long by about 200 km wide. They've got about 47,000 acres of tenement applications there. What we did is we've negotiated with an oil and gas company to utilize and access old oil and gas wells for the purpose of evaluating lithium and potassium extraction.
You know, to drill one of these wells into a brine deposit, about $3 million. We've got access to 32, we've got an option to access 32 wells, very, very cheap price. Basically, they get a royalty if we get through to production. We've got the summary terms there. Essentially, what we've got here is these are all the wells, these are all the leases, the brine sits, these are all the oil and gas wells. This is where they make the gas from. This is the mass of water. In terms of the aquifer in that Paradox, it is America's largest critical minerals bearing brine. There are 56 billion tons of water in it. That's not just ours, that's the whole basin.
In terms of grades, the lithium grade is a little lower, excellent potassium grades, does not make a lot of difference when you have direct lithium extraction and very, very cheap power, which they have in Utah. Utah in 2023 was ranked the number one mining jurisdiction in the world. I have been over there with Darren last, we got back on the weekend. You know, we had meetings with the Assistant Attorney General, the Department of Oil and Gas, Department of Environment, Department of Water, and you have never seen anyone more welcoming. You know, turnarounds on applications in a couple of hours. It looks like a fantastic place to operate. Vanadium recovery project.
Look, you know, lithium and vanadium are still the most positively forecasted commodities out to 2050 in the electric trend, in the, I guess, the energy transition, lithium for energy storage and the electric vehicles. The second commodity is vanadium, the second highest, and that is basically from this energy storage. This really looks like, and this is the percentage of batteries. All the growth is going to come from the batteries. It sort of looks like lithium in about 2014. You know, we invested about AUD 20 million in this project from 2020 to about 2024, and taking it from a concept, developing the flow sheet through a scoping, a pre-feasibility, a feasibility. You know, we've managed to get a taper payoff tape with Glencore. The feedstocks will come from SSAB.
We've got an MoU with Salzgitter. We brought the European Institute of Technology, EIT Raw Materials, in as a shareholder, have been funding it for the last year, and they own about 2.2%. In terms of the value, you know, they've put money in at a EUR 50 million valuation, which is AUD 80 million. We own 86% of it. Business Finland, they're going to give us EUR 48.7 million as a capital subsidy for the project, which is more than AUD 80 million. If you want to try to work out what the project's worth, you've got a couple of benchmarks there at about AUD 80 million. To get that recognition, we have to get the equity. That's been hard because, you know, we put out the DFS and in the next six months, the vanadium price halved.
Now fortunately it's up about 25% over the last four months. We think, you know, a couple of months we're starting to get more interest, which is fantastic. You know, what do we offer the shareholders? We've got multiple shots on goal to make this, and to get back to being a billion dollar market cap. We've got that strategic commodity diversification, cash flow from gold, the growth in the battery materials or the critical materials, lithium and vanadium. I mean, they are the commodities that have had us to a billion dollar market cap. We don't have that single commodity cyclicality. If, you know, we had split and just focused on one, we wouldn't have the benefit of being where we are now. We've got a business model diversification.
You know, we want to do a joint venture, a production joint venture on the gold to get cash flow. We'll then do the exploration ourselves. We're going to commercialize the lithium in a licensing model with ELi, but we have that ability to use that ourselves. We're going to look to do that in Utah. The vanadium project, well, we're just waiting on the market to improve so that we can get the equity. We think we've got a great platform to rebuild the business and experience and committed leadership, and some fantastic partnerships. I'd like to thank you all for coming along today, and your ongoing support. I'm happy to take questions. Is that the right time?
Any questions for Chris on the presentation or on anything else arising? Got to be one out there. You floored them. All right. Thank you very much. I declare the meeting reopened then, from the adjournment. Thank you, thank you Chris for that presentation. Very informative. Have we got the results? How are we progressing there? Two minutes. If somebody would like to do a song and dance or a bit of a magic trick up here, it would be fine. We will just wait for a couple of minutes till those results come out. If they are about to be ready, we will get them out to you now. If anybody does think of anything they would like to raise in the meantime, please just put your hand up and more than happy to respond. You can ask people at our drink session afterwards as well.
Maybe I'll just take this moment just to again thank Doug and Jenny for their support and services on your behalf over the last 8- 10 years. This will be their last AGM. We did have a dinner with them when they were over at the last board meeting. We did have a board meeting before today's AGM and again farewelled them virtually. Thank you very much indeed, both Doug and Jenny. For the coordination for today, thank you very much to Krishna and Brianna. It takes a lot of logistics to organize a day like this, dealing with all the questions, coordinating papers to go out to everybody, all overseen by the company secretaries, obviously. Thank you, Krishna and Brianna as well. Just again, a thanks to the whole Neometals team.
Darren I know has been working very hard, up in Finland and now over in Utah as well. Travis has come on board, and Clay's been doing some wonderful work up in, up around Barrambie as well, working up those golden assets and all the other members of the team. Thank you.
Maybe I can put on that video.
Oh, here we are.
I think we're done.
Yeah, we'll do this first thing you want for those who wish to. Right. It's pretty self-explanatory. Okay. Okay. Just on the results for resolution one for the adoption of the remuneration report, I declare this resolution has been passed by the requisite majority, also in order to not trigger a first strike, including with the percentages voting for and against, being as follows: that those for the remuneration report, 87.35%, to 140,945,115 shares and against was 20,406,310 or 12.65% only. With respect to the reelection of Greg Evans as a director, he's just got the overwhelming support. We'll give him the elephant stamp for shareholder appeal with a 97.88% rating, with only 2.12% voting against. I declare that resolution passed. Congratulations, Greg, and we look forward to your continuing contribution. For the approval of the performance rights plan, we had 86.32% in favor, 13.68% against. I declare that resolution carried.
For resolution four, the approval of the grant of the performance rights to Chris Reed, 85.48% in favor, 14.52% against. I declare that resolution carried. Approval of performance rights to Greg Evans in favor, 88.71%, against 11.29%. I declare that resolution carried. Approval of grant of performance rights to Les Guthrie in favor, 88.18%, against 11.82%. I declare that resolution carried. The approval of grant of performance rights to Stephen Cole, 87.79% for, against 12.21%. I declare that resolution carried as well. Thank you all. Those results will be posted to the ASX announcements platform shortly. Ladies and gentlemen, there has been no further business.
That completes our 2025 annual general meeting, with the only outstanding informal matter being the opportunity for the board and our fellow meeting attendees to come and join us with a complimentary drink at the downstairs Chelsea Social Bar, and the chance for you to have a less formal chat and ask some questions that you may have. Unfortunately, as per usual, our video streamlined, you'll have to have a virtual drink only on us, but hopefully, we might make good that at a future date. We do very much appreciate your attendance and continuing interest in the company. I'll now declare the meeting formally closed. Thank you for your attendance.