Okay, off we go. Tivan's first investor briefing for a while. It's certainly been a while between drinks. I think the last one was early January. Welcome back. Glad to be hosting tonight in Sydney after a pretty frantic and important first quarter to the year. With many achievements and milestones, many of the things we've been working on are culminating, particularly this week as well. For the new listeners, welcome. I think there'll be many people that watch this replay. Tivan's gaining greater prominence as we go forward. For those that don't know, we do pride ourselves on open, transparent, timely communications and these investor briefings. We've been running them for two years plus, really, to narrate this story as we go.
Because we're working on complex, sensitive deals, through Q1 and April, it's been a while between drinks, but happy to be here tonight. Formats, as usual, I'll be able to pull through the slides, within half an hour, I expect. We've had a good response on the requests for questions. We've probably got about 20 questions, which we've embedded into the slides. Without further ado, we'll hop straight into it. Here we go. The principal reason to host the investor briefing tonight is that we're on the other side now of the joint venture announcement with Sumitomo. It's a deal we've been working on for the better part of a year. It's a strategy that we outlined really from the start of Tivan two years ago, which was to work with Japan in critical minerals.
I'm not sure people saw the world as clearly as we did two years ago, or as perhaps clearly as they see now that we've got Trump too. We recognize the importance of project partners from the start. We believed in Japan, and we always believed that we'd be able to find the right partners up there. It's been a journey to get the right resource, of course, and the right projects, but we're delighted to have finalized the joint venture with Sumitomo. You'll notice that the deals we announced on Wednesday, the terms of the deal, are quite comparable to the terms that we published at Christmas. The journey from Christmas to April was arduous for both parties. It's one thing to go from a relatively short document where you've agreed in principal terms to long form.
Long form, in this instance, is five, six, seven hundred pages of documents, eight, nine different deals, all being worked through by multiple lawyers, tax structures, committees, so on and so forth. It was a very labor-intensive exercise. I think my belief in Japan as fair dealing partners has absolutely been vindicated. I think if we were dealing as a small company with a larger company that perhaps had sharper elbows, the outcome would have been different, even between the MoU and where we finalized the deal. It is just very difficult to resist the temptation to push around a small company. Now, that is not to suggest that Japan was some sort of pushover or this deal was easy. It was not. I think it is a really singular achievement.
I think most of all, it speaks to the trust and respect between the two parties and the fact that it's a natural partnership. You know, we have things now at Tivan that Sumitomo really attaches great value to, principally our resource bed in fluorite, two projects. I think our team, I think our teams really excelled through the long form due diligence, all of the technical requirements to anchor a deal in Japan with a major trading house. These are formidable due diligence processes that we've put the project through, that we've put our young team through. They've held up, and we have built enormous trust and respect. Of course, I think my deep desire to work with Sumitomo at the start, where we could have worked with other trading houses, has also been vindicated.
I believe in Sumitomo because I know the history of the company really well. I admire it. Most of all, because underneath all of that are values and principles such as enterprising spirit and working for long-term objectives, mutual respect, and also prioritizing community, which is really important in the parts of Australia that we're working with. We couldn't ask for a better partner anywhere in the world. We're delighted now to be in formal partnership with Sumitomo Corporation. I want to send my thanks to Tokyo, all the people involved up there. It's been an incredible effort through Q1 to bring together a deal which has never really been done before like this. There are very creative aspects to it in terms of risk sharing, risk mitigation. We are super early stage at PFS.
I don't believe Sumitomo Corporation's ever done a deal in critical minerals sector anywhere in the world. We're also operating in fluorite, which is new for Australia. There are multiple firsts with this deal. Of course, we're really proud of it. I know they are too. They're really excited. I'm glad that we've turned the page because certainly for myself and our lawyers, it's a momentous effort over the past three, four, five months. I actually, I'm not sure if it's typical at this point, but I want to give a shout out to our lawyers, Gilbert + Tobin, particularly Michael Blackerson, a partner there. Michael's been instrumental for Tivan putting together this deal. Michael was involved right back at the start when we acquired Speewah. He's become a close friend and confidant. He's a fantastic deal lawyer, and he put in a shift.
And so did Shay, his associate. So big shout out to Michael and Shea for putting in such a huge amount of work through the last four months. Really, really appreciate that. Also want to acknowledge the team, as I did in the announcement. You know, the work that we did to satisfy the technical due diligence was largely complete by Christmas. But there were still many, many demands for additional information as we went through Q1. And I've always presented that to the team as an opportunity to showcase our project. But also the guys were getting ready for the big draw program, which we'll talk about in a second. And whenever I needed something, it was at the ready. It was always delivered really professionally and mindful of the high hurdles that we were looking to clear in Japan.
It's been a real coming of age, I think, for our team. Of course, not only are we proud of it, but it gives us great confidence looking forward because we now got a really sophisticated, developed, and financed plan to get through FS and DFS. I think in terms of the project financing side of things, we're super advanced for where the project is on a technical basis. In some senses, the technicals have caught up because we've done so much diligence. Those two things together is a really powerful cocktail. Of course, you know, working with Sumitomo as well is an ongoing opportunity. We'll have many other opportunities, I believe, if we deliver the first project successfully to further cement these relationships in Tokyo.
It does come down to that idea that there are things that Japan needs and wants, and there are very few companies in Australia that can deliver them in the way that I believe Tivan can. It is a milestone. It is obviously a really important development for our young company. It does mark a new phase at Tivan. I think the first year really was about survival. It was a bit of a fight to survive the things that we endured at the start. The second year at Tivan was finding that path which we are now on and really coalescing around it. I think as we move into this year, we are in a new phase. The company is much, much stronger. We are expanding our team. We are moving into operational capabilities that are required to deliver a project of this magnitude.
We're sort of in phase three with a few more phases to come yet. For the eagle-eyed, you'll see there was a second announcement on Wednesday, and that is a non-binding term sheet for project equity, effectively to match Japan, along with a placement which has been escrowed for 18 months. If you were at the AGM or listened to what I said at the AGM, you'll know that it's been a really huge priority of mine from the start to minimize dilution to shareholders. When I look around the sector, I think most of the companies can't raise the money for their projects, the project equity. Many people might be able to get a conditional letter of debt from the government to say, if you raise the equity, then you might be able to unlock some debt.
If you look around the critical minerals sector, whereas no one can raise the equity, and you've really got those two routes. You could try to raise it as ordinary equity, which some companies have done over the past five years, particularly when markets bubbled up in lithium, for example. That naturally causes large-scale dilution to existing shareholders. I've sort of been hell-bent on avoiding that as a shareholder, which I am, along with all of you. At the AGM, I explained the strategy, which is to create a special purpose company. Now it's called Fluorite Holdings SPV. They're on the chart. Sell a piece of that at the appropriate time to bring in additional equity, thereby averting issuance in Tivan shares.
You will see in the announcements the estimated project equity gap being around AUD 50 million. Imagine if Tivan was to issue equity, if we could at all, for AUD 50 million, you would be talking about maybe 500 million, maybe a billion extra Tivan shares. Hell-bent on avoiding that, and of course, wanting to raise this money as early and as reputably as possible. Whilst I have been working on the Japan deal for three or four months, it paralleled two potential investors. There is one offshore, there is one in Australia. There was a third as well, but I believed that the timeframe to get them involved would be too slow. I went with the non-binding term sheet to signal to the market that we are very likely to have this covered on schedule even before, I think, the AGM, and that it is there and available to us.
You could not send a stronger signal of support for this deal than by doing a small placement and putting those shares into escrow for 18 months. I am not sure people really fully understand how important that is, but effectively, the investor wanted to send a signal to everyone that they are real and that their intentions are to take this term sheet into binding ahead of the AGM. They are prepared to lock Tivan shares away for 18 months, effectively as a form of collateral on the non-binding term sheet. Really potent signal from this investor. It is a non-exclusive deal at the moment, meaning that we can continue to talk to other parties. Sitting here tonight, I am really happy with how this party has approached it. If we anchor, their name will be added. This was a bit of a point of consternation with the ASX on Wednesday.
We did not think it was appropriate at this time and did not want to take the focus away from the deal that we are closing with Sumitomo Corporation. If it does go binding later this year, then of course, the investor involved will be named. It is a great relationship, many common touchpoints for me personally, feeling very confident that they are the right financing partner for Tivan going forward. Again, the end game here is to, the end game for me was always to try to have Tivan retain at least 50% of the first project that we can build. That would be seen as a tremendous achievement. If you are fully financed without issuance of head company shares and you have got 50% of your first project, that is, you know, you are in absolutely rarefied territory if you achieve that.
The way this is trending is 60% potentially, maybe a bit higher as well. Not only are we confident on this pathway, I believe that Tivan will end up with a much higher share of Speewah Fluorite Project than I first envisaged. Tremendous progress at Speewah, particularly on the project finance. We do have stage gates to get through. We will be working now in partnership with Sumitomo on a formal basis, even though it has been very intense for at least six months now with their team up in Tokyo. We will be supporting the maturation of the offtake arrangements and the marketing of the project, including through test work and samples and so on and so forth. We will be embedding with their team.
Of course, when the JV completes after FIRB, this is when Tivan moves ownership of the project out of Tivan and into the joint venture itself. The joint venture is a private company, has a separate board, including a representative from Tokyo. We will move into the next phase, which is the additional stage gates and then onwards to project delivery. Yeah, real landmark achievement and super proud of this. Let me turn the slide. You'll note in the announcement as well that we have, or in the slide deck, in fact, been working on a resource extension program with Japan.
Now, again, for those at the AGM, I explained this precise scenario that both parties, you know, were looking at the trade-offs between the super fast track Tivan's been operating on with a 10.5 year mine life or taking the time to do additional resource extension drilling before we reach FYD. The strong consensus between Sumitomo Corporation and Tivan has been through Q1 to do some resource extension. This will not push the Speewah life of mine to where we think it will ultimately land. As a ballpark, and this depends on various things still, as a ballpark in the PFS, we talked about 10.5 years of life of mine.
The program that we've been working on for three months to pull this together operationally and logistically and in terms of permissions, we think this program will extend life of mine from, say, 10 and a half years towards 12. Now, that might not sound like much, but from an NPV point of view on the Speewah project, it will be very, very significant. I estimate, you know, on all else equal basis, in terms of our assumptions and costs and so on and so forth, you're potentially looking at NPV uplift in the order of AUD 100 million just for the one and a half extra years. It is a very important target that we have. It has been jointly agreed and workshopped in Tokyo. We've been working very hard to pull together the technical components of the project, some of which comprises infield drilling, some of which comprises exploration.
We've also been working in conjunction with Western Australian Government and the traditional owners, especially to have the right approvals in place. We're very well advanced on this. The reason we haven't been talking about it on ASX platform, for example, is that we've been subject to final cultural heritage approvals. We don't quite have those yet. We have completed the surveys and we're waiting for a report, which hopefully will land as early next week. Ahead of that, we can start grading roads and things like that, which we're commencing this week in anticipation of a successful outcome with the permissions. Once we have that in place, we will publish on the ASX the full extent of the draw program. Not quite yet, but we're sitting comfortably. There's unanimous support for this program as between Tivan and Sumitomo Corporation. It's the right move for the project.
You know, you could rip through, as we've been doing, fast track, fast track, fast track. At some point, it becomes irresponsible because you're moving so fast that you'll introduce suboptimality to the mine design, and then you can risk building a mine which doesn't work out. There are many examples of that around. If you look around Australia recently, Core Lithium, Galena, there's others. We want to build, and of course, Japan wants to build an optimal mine that does involve, you know, additional infield drilling, for example. Importantly, having that initial life of mine at 12 years, I mean, that's a great starting point. Again, that's not the extent of the resource at Speewah. On this map, the principal drilling that we'll be doing is down at G vane and A vane. We think there's enough there to get us out to 12 years.
We'll be doing some exploration drilling up at Dingo vane. That won't be included in the 12 years. It's like widespaced drilling for those geologists out there and down to the D vane as well. That will set us up for future resource expansion in the years ahead, as we explained in the original PFS. What does that mean for schedule on the Speewah Fluorite Project? This is a question that got asked. Four-month drilling campaign naturally pushes the entire schedule by four months. I think as well, we should be expecting an additional month of reviews at FS and DFS from Tokyo. We have to go through very meticulous processes because the Speewah Fluorite Project at that time will no longer be 100% owned by Tivan.
We can't operate quite as quick as we have been because we'll want to go through various technical committees in Tokyo to their satisfaction and then declare that we're through that stage and move on to the next stage. All in all, we're expecting now the schedule to push out by six months, four months on the drilling, one month for each review point. That pushes first production into the second half of 2027. Still close because we've banked so much work in the past 18 months to two years on the hardest, longest lead items, particularly environmental approvals and traditional owners. I want to emphasize as well that this is a choice. We all want a stronger project.
There's a point, and I said this at the AGM, where it's absolutely rational and appropriate to go for a larger project at the expense of the super fast track that we're operating on. We also need to, you know, respect our prestigious partner because they have, you know, a reputation globally for delivery. Of course, that comes with great technical input and technical input takes time. Slightly longer path now, but a more valuable project soon, and that will become visible, you know, at feasibility stage, I believe, and certainly at DFS and greater conviction. They're actually going to build this because we've got such strong support out of Japan. Those are the key trade-offs and these are the decisions that have been taken through the first four months of this year.
As I said, we'll publish more details on the drill program once we've got the relevant cultural heritage approvals firmly in place. The work's been done, but we do want to make sure that we're abiding by the structures of the processes that we agreed with the KLC. Okay, that's 20 minutes on Japan and Speewah. Turning to, you know, what is, you know, I believe now Tivan's second most important project, Sandover Fluorite. For those that are not aware, we acquired the Sandover Fluorite Project for the princely sum of AUD 1 million in Q4. We recognized its potential from archives, and I think that potential's only been confirmed by what we've learned through the first half of the year. We have now conducted two field surveys.
The first was in December, and we published assay results in January with these ultra high grades, these are rock chips. Just two weeks ago, the team that we've now got, which is larger, so we're able to do more things, went back down to Sandover and really did a very extensive surface sample program. This map shows you the locations in yellow of where the team was. It took about three days to cover this ground in the meticulous fashion that they wanted to. This will generate assays. They'll be back in June and will then have a much greater sense of the extent of the resource at the surface. That includes not just the strike length, but the breadth and, of course, confirmations on mineralogy grade and so on and so forth. This is really important work. We're pleased to get it done.
The guys were prioritizing the build-out of the Speewah drill campaign, you know, for the first several months. It's a tremendous amount of technical work. We've gone from having two geologists, we'll see in Steve Christmas, to I think eight now. And so that extra capability's really, really helped. But there's just a huge amount of work that we're getting through. And so team went down, everything looks good for those on our copy. You'll know that I won't be talking about visual estimates or visual mineralization tonight for a couple of different reasons. But I would say our conviction's extremely high. Let's see the assays in June and we'll be able to push forward from there. The value of this asset to Tivan is going to be immense.
I make no retractions on what I said at the AGM that I believe quite firmly now that this is going to be an acquisition that results in extreme value creation for the company. I think the visualization of value creation will start to commence from the middle of this year and will extend certainly out over the next 18 months. Let me talk to that because I think it's important, you know, shareholders understand the pathway here. We're working as fast as we can. We've had a great leg up in a sense on the project facilitation side because we've already been working in Central Australia for a couple of years. We're accredited there with the traditional owners and with the Central Land Council, most importantly for the work that we've been doing at the Sandover AI project.
Places like Aileron and Napperby, it took a lot of time, probably a year to heal the company's reputation in Central Australia, which was beyond abysmal as TNG. Even though I grew up in Alice and had some relationships already established, important ones, in fact, the damage that TNG had done in Central Australia was really, really profound. It took a year to sort of repair that. Once we had some early stage visualizations at Aileron and Napperby, we worked through these long-form mineral exploration deeds, enabling us to do drilling. That is a long process. To have documents in place, which we can now use again at Sandover Fluorite, will shortcut the times to be able to drill at Sandover Fluorite.
The schedule at the moment for the white rows where we're looking to define a resource runs through this second stage stamping, which we just completed. There will be a third round mid-year. I believe that by early Q3, we will have a mineral exploration deed in place with the Central Land Council for Sandover. Directly after that, once the guys come off the Speewah Fluorite Project drilling, so four months intense up there, pretty much starting now, the team will roll down to Sandover. We hope to be drilling at Sandover Fluorite by October. That can kick on into, you know, October, November. There is no real wet season to deal with in Central Australia. Then you are pulling out real cores. That drill campaign has been designed.
The work program has already been submitted to the NT government and to Central Land Council. We are doing all of the work now. The team will go to Speewah, deliver that big campaign. Once that is complete, I'll be working on the permissions and the mineral exploration deeds with CLC. Those paths converge October, November. We are drilling, pushing into study phases already for scoping, especially. We can already do some of the key work, for example, on transport costs from Sandover to port. Once we know that, we have a much better read on the target C1 cost for this project.
We already have a pretty good handle on it, but we can design scopes and really formalize that, putting us in a position to deliver a scoping study and start putting numbers on this by, you know, Q1, Q2 next year, and then heading into a pre-phase, hopefully delivering that by Q4 next year. What you're doing there is starting to put real numbers on the project. Again, we bought this for AUD 500,000 upfront, AUD 500,000 at JORC. That is AUD 1 million. Once we get into pre-phase and we have a JORC, and the JORC, the first JORC at Sandover is mid-next year, like after we've completed a lot of the drilling and we've decided on an optimal approach to the resource.
Certainly this is something massive to look forward to next year, the pathway through JORC and a PFS that could, as I said, at the PFS, end up with a billion dollar type resource, maybe more, really extended mine life. Of course, as it stands, Tivan owns 100% of this with natural synergies. Really looking forward to this journey. It's in our hands. It's incredible to be in this position where you've got your first project to get to revenue and then something that looks really spectacular behind it. It's a unique position because we control all of the high-grade fluorite in Australia. That's the value proposition that Japan sees so clearly. So much to look forward to here. I think you'll hear a lot more from Tivan on this subject as the year unfolds.
The focus has all been Speewah, Speewah and Japan. I think Sandover Fluorite will really start to emerge as we get into the second half of the year as a value driver. I do not think it is recognized in enterprise value at all at the company. I think the enterprise value, now that we are going to, you know, start to sell more of Speewah away, I think this project will end up as the dominant form of enterprise value at Tivan in the years ahead because we are starting off that 100% base and because of what we know, what we think we know, can I say, because, you know, there is obviously still some uncertainty being so early on on what is really there.
With the benefit of historic drilling, our understanding of transit costs, the support we are going to get from NT government, federal government, and, you know, the rapport that we have established with traditional owners and CLC, this thing looks just incredible. I think over the next 18 months, call it, it is going to be a key driver of shareholder value at the company. Okay, further afield. I know there is this guessing game. I did perpetuate this a little bit around Project X from the AGM onwards. You know, I said at the AGM that we would have another initiative. We looked to fill the map out at Tivan. We redefined the mission at that time, building a company of strategic importance up north. It was not constrained geographically to Australia, what I said.
We did not really know, I can confess, I guess, how long it would take to have this award. I knew the government. I have worked before with Timor's government in an advisory capacity on a couple of different subjects, dating back to 2010, 2011, 2012 area and again around 2022. Important stuff as well. I have got a really good sense of what can be achieved in Timor. I am super bullish on Timor as a country. I think it is a unique country globally, but certainly in the Southeast Asian footprint in terms of the way they are creating the institutional infrastructure and various attributes of the country, which are completely unique. Most importantly, I think, is there is a very simple point, which is they won their independence and they won it after an incredible battle. You have incredible resilience as a population because of that.
You have leadership, including with the Prime Minister pictured here, Xanana, that can guide the next development stage for a country. They are doing that. They could have taken different routes, but I believe they are on the right route following sort of a liberal institutional model. They have great commitment to that path, which is really, really important as leadership will ultimately evolve, you know, I think, in the decade ahead. Importantly, though, they are incredibly asset rich. It sounds trite, but many countries do not have the starting position that Timor does. Now they have a huge gas project, which is trammeled and controversial, and it will take more time and it will really require some dedicated commercial cut-through to get Sunrise up. It is an absolutely incredible asset. They have already got a sovereign wealth fund, which has significant cash.
It's been quite well managed over the past 15 years. They have what we believe to be a really unique and underdeveloped and underexplored geological footprint in one of the world's hottest zones. It all looked good from our geologist perspective once they got into it in Q3 last year when I asked them to. Once I thought we had the Japanese pathway progressing, I did want them to look at this. We looked at the various processes required to get different tenure whilst they were coming up with their pick of the bunch. They always wanted to risk high. It was absolutely unanimous internally that this was the block of tenements that you would want.
I reconnected with the government, explained that we wanted to move as fast as possible whilst going through their very formal due diligence processes and that we did not want to engage in a tender process, which would both slow us down and, you know, in my view, was not required given the trust that already existed between, frankly, myself and the government. That played out through Q1. We were really happy to have this announcement in early March. I think it is going to be, you know, really formative for the company. I think it is the one that breaks Tivan out from potentially being ring-fenced as a fluoride company, which I definitely do not want. We are very committed to our fluoride strategy, but Tivan is going to be bigger and bolder than just fluoride.
This is why the mission was redefined at the AGM to encompass, you know, all of Northern Australia. There are these natural synergies where we are, that we're in Darwin. We can build our footprint there. We've already kicked off an office in Dili. We've hired one. We'll probably hire two more people pretty soon. It's so different in that regard with labor costs and our ability to pull together people, even with experience, even geologists, to put together a credible team under strong leadership. Shout out to Francisco if he's watching. He's had a cracking start to his life at Tivan. We've already secured the premises, I think, of the US Embassy, like an old office they had for basically nothing. He has a remit to keep building in a respectful and engaged way with Timor's government and with the local community.
The timeframes we're looking at for this are here. Lots of preparatory work. We may be able to shortcut somewhat this year because we are in a data sharing environment with the government and they have done a lot of work at Turiscai, which is great. If we are picking up local geologists, for example, we can do various programs that perhaps we weren't expecting to be able to do this year. I would condition shareholders that we don't expect at this stage to drill this year in Timor. That is because we're so busy at Speewah and then Sandover. I literally just explained four months of really intensive drilling at Speewah, a truly massive program.
To give you a sense, when we did the fast track drilling at Speewah last year, that was around 600-700 meters of diamond drilling for metwork, which was really, really important to our critical path. We are going from 600-700 meters to 40,000. That is the step up that we are taking. There will be, we think, 40-50 people involved in the field this year at Speewah. It is a really, really significant program. We are heading to Sandover because it is so important and because we believe it is the lowest risk path to generate really, really meaningful enterprise value for Tivan in the near term. It rains in Timor.
The strategy is to do everything we can this year to get ready when the rain stops, roll up there with our team and our resources and our capabilities and our knowledge and put together the biggest drilling program that Timor's ever seen. It is exciting. I think that will kick off, you know, call it Q2, early Q2 next year. You will be in that phase where you are waiting for results. The geological setting up there is just so different. It is extraordinary. You can see it when you are walking around. I would say the project facilitation setting is dramatically different than Australia as well. When we went up to Turiscai, the Prime Minister did come and he welcomed us on country and he introduced us to his people.
Those are the same people that kept him safe, kept him safe when he was leading the resistance against, you know, the Indonesian occupation for 20 years. This is the same country where he hid. It was a very emotional reunion. We were not expecting 1,500-2,000 people to welcome us there for four hours. It was an amazing ceremony. What it meant was, and Xanana literally said this to Fussy, he grabbed Fussy's beard at one point, right when he met him, and he said, "Go do your job." What he was saying was, "Go find it. Go find the copper. Go find the gold." Xanana then stood up in front of 1,500 people, welcomed us, welcomed Tivan, asked the community to keep us safe and to support us if and when we find something.
If and when we find something, we will not be facing some of the things that we do face in Australia. In a sense, the community there, because they won their independence, they are the traditional owners. You have the Prime Minister, truly a legend, a global icon, welcoming us up there. We do not have the slower tracks that we do in Australia. We will not be working through long stage processes with EPAs and with land councils and so on and so forth. We will be welcomed on country by the highest members of government and welcomed in community. They will be desperate for us to push on as fast as we can. If we do find something, I think it will light up.
For those that talk about sovereign risk, please know, please know that I've worked with the highest levels of the government for 10 years. There's a lot of trust there. And there's ways to manage sovereign risk, besides which Timor is very, very well run for a country that's come through what it has. I believe we can be a big chapter in their next phase. I want to be. I really do. I'm very committed to this pathway. Tivan is there for. They've given us exactly what we want and need. Yeah, we're excited to forge ahead. I believe if we're successful up there, this could be a natural site of extension for our Japanese partners as well. We'll see. It's a really exciting project, early stage, but again, stuff that will start to come through as early as Q2 next year.
Okay, these are the main slides. I want to move to Q&A at this point. Before I do, again, thank you to the team. Now, as you can see, our team's growing. We'll need to reorganize the org chart again and again. There will be, actually, I can say, I think tonight, a formal reorganization of Tivan. I think that will happen in June. That's our anointed HR annual process. This will create a bit more organization to the organization chart, but also recognize the incredible achievements of the team, particularly those who've been from the start and turned this company, you know, lifted it out of the abyss, really the abyss, and now are working with one of the most prestigious companies in the world in a partnership that can, I think, blossom over the next 5-10 years. There will be a reorg.
There'll be more people joining. I think we'll reach steady state in the next three months. We had to hire really, really aggressively from Christmas. We've done great. We've had so many people apply to each of these jobs. It's been amazing. We've gone with youth, talent, energy, all the things that characterize the team from the start. There's great camaraderie. There's great hunger. There's a buoyant mood in the company at the moment. The GIs are hitting the different sites. They're out on country even tonight. They're really looking forward to delivering while the rest of us, you know, work to build the other aspects of the project that are required. There'll be a reorg. There'll be some new leadership positions established at the company, which is exciting, an opportunity for me to diffuse some of the responsibilities that I've been carrying for this whole time.
I'm looking forward to that very, very much. We're setting the scene, really, for the company to emerge into that next phase of growth and to work, again, on a going basis with our friends and partners in Tokyo. Okay, to AMA, you'll see we've taken the questions tonight off HotCopper and many of the things we've got in our inbox. We do value these questions. Let me be clear about that. We always want to engage with shareholders, address as openly as constructively as we can at these moments. It's why we've included names here or pseudonyms just to show that level of accountability. Please, yeah, when we host these sessions, feel free to write in with anything and I'll do my best to address it openly and honestly.
You can see from these two pages that there's a lot of focus on Sandover Fluorite. I may have already addressed some of these points, in which case I'll fast track through. I'd say some questions about Aileron, which are new, a couple of other things. I won't read everything out, but I'll address the substance of the questions and move forward and wrap up within the hour. Okay, so Speewah Fluorite on the project schedule. I have actually already addressed this pretty precisely, Andy Buck. You're right. You've got eagle eyes to point out that in the slide deck, the only project where we didn't publish a new schedule was Speewah Fluorite. We did publish a slightly different schedule in March, I think, in one of the investor decks. The big update to schedule is imminent.
I have said it tonight, it will ultimately push first production around six months at this point. Again, four of those months comprised of large-scale drilling to improve the resource and make it bigger and make NPV even better. A couple of months allowing for very important reviews in Tokyo at FS and DFS. We are still operating super fast. There has been no attrition on actual items that we have been working on across the critical path. This is a choice by JV Partners to make the project bigger and better. We will publish an updated schedule, Andy, once the job program is approved. When that is, hopefully next week. You will see. We were not holding that back for any other reason, but it is important to answer that question.
Sandover Fluorite, the thrust of a lot of these questions is, is Japan going to get involved at Sandover Fluorite? In the announcement this week, we did not mention that topic at all. What I can say at this point is that if you put yourself in their shoes and you have just gone to extraordinary lengths to ink a joint venture with an up-and-coming, you know, junior miner in Australia, and they have got a second project which resembles the first from a mineralogy point of view and may well ultimately be much, much larger, you would think that they are deeply engaged in that and would be thinking very hard commercially about that pathway. Now, from Tivan's perspective, we are not in a huge rush here.
As I said, it's important for us as the asset owner, particularly given that we acquired it for such a low amount of money, to have that time to develop it and at our own cost. Like, we don't want to buy something for AUD 1 million if we actually believe it's worth, say, AUD 1 billion and sell it the next day. You want to develop it a little bit through, again, the permissions, the early drilling confirmations. You ideally want to get to a JORC. You want to get through a few studies and be able to say, "Okay, look, this is really what we think. And this is what independents think as well." It's common sense that you wouldn't be looking to divest ownership at this point. Absolutely not. That doesn't mean that Japan isn't interested.
It does not mean that there are not ways for that interest to be expressed. I think look out for that at some point. I do not want to preempt. I do not want to, you know, say too much about this. I think if you just step back and imagine the interests of the different parties involved and those natural synergies that we have created and the trust and respect which evidently exists between the two parties, you will probably get to the correct answer. In terms of Cal's question, that is interesting about, you know, potentially the second project, the impact on global supply demand. There are questions here coming through about DSO direct shipping ore. Let me address those two topics sort of consecutively on Sandover Fluorite. I will turn the page to the last set of questions.
When we first acquired Sandover Fluorite, we did in one of those really early announcements, or perhaps it was when we first got those super high-grade rock chips back in January, we said that we were going to evaluate direct shipping ore as an option. Of course you would if it were possible because direct shipping ore could be an absolute cash cow. It involves very little CapEx. Effectively you are digging, you know, rocks up. If you can make grade, you can ship it out at super high margin. In our case, that would be MetSpar. Now, MetSpar's got probably an 80% cutoff. Some of the rock chips that we pulled up were there. These are just rock chips. What is the ore underneath? What is the average? What is the grade? Is it amenable to DSO ultimately?
If your starting point is maybe 50%, which is incredibly high, again, the high-grade component at Speewah is high at 28-29%. That's very high. If the high-grade stuff at Sandover conforms to the historic drilling, you're looking at maybe 45-50%, maybe higher in some sections. Can you upgrade that to 80%? The solution there is this ore sorting technology. We're working with a company called TOMRA. If you Google TOMRA and fluorite, you'll see actually there was a big headline this week about the work they're doing in Mexico with DSO. When we said this, I think in January, there's a couple who tried to slap us down on this. You're totally wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. We've got some of the best metallurgists in the country working here. They see this pathway.
Now, we're not absolutely sure we can jump on it. We have to do the work. Absolutely, we're evaluating it with vigor. Because if there is a pathway to do DSO and MetSpar, that means Speewah can stay on the same accelerated path that we're working to, to produce acid-grade fluorspar for the top-end use cases being semiconductors and EV batteries. Meanwhile, you potentially have a MetSpar fast track as well, with MetSpar being used for the traditional industrial processes. You're not cannibalizing yourself, which sort of goes to Cal's question. If you're bringing on two acid-grade projects, which would be great, you wouldn't want to do it at the same time. You wouldn't have the capability to do it at the same time. There's a lot of work involved in doing that at Sandover.
As I said at the AGM, I think if it's two acid-grade projects, Sandover is, call it two years behind Speewah. If there is an opportunity that pops out to do some DSO to get MetSpar at Sandover, then you could do both those things at the same time. They'd probably hit the market at the same time. They are two different markets. Imagine us sending acid-grade through Sumitomo, of course, up to Japan and to Taiwan and to Korea. The MetSpar might end up in India doing completely different things, very different product segments. MetSpar prices are also extremely high. If it holds up, we could have two revenue streams. We do not know, but it's absolutely important that we evaluate this. We are starting that work. Part of the drilling and the sampling can already evaluate a DSO.
We will be doing a lot more, you know, forms of drilling in Q3 that will support that evaluation. We hope by core Q1, you know, maybe April around there, to have full knowledge on this. It will not be overnight. It does take time. You have to do variability studies and so on and so forth. We are evaluating it with vigor. The technology on ore sorting is extremely good. Sandover has these incredible grades. We all know that it is in the middle of Australia, of course, and that is going to cost to move it around. When you have this starting point of that sort of grade and you have the size that we have, if you can open that up, then your OpEx is going to be extremely low, dominated by transport, but very few other costs.
A much simpler site as well, because it's flat. It's in the desert. There's no foliage. You'll be putting it on a truck, and you'll be driving it to the GAN, and you'll be sending it out of Darwin. You will be printing cash. You will be. You'll be doing it for a very, very long time as well, because you've just got a huge resource advantage over everything else in the world. We will see how this goes. What I would say is that the two acid-grade projects, there's no real global supply constraint as such, but they're just going to have to be sequential because of the work involved. If we do hit that MetSpar pathway, it's going to be a real game changer. We won't know for sure, but we'll get good knowledge through the second half of this year.
If it's possible, fantastic. We'll go for that. In terms of the other questions that have been asked, I think I've sort of covered it off because a lot of this is referring to Japan. I don't want to say more than I have. Pro is asking about delivery schedule. I think I've addressed that with DSO. I think I'll leave my comments on Sandover here. I've spoken quite a lot about it. In terms of CapEx, Pro is asking about in the details of the announcement with Sumitomo, we said that there's a AUD 101 million project equity requirement. The way that number was arrived at is pretty simple. You've got your AUD 236 million from PFS on CapEx. When you reach the point of funding a project, you're still going to be maybe 18 months out from revenue as well.
You build in a buffer to finance that 18 months. That is AUD 236 million to say AUD 250 million. We just use AUD 250 million as the rough estimate. At this early stage, those numbers will move around. It is natural. If AUD 250 million is the CapEx requirement, then you have your project debt equity ratio. That is the next key variable. 60/40 does look achievable. This will depend enormously on the propensity of the Australian government to lend to our project. Naturally, as the equity holder, you would prefer more leverage because you can increase the return on equity. Many critical minerals projects, I mean, they cannot get as far as we will. They do not know ultimately what their project equity requirements are because they cannot achieve it. We can, and we have shown that. We think ultimately that we will land the funding balance around this sort of 60/40.
It will depend on how the offtake goes, but it will depend also on the Australian government. Now, addressing another question first from Paul, you've got a shift in the same government coming out of the election, but a clearer emphasis on the modalities of supporting the critical mineral sector. One of the clearest things they can do is to lean in harder to the existing programs that are there with Export Finance Australia and Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, meaning that they can lend more for a successful project or at lower interest rates or for longer term. We will see how this plays out, but we're targeting this 60/40. That's how you get to 100 pro, like 150 of debt, 100 of equity. We've wrapped that up already. Those numbers will change inevitably, but that's the ballpark.
The signal we wanted to send, particularly with the unnamed Australian investor, is that we've got this. We absolutely do. The Australian investor as well has indicated a willingness to put in more than the AUD 50 million we said. Obviously, Tivan can contribute directly as well, even if we're not looking to do it that way. We'll have multiple pathways to fund the hardest piece, the piece that no one else can. You layer in the government debt and you optimize everything and off you go. You build and then you have revenue and then you have profits and then Tivan is in that next phase. It'll be a fundamentally different company if we have revenue and profits coming in. That is how we got there. We're working in a very integrated fashion with Sumitomo on this. The financial modeling is really sophisticated.
Perhaps if I can say, I think the fact that there are really sophisticated financial people at the company on the board, I think we can cut through faster than anyone. Again, I've said this before at the project level, it's about trust. I think it's much easier for government and large players to trust a small company when you've got people coming off the backgrounds that we've got. I've always maintained, I don't think people believe me when I said this at the start. I did say when the numbers get bigger, it will be easier for me to raise it. Here we are. Here we are. It will be. Numbers can get bigger again. It will still get easier for me. The small raises at the start were very, very challenging because the company had no value proposition.
Now that we're on the verge of real achievements, it gets easier. It'll get easier for Tivan, I promise you. That's the CapEx. Treasury functions, Cal. I don't know who you are, Cal, but I like your questions on HotCopper and you've got really good commentary. Welcome to the frenzy. Acid-grade cannot be hedged. We don't have a futures market. Obviously, if we did, it would be straightforward to finance this project. Notwithstanding that, we're going to do it, as I've just explained. Does management have a currency hedging strategy? We have a strategy, but we cannot execute it at the moment. Whenever you do currency hedging, you have to post margin. If you need to post margin, you're going to absorb a lot of cash. Cash has been scarce at Tivan. Not yet is the simple answer.
As we get closer to production, that will be evaluated. It was part of the JV discussions in terms of how we're going to manage that. All at the right time. I have a currency trading background of many, many years. I've seen companies blow up on currency hedging. I know all the pitfalls involved, but didn't want to absorb our cash balance on putting in dynamic currency hedging two-plus years out from first production. Tivan is exposed to the fluorite price. There's no way around that. There will never be a futures market in this commodity, I believe. If you're locking in underlying offtakes, that starts to reduce the variability on some pricing. However, ultimately, we want the offtake to have exposure to supply demand developing in fluorite. We're bullish on where fluorite prices are going. We don't want to lock it in.
All of that journey is ahead with the offtake and the pricing. The currency hedging is different. If we do get to a point in two or three years' time where the Aussie is low and we think it is a great point to hedge some of the currency, that is a JV board decision. That is possible because you can hedge the Aussie out relatively easily, five years, ten years if you want. We would have to disclose that if we did it. You do not want to end up in some of these positions, which even major companies in Australia have had to disclose recently, which is a core business in mining, but then dusting hundreds of millions of dollars on currency trading. It is mindless stuff. That will not happen here. Thank you for your questions. On Aileron, not much to say tonight.
I am aware that there's an expectation, perhaps we did create it, on when we're going to deliver assays. It's been quite unpredictable. There's been a few different things happen, talking about weather interruptions, as well as the assays just taking much longer than we anticipated getting them from site to Adelaide and then through. We should get some news next week. There's no real change in Tivan's posture. We haven't said much on this. We've said from the top that we're hopeful, but not expectant. It's a journey from rock chips to cores. We're focused elsewhere at the moment. When the news lands, we'll assess it and we'll move forward on that basis or make decisions on that basis. If there's a decision not to go forward, that's fine as well. Absolutely fine. Just give us another week or two.
I am aware that people are looking for this. It's been really hard to get proper comms out of some of the labs as to where things are at. I do expect that the news is close. Are your government re-election have sort of addressed that? Onwards to Vanadium for two minutes. These are quite complicated questions, Dean. What I would say is that this shift in the Australian government to potentially a more progressive interventionist model in critical minerals, this may be the thing that changes some of the foundations for Vanadium. They really have to do a lot of heavy lifting on the rare earth projects because commercially they cannot stand on their own two feet. Vanadium with Chinese Vanadium prices and lack of a developed offtake market is a similar sort of picture.
I think the critical mineral strategic reserve will take some time to get together. We're keeping Tivan one degree removed from it because we don't need it in fluorite. It is much better if you can finance projects commercially. We are engaged in it. We want to see who is involved in it. I do not want to have Tivan's name associated with companies that I do not respect. That would be an interesting exercise, particularly in vanadium. We will see how it goes. We are not taking our eyes off the prize on fluorite.
I think the way to think about vanadium is that if it were ever to happen, the Speewah Vanadium Project, because we'll have the infrastructure and we'll have all of the things that we need right adjacent to the Speewah Vanadium Project, along with what we know and what we said in Q1 in terms of its now proven ability to reach high-grade pentoxide without acid leaching and these specs that we hit. We've proven the product pathway, but we don't want to take our eyes off the near-term prize, which is the Speewah Fluorite Project. If we get that up, it's just going to confirm what we already know and provide a pathway to build it behind it. Right now, it's not the time.
We are interested to see what the government is doing with the various policies, but our focus is very clearly on making sure that we get the best package of debt financing available for the Speewah Fluorite Project. That's our key priority. Finally, on Twitter, Baraka, no change, no change. Twitter served a really important purpose for Tivan. I was never on Twitter, but when this journey started, I understood immediately, actually, that without a means of communicating to a rest of shareholder base, I would not be able to hold the narrative of the company together coming off the TNG 249. If you look at my Twitter history, it doesn't exist before the campaign because I was never on it. I was a very private person.
I've been using Twitter to stay, to keep a means of being able to communicate with shareholders on a regular basis, amplified on online platforms. We do not have to wait two weeks or three weeks for an ASX headline, which might get misinterpreted. Twitter is a way for us to craft the narrative around the company. It does come with responsibilities, of course, and I have been mindful throughout of listing rules. I'm not going to deny that I've pushed up against the edge of them. I've done that deliberately. In fact, I did not know where the edge was on some of these listing rules. They're very hard to interpret because there's probably not another CEO in the country that's doing what I'm doing or that's been through the journey that I've just been through. I am mindful of the listing rules.
Got great respect for ASX and their team. We did talk about it this week in particular. Points were made. Some things I agree with, some things I disagree with. It's not going to change anything in terms of how I use it and what I'm using it for. I would say that it's important to emphasize that I do try to communicate in a very compliant way. That will be reinforced going forward. I would say, and I think most shareholders would agree with this, that it's an important tool that's helped Tivan in terms of getting the company through what's been a really, really challenging first couple of years and now onwards to these next phases that we're all excited about. Yeah, no real change on that, Baraka. Slap on the wrist. That's okay. I've been looking for it. I've been waiting for it.
It happened this week. Okay. I'm going to stop sharing the screen there and wrap this up. Again, I want to say thanks to shareholders for their ongoing support. I would say a difference between Q1 and maybe Q2 in the middle part of this year is that we did come into Q1 really sort of storming. Like, I was quite aggressive in terms of what I was guiding towards for catalysts for Q1. Part of that was me trying to ensure that the company was not facing a major dilution event on February 17 with the KRR trigger. I did not want the share price to be below AUD 0.10. I was really pushing parts of the narrative really, really aggressively. That worked. We avoided any further dilution. I was really pleased about that.
Similarly, we're out of the convert now and the downside risks that could have presented themselves if we didn't get the rally that I was anticipating. Into Q2, I'm not guiding. There's going to be surprises. I've said that much. I want to let the market digest those as those hit. For shareholders that are getting aggressive at times, I do want to conclude by restating what I said in January, which is try as much as you can to have a healthy relationship with the stock. Sometimes I look at HotCopper once every couple of days, and I can see sometimes people get quite emotional. Sometimes they'll send us emails and so on and so forth. There are things maybe we can explain. Maybe there are things we can't explain for commercial reasons or diplomatic reasons.
Sometimes I think the level of anxiety that is associated with some of the comments is excessive, if I can say. I would therefore ask some of those shareholders to take a look at themselves as well. Whether you are too close to the stock, whether you have that healthy relationship that I did say was going to be important back in January. From Tivan's side, I can say that we are absolutely on track and that we have executed brilliantly now over a sustained period of time. Q1 was another example of that. There will be more. There will be more in Q2. Really, really important things. You can look forward to that without me perhaps saying too much more. I do want to say thanks. I know that everyone is on a very different journey.
You've got people that are coming off this really difficult experience with TNG. You've got a lot of new shareholders here who don't want to hear about that. They just want to hear about how we're going to take this company forward. What I would say is that I really firmly believe tonight that Tivan is now a real company and that all the work that we did to turn it around and now having this partnership inked with Japan is a really momentous step. There are lots more aspects to it, which will be revealed through the course of this year. Apart from that, our team's just going to go back to work. We really have a tremendous amount of work ahead to work through on schedule. The mood internally is focused. It's driven. It's hungry. It's dynamic as well.
We want all those attributes as we are hiring and as we are building out the team. I think for shareholders, they should take that sense away from the call tonight. We are very focused on business and delivery. You will hear and see much more evidence of that over the next couple of months, including on Twitter. I will leave it there with thanks. I think that will do it. Have a great weekend. Thanks.