Agnostic to the price. It doesn't matter if these sorts of index trackers like the story, don't like the story. If it goes into the index, they have to buy it. It's completely insensitive to the price and to the underlying story. And the numbers, to be fair, are extremely significant. So it's something for, you know, for shareholders to think about. We are mindful of it. We are receiving a lot of questions on it. I don't want to over-egg it. I do want to say very, very clearly, once again, that our focus is on executing corporate strategy and building the company, in alignment with our mission. If we do that, these sorts of dynamics will actually take care of themselves. A happy chart to finish with. This is our footprint because it deserves some airplay. We think now Tivan has retail ownership around 60%.
For those that know ASX 300 companies and so forth, that is an insanely high statistic. So, for guidance, most ASX 300 companies have retail issues somewhere between 5%-12.5%. I mean, this is according to the Australian Institute of Shareholders. They did a survey. It's probably not perfect, but call it 10%. And we're sitting here at 60%. And then we've got this sort of barbell with a bunch of offshore legacy accounts, as well as some, you know, some of the most pedigreed, most respected investors on the whole planet that I've brought into the company over the past two years. So it's a very unusual situation.
I love it because it's got this fairytale quality where, you know, we got rid of the bad guys, we've turned the company, and we hope that our retail base can hang on for the duration, because it will result in life-changing capital appreciation and accumulation, for, for many. We have some hotspots. I have to give a shout out to, so the guys in Albury-Wodonga, that's a lot of legacy capital. But yeah, fantastic that they made the map in, in such form and seem to have multiplied, somehow, somehow. Kuta, thank you for your support, particularly in some of the placement rounds. I haven't been to Kuta in a while, but, I'm told that the, the streets might be paved in tungsten if, if we pull, many of these objectives off. So thanks for the steadfast support.
And of course, it's great to see, on a more serious note, the local penetration that Tivan's got now in the Territory. We are very serious about branding Tivan out around this Territory and iconography, and to see, you know, Darwin get behind the company in the way that it has. Katherine, Alice down the bottom, and importantly, Kununurra. That's where we're based. Kununurra is only a small town, and so to see the word of mouth start to go around town, having people to put a toe in, it's great. I think it shows that the company's respected, and once people are part of the journey, they tend to stay around. So it's a very powerful dynamic, and it's a very unusual register.
It does allude to the 249, but it does put us in a really, really good position to continue to extract maximum value for shareholders as the company grows. We're no longer beholden to anyone. We've delivered the company. The flows that were, you know, impeding perhaps our progress have now finished. We are on the cusp potentially of really significant, non-price sensitive flows in the opposite, bullish direction over the next while. And if we stay on track, nothing would make me happier than to see retail Australia benefit and for Tivan to be the most held company by retail Australians. Because again, we're not going to be doing placement rounds to super funds and to Vanguard and BlackRock. It's not happening here. The answer is no. If you're watching today, no. Call someone else.
If you want to get your shares, talk to one of our longstanding shareholders or, let's see the price move to a point where, you know, some of our retailers also want to take some profits. So it's a very interesting setup. But again, the focus of the company is on executing right across the Lassonde Curve. Nonetheless, it's a feel-good story, and I wanted to share some of these metrics today with everyone at the start of the year. Okay, so to AMA briefly, a lot of these questions I've already covered, so I'm going to pull through this in real quick time today. And nonetheless, recognize, as I always do, that, you know, we're very much about accountability at Tivan. And so when the questions do roll in, as they do, we try to group them, and we do address them.
And if they're complex, we're happy to write and we're happy to field, you know, one-on-one questions as well. That will happen, you know, through the course of the year. But today's just a start. So, yeah, just let me rip through, to close all of this out. So firstly, from Pro on the three programs, I've addressed this extensively, Pro, in the, in the introductory comments. The main thing to say is that we will be releasing, you know, these three sets of asset results in January as we're guided. I'm not sure why people thought January 15. There's a lot of work to do at the labs. I said January, January's January. So I don't know. And we haven't seen the results from Timor or from Sandover Fluorite. We're working through massive amounts of data at Sandover, sorry, at Speewah Fluorite. All will be revealed, this month.
In terms of the drilling programs and resourcing of the company, Tivan, we've plenty of resources now. This is both financial resources, but the team's grown, we're up to about 35 people. We are on a major push with HR that will extend pretty much all the way through this year. So we have the capacity, absolutely. We've also taken decisions over the break to dedicate different people to different projects. So we now have panels of geologists, meaning that they can work alternate shifts in continuity at Speewah, at Central Australia, so Molyhil, Sandover, and at Timor. Okay, so we have enough people and enough muscle now to run all of those projects simultaneously without any downtime. That will lead to more news flow, more progress, out the Lassonde Curve and so on and so forth. This is the power of money, essentially.
So we have, you know, completely transformed financial situation at the company, but we're still being careful about who we bring in and how we bring these people in. To give you a sense, though, of Tivan achieving one of its interim goals, which was to become an employer of choice, we put out two job ads just before Christmas. The first, HSEC, we had 450 applicants, and the second, which was like procurement contracts manager, pushing 300 applicants. So as far as the job market's concerned, like the word is out about Tivan, that we're a great place to work. That's really, really important to the vitality and vibrancy of the company. It means we're in a position to build the team with people that are really values aligned and that want to come on the journey, want to work hard.
Bob Cole, how are communities, how are we supporting communities? That would take me hours, Bob. So one highlight I want to mention, because it was in one of our announcements just before Christmas, is that we've been working with the Central Land Council around Alice on a community development proposal. Hope to announce this in February. There's some chance it gets delayed into March, April, because it will involve potentially some matching capital from Canberra. What we're looking to do here is to invest in community early and preemptively to strengthen communities, out from really Aileron out towards Ti Tree, in conjunction with the Central Land Council. And this can be a pretty wide gamut of social investment. And the reason we're doing it is that we now believe firmly that Tivan will be the first major project in the vicinity of Alice Springs, you know, pretty much ever.
If you think about The Granites, Tanami, that's like 1,200 kilometers away. Arafura still has a very difficult journey to get to first production at Nolans. That leaves Molyhil, and Sandover Fluorite and Tivan in pole position to achieve this. That's just going to cause so much uplift in Alice. Mark my words. Alice will get behind Tivan in ways that perhaps no other town in the country would. At the same time, the communities we're operating in on the way out to the Harts Range are very, very fragile. So we want to work early, and we're going to agree with the CLC to a broad community development initiative. It'll be money extremely well spent. It will strengthen our ability to build workforce and procurement.
and I think it will lead to other very good things in the Territory, one of which I hope to announce in Q1 as well. So another really significant development that will reframe very positively the way that Tivan is perceived in the Territory and perhaps right around Australia. So really exciting work that's going on in that portfolio. Timor-Leste is another big conversation on that topic, Bob, but in the interest of time, I'll park that for another day. Ariel, I'm going to skip that question if you don't mind. There's lots of reasons to invest in Tivan, but it's really about our comparative advantages, which we've previously articulated. And I'd say the one thing I would emphasize again today, because markets have obviously turned in favor of critical minerals company, Tivan will remain incredibly disciplined on the capital structure side.
Graham Tuckwell said this for me at the AGM about, that's it for placements. I think he's right. It's best coming from him, rather than me. That will put Tivan in this very unique position of having stabilized and capped out shares on issuance. Again, emphasizing the point that the shareholders we've currently got are our shareholders. This is their company and it can stay like that. That is incredibly different than every other Critical Minerals or rare earth company in Australia, and we're dead serious about it. In terms of further acquisitions and commodity prices, I'm going to skip this set of questions altogether because I've addressed it up top. Never say never on acquisitions, but with the big rip in commodity prices, it's time to accelerate exploration. Let's go find something and, to deliver on the projects that we've already acquired.
If something comes along, which is perfect, perfect in terms of our acquisition, and if it's a price, which I deem to be viable, then fine, we'll do it. But we're not going to necessarily chase things and we're not looking, you know, further afield either. So tremendous amount of discipline and focus. Those buying antimony projects or silver projects now will lose money. Definitely, definitely. The price of entry on any project is critically important and we achieved incredible entry prices over the past couple of years. So now is the time to capitalize on those achievements. For Japan, I've addressed this as well, so I think I can skip through pretty quickly. The last point's important, though. There are other ways for Tivan to leverage its relationship. I don't like using the word leverage because of what I've said.
I think there's been some real vulnerabilities displayed in the past couple of weeks. We're there to support Japan and to build long-term trusted relationships. That's how to build a company of strategic importance. It's to be there. And so there are other ways though for those opportunities to present themselves and for Tivan to be involved in things which have never happened before. And those are the things that motivate me and can really differentiate Tivan from the crowd. In terms of Speewah Fluorite, Traditional and engagement financing approvals, WA royalties, those are all really fair questions. TO engagement has been a three-year journey. As I said at the AGM, we're approaching this year with a great deal of positivity. I expect that we will wrap up the first of the ILUAs towards the end of Q1, early Q2. That's to do with the access road.
We've said in one of our ASX announcements just before Christmas that commercial terms have been agreed, and that is the case. That's a huge amount of work to have got through. And we're working on a similar process and protocol with Ngarinyman, which is the traditional owner group, a new traditional owner group that's formed around the Speewah site. This will be a process that we're looking to bring to fruition in Q2. That will be a more challenging process because it's a new group and because it involves the mine site. But we're, as I said, approaching this topic with a great deal of positivity given all the work that we've done. Also a great source of, you know, personal focus and joy in some ways.
I hope to actually be living in Kununurra in Q2 to wrap up some of these processes and to work through the environmental approvals and to continue to bed down the social license for the project, in and around town. Yeah, it's shaping well. It's consistent with all of the projects announcements that we've made. Similarly with the financing approvals, obviously we secured the finalization with ETF Securities over Christmas. That was a great step forward. We are on track with NAIF and the EFA, along with Japan on the financing side. No reason to be concerned there. On the contrary, you know, we've, I think as Graham said at the AGM, it's highly, highly unusual to be this advanced, effectively fully financed, at this stage of project development.
WA royalty. We did two hours again today with the WA government, so they understand that we're looking for a decision in Q1 and we hope that's the right decision. So let's see what we play out there. NAIF and EFA are longer-term processes that will culminate in the back end of this year. We tend to do quarterly updates with both groups. Everything is proceeding on time, on plan and consistent with the way EFA and NAIF engage with all other successful projects. Visibility study. CapEx won't blow out. That's a very good question, and I think it's a very fair question. So what assurance can we give that CapEx won't blow out next month? The best answer to that is that, you know, when we picked the Speewah Fluorite project up, we picked up a scoping study with a CapEx of AUD 70 million.
I think I've said this. I've used this word before, so I'm going to use it again, which is we knew that was bullshit and that it was very typical of how junior miner companies operate. They just throw mud around and pretend it's going to stick. So we spent a lot of time on our PFS. It's an unbelievable PFS if you take the time to read it. It's 130 pages long, I think, incredible level of detail. And the costings came out at AUD 260 million. So we're already like 4x, less AUD 30 million for the access road. So we 4x the already. And I think drawn from that can give you tremendous assurance that there's not going to be this, you know, CapEx blowout, which does characterize many projects. The reality at the moment is there's not many studies going around.
Most people are just getting back on their feet because they suffered for 18 months. There was a raft of, you know, PFSs and FSs back in the lithium bubble of 2020, 2021, 2022. And all of those companies, more or less, and there were a couple of exceptions, but most of them gapped CapEx multiple times on the way through the stage gates. Now, often they blamed COVID, you know, and that was fair to a point. Sometimes they had, you know, big changes in the resource definition or they were, you know, trying to upscale the project. So perhaps you can characterize it that way. But listen, sitting here at Tivan, I think that, you know, naturally you're going to have some things that go against you over 18 months. You know, there's been inflation over these 18 months as well.
But if you've done the work and we have, you're really sitting here with risks and opportunities. There may be changes at FS even to the production target, like we might try to upscale the project a little bit because there's so much demand for what we're doing. If that leads to a bit of extra CapEx, that's great. But these are decisions that we can make because we've put the work in and because we published a very authentic and very credible PFS 18 months, 20 months ago. So we were building on really high quality work for these past 18 months. Wolfram, I think that's the greatest assurance I can give you, that things are going to be okay in February.
I think as well you'll have that stamp of approval from Japan because don't forget they'll be being asked to put in that second tranche of funding. We've already got ETFs doing that. They've just signed off and they just put in acceleration capital. You can sense from all of that dynamics the parties with the superior information who are right at the table learning. We're learning at the moment. They're pushing money into the project. Actually that gives you some assurance as well that things are looking good. Of course we're all waiting with bated breath on the dual resource estimate upgrade at the end of January. We'll see how that goes.
And perhaps one quick point there is that even if we do get a resource upgrade in January, we won't be able to integrate that into the feasibility study straight away. That will go into the DFS and that will mean, you know, an even stronger project at DFS and FID. And so with the drilling this year. And if there are other co-products at Speewah fluorite, and there might be a co-product that no one's conceived of yet, a lot of that will go into the project at FID, FID. And so let's see what all plays out, but I think I can give you my personal assurance that we're not going to see the sorts of CapEx blowouts, like things that doubling, tripling.
It was a really heady period in 2020, 2021, 2022, but the disciplines and the work that we've put in will ultimately pull us through these milestones. Molyhil Sandover, briefly, because I think I'm pretty much out of time here. Yeah, the discovery of fluorite north of Molyhil is great. You know, from what we've seen so far, we need to get the assay results, but some of the veins up to the north appear to be dipping on a slightly different angle, which may assist in terms of resource definition, so we're actually quite interested in that area and more will be revealed as we get through resource definition this year. U.S. EXIM unlikely to be involved. As I said, I'm going to the U.S.
I've seen old friends, including very high up in the U.S. government, but Taiwan has been very clear about us prioritizing Japan. And we are very dedicated in that, in that mission. And so there will still be very important conversations in New York and Washington, but I don't believe so we need U.S. EXIM Bank, and I don't think that it would be additive to the joint venture that we're looking to put together in such rapid time. In terms of the Walsh's Wall and the Barite Gossan, Gerard, listen, we don't know what's underneath it. There's different theories here. I hope it's tungsten. I think Steve thinks it's copper. You know, we obviously don't want to strike out. We could; we have to work through some planning and mapping. That's correct.
Then we have to get approvals from Central Land Council and then go through one of these anti-government processes. I think we'll be drilling the Gossan by mid-year. That's my estimate at this point. It is a priority. As Steve said, you know, most junior companies have just been focusing on that. It looks so great, but yeah, we don't want to build things up too much either. The undertaking, I think for me today is that we will drill the Gossan this year. We might do some aeromag before as well just to try to understand it, but it is a priority in a world where exploration is itself a priority. DSO, Tivan, as I said, right at the top, focus now is on Molyhil.
And with our Japanese partners, they really want us to preserve the Sandover Fluorite Resource for assets as well. It's that important for Japan, what we're working on. It really, really is. The ability for us to not just hit these 97% specs, but to do so without arsenic, and without other forms of impurities, which are debilitating. It'll become clearer through the first half of this year why that's so important to Japan, and in a sense, they don't want us to, you know, to waste the resource on DSO at Speewah, which would be for such a low-value strategic use, so Molyhil as well is going super fast and we don't want to have to duplicate permissions, approvals, negotiations of ILUAs and so on and so forth, so that decision's been made and, Molyhil, is the way to go.
Let's see if we can drill out tens of millions of tons at Sandover Fluorite. If we present that to market, I think that's already a very, very important part of the narrative. Paul, I think I've spelled a lot out on the critical minerals vision in Central Australia. So I'll move straight on to the last slide. Drilling in Timor, as I said, this year is all about building the team out, building the capabilities, making sure we settle that big transaction at the end of last year and then moving towards drilling next year. We should be able to deploy lots of other forms of surveys this year, which will give us further guidance. I'd say, you know, I'm looking forward to some of these early samples coming back from the new tenements as well.
Like we know quite a lot from the vendors, like a lot. And put it this way, like we're really excited to have taken control of that ground. And I think there will be pretty much immediate gratification once we're able to do a bit of extra work and start putting the samples through the workflows that we've already established. Yeah. Sandover AI, we've discussed this and quick shout out to Norm, who's helped us locate the Pimple. Roman and his team are still quite bullish on Aileron in terms of that lead silver prospect. And that's the reason why he really wanted to push on and to do these extra electromagnetic surveys. And we're paying for that. And that's fine because again, we've got the resources and we always want to defer, I think, to Roman's expertise. He views the world differently than conventional geologists.
We want that diversified view. So we did pause things, you know, for about six months, just while we were working through our other priorities, last year. But we're back at it now. And with the support of Central Land Council and again, all of that community work that we're doing, we hope we can find other things in Central Australia. So we'll be doing everything we can. And, Silver Rock, I did predict it was going to take off. So hopefully we can find it. I'm not that bullish on silver up here, just to be clear. Unlike other critical minerals, you will see a huge amount of desilvering in the next couple of years. It is easy for established mines to bring on silver. There'll be an attempt in China to remove silver from PV, like photovoltaic supply chains.
And so I do think you'll see a cyclical supply reaction in silver of really significant magnitude. But it'd be really fun to find. There'll be some critical minerals where that can't happen. Tungsten in the west and fluorite, the stuff that we're really committed to. So yeah, let's go find silver. But we've got a lot of other things we're hunting for as well in Central Australia. And I hope that this wave of central, of critical minerals, you know, interest can ultimately transmit into sustained project development in Central Australia for the first time. Again, that was a really important motivation for me commencing with Tivan. And I want to stay that, stay that particular course. Vanadium is still on the outer. I don't necessarily expect it to be included in the strategic reserve.
We are talking to WA government about it because they're putting together this Kalgoorlie battery initiative, and so that could lead to, you know, some additional focus on it from us this year, but we've got so much else on and it still, in my view, doesn't satisfy the commercial requirements to build a project, not Speewah as such, but that there's insufficient offtake market to satisfy what you need to satisfy to get through a big project development round, so if it is ever to happen in this country, I do think it will be Speewah because we'll have Speewah fluorite up and running by then with all of that infrastructure and all of those, you know, the aspects of mine development that can create natural synergies, particularly towards mine closure, but that's some distance away. It might be quite some distance away at Speewah.
So maybe then vanadium will have its day. But it's the least of our priorities. And if we get to the end of the year and we've moved five of our projects decisively along the Lassonde Curve and vanadium is still sitting in the orphan, that's fine. That's absolutely fine and probably expected, to be frank. Last question from Bower Three on corporate. Yes, options. We have seen the chatter online. We are aware that the options have gone into the money. That's great. The bonus options were issued to shareholders back two or three years ago as a gesture from the board and an invitation to stay the course. I was always confident that we'd turn it. I don't know where the share price is going to go over the next three, six months.
I do think it's very, very likely that many of these options will be exercised, and that's great. If they've got intrinsic value, fantastic, and it does mean obviously cash into Tivan and that we can head towards that fully diluted market cap, which I referred to at the AGM, noting that because most of these options were issued to existing shareholders, that we're still going to have this fantastic constituency composition of the company, which again is Aussie retail, moms and dads, particularly moms and dads that had a really hard time for a decade at TNG now making good, along with this offshore smart money cohort. So it's a really interesting dynamic. It's, I'm glad as well that our team is participating. They bloody well deserve to. I think it's a really perfect setup, you know, for sustained wealth creation.
I hope as well in some ways that for some of our shareholders that Tivan might be a little reminder that capitalism can work. Like I do worry now in Australia that with the tax rate where it is, some of the messaging from government, the next generation as well, I don't know if they understand how to create wealth in this country or that it should even be a priority. Tivan's, you know, is going to be a wealth creating company. We already are, but we'll have our own way of doing things, which is to say that we do want to share the benefits of our projects, really overtly as well with community, with traditional owners, as well with, in Timor-Leste, with community up there with the country.
So we've got our own way of doing things, but we are very much about, you know, wealth creation here. And I think we're just only starting to see that, but I think it will be sustained and the options will be part of that journey. So we can't give financial advice. We will update the website. There will be some smoothing of these processes. That is to say, it's likely that we'll ask Computershare to set up like a registry, or like a BPAY where you can just go in and exercise your options and it'll be almost like an SPP. We won't do it right yet, but we can still handle the manual options being sent to us once a week. But if at some point we get flooded, we'll, we'll set up a, like a website and we'll, we'll do it properly. Maybe that's March, April.
I'm not quite sure. We are monitoring it. If you have any concerns or questions, you can write to us. And if we get, you know, into Q2 and we've got thousands of people exercising options, that's great. That means we've been successful. And so bring that on. So with those thoughts, I will wrap up here. I think we had a bit of a mishap at the start of the call, but I can see that a lot of people have stayed the duration, but a couple hundred people on the call. So I'm glad you found the link. I've gone a bit over time today. It was deliberate. I normally say an hour, but I wanted to give people a good sense of what we're trying to achieve at the start of the year, and it's complex.
You know, we're working across effectively five or six different projects and there are different stages of development and we're looking to ramp the company like really, really significantly. We're in a great position to do so. There's a real dedicated drive, you know, at the company. I can sense that everyone's come back ready to, ready to go. There's a lot of focus and determination in the team and there's a lot of muscle memory from, from last year. So sitting at the start of the year, I'm very, very optimistic on, on what's ahead. I know that we'll be assessed on, you know, certain corporate milestones, and that's well and good. But I can also assure you that I'm, I'm holding a few cards very close to my chest and there will be some massive surprises this year, in a good way.
So it's going to be fascinating to see how it all plays out, and as always, we're very much focused on delivering for shareholders and stakeholders. That concept of alignment has been true north for Tivan since we started and even sitting here today at the start of our fourth year. It remains, you know, true north for the board, for our team and, hopefully for all of you, so I'll leave it there at the end of a long investor briefing. Thank you very much for being here tonight. Spread the word, share the replay. It'll be up later tonight on YouTube. Thank you.