Good afternoon, everyone. For those that don't know, my name is Grant Wilson, Executive Chairman of Tivan Limited, dialing in from Sydney today, which is unusual for me. But flying out tonight to Tokyo and to Chiba for a very important 10-day trip to Japan. Rob Gerrard, our CEO, named a few months ago, is coming along. Yeah, really important trip coming up and delighted to be here. It's our fourth investor briefing for the year. We do pride ourselves at Tivan on being open and transparent and timely, forthright in our communications. That goes for good weather and fair weather. Whilst the company's not under really any form of pressure at the moment, obviously, the share price has been under pressure for a couple of months.
I wanted to make sure I showed up before this trip and before this month, because I've got to head from Japan back to Perth for a bit and then straight to Europe for this Fluorine Forum and various other events in the Middle East as well. So October's a really heavy month of travel. We've got the AGM set up for mid-November, but this will be our final call. However, I wanted to make sure tonight that I had that opportunity to provide reassurance and insights and probably to debase a few myths that have been popping up online as well. Without further ado, we'll jump straight into the slides that we prepared and yeah, great to see. Really strong showing tonight as well. I can see how many people already are online. So bear with me.
These slides were up on the ASX just 10 minutes ago. We start, as always with our classic mission slide. All great companies have a mission. We defined this mission a couple of years ago now at the AGM. It is distinctive. Most mining companies will build themselves around a particular project or a particular mineral. We're building ourselves around a specific geographical region. That's very deliberate. We think mining increasingly is driven by social license as really, absolutely a fundamental parameter. And this part of Australia is one of the most challenging areas and one of the most underdeveloped areas for that reason. Similarly, Timor-Leste we'll come to. We might need to actually upgrade our mission statement at the AGM to ensure that Timor-Leste is pride of place. We've made great strides over the past two years.
Really proud of the work up there and yet tremendous excitement into year-end about our maiden drilling campaign. Most people know this. We do have new listeners as always. So just again, highlighting that this mission really galvanizes the whole company. It's why we're here. We take it seriously. It's not just something on the cornflakes packet. It really is the foundational aspiration of the company. So for Speewah, most of the slides today are on Speewah. That's appropriate because that's most of our energy. It's most of our capital expenditure. It is our flagship project. I was quite bemused to see recently some comments online suggesting that we'd lost focus on Speewah. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've essentially been there myself for about six months now. We've pulled through some of the most important and arduous environmental baseline studies and reporting.
We're knee-deep in traditional owner negotiations as we go. As you'll see, it's really a whole of company effort to get the project to a final investment decision. I wanted again, to show up tonight and provide great clarity on what that looks like and the work that the team is putting in to achieve that very important outcome. Before I do that, though, this is the journey. Again, for those that are newer to the company, Tivan's been around for three and a half years now. 2023 was characterized by this change of control and the important transformation that the company had to go through to survive. That was extremely difficult. You'll see towards the end of 2023 and 2024, we started to already recognize the importance of working closely with the traditional owners and the Kimberley Land Council.
There's a series of agreements through that period which provided the frameworks that we're still operating within to this day. The start of 2024 was the big pivot to fluorine away from vanadium. That was absolutely crucial for the development of the company. Essentially in January, we've been working on Speewah Fluorite dedicated for three years. That's important, I think, to emphasize because of the handful of successful critical minerals projects that have been built in Australia this decade. There's only six, by the way. The traditional project development timeline is somewhere between seven and 10 years. We're three years in. You could argue we're three and a half really, because a lot of the work that we did in 2023 on environmental baselines for Speewah Vanadium were thankfully translatable to Speewah Fluorite. We got a bit of a head start there.
We've been absolutely at it since working as fast as we can to build not just a new project, but a new project with a new critical mineral for Australia in an environmentally sensitive area, in a culturally sensitive area. We've done so with great respect. We've made tremendous progress working through critical stage gates. It's not just with timeliness but with comprehensiveness. I think anyone that looks at our PFS and FS will see some of the best reports that have ever been published in the sector on a global basis, I would argue. At the same time, we've brought in key partners being Japan and ETFS, and that goes to our capital management strategy. In 2026, you'll see great progress with our Feasibility S tudy. We are in the process of wrapping up drilling. We'll show that slide in a second.
Really a big push now to localize the project. We have been on the ground the whole time, but you'll see we've opened an office back in end of Q1. The community forums that we hosted recently were really, really well attended. As I've mentioned, I've been there extensively really throughout this period. We've got local presence now as well with Anthony Martin, who's a proud [inaudible] man, and we're very proud to have him on the team. He's quite a legend. He represented Australia at the Sydney Olympics in weightlifting. He's a great person, great personality, and really proud that he's part of the local push now. We are coming into the really clutch period, and I'll narrate that very carefully. There are reasons why some things can't be said.
There's confidentiality agreements left and right at a time like this that goes for Japan, goes for the Australian government, goes for the Torres Strait Islands. I will do my best, my level best to work within those constraints to give everyone a sense that I think they need at the moment, that we are absolutely on track in developing a new critical export for Australia and for the benefit of Japan especially. In terms of drilling, 37,000 m. We're wrapping up. We've probably got about two weeks to go. You'll see a really heavy emphasis on the project development drilling through 2025. We needed to start with metallurgy, geotech, hydrology, especially, to ensure that we had the foundations to build the project and to pull through the studies.
We then started on the very extensive process of in-field drilling, and that is principally to upgrade the quality of the resource. We did have a small but nonetheless meaningful percentage of inferred material, not just in the mineral resource estimate, but in the pit, and that's not something that we wanted, and it's certainly something that Japan wouldn't sign off on. The reason for that is you can't carry inferred material into an ore reserve under the JORC classification and guidelines. Hence, we needed to translate all of the inferred material into indicated. That often results in a lot of tons being lost. I can't say too much, but we're not on that track. We have seen a lot of the results. We have not yet pulled through the mineral resource estimate, the new one, because that's independently done by SRK.
We're feeling relatively confident and hopefully we'll be in a position to publish another mineral resource estimate at Speewah in the next month or so. It's that mineral resource estimate, the highest quality one so far, that will be carried into the DFS. As part of the DFS, we'll then be able to punch out the maiden ore reserves. This is all new territory for Australia. This project was known about for 100 years. Mining leases, I think, were in the late 1980s. Various people tried and failed. I think our team's done a remarkable job. Great props to our geo team especially. It's a huge amount of work. Again, I won't say too much about some of these semantics that are online about how far we drilled or how big the program was. I can tell you that it's top 10.
I'd say it's seventh in the history of the Australian critical minerals sector. Not trying to score points there. Really was just trying to give the shout-out to my guys. They're absolutely busting themselves in the field for the company, for shareholders. All sorts of constraints and dangers at Speewah. Some of the inclines are really, really challenging. Obviously, we've got the seasonality to deal with. We are extremely remote. Then we've got the cultural monitoring overlay, which has had its complexities from time to time. Lightning strikes, bushfires, you name it. This is not an easy thing to execute. So in embellishing, if I did the scale and the challenges of the project for a young company to be able to deliver it within budget on that timeframe, it's a remarkable achievement and I wanted to give credit to the team. We are wrapping up.
We are really pleased about that. It is not to say there will not be more drilling in the years ahead. We hope and expect that as we work through the finalization of the Indigenous Land Use Agreements, that will make it easier for us to mobilize for additional exploration drilling, for example. We will have what we need, we expect, in terms of the mineral resource estimate, the ore reserves and all this work will have been achieved in effectively two seasons, which is a really tremendous outcome for a young company. The broader strategy at Speewah and even for Tivan warrants re-emphasizing because I really feel, particularly at the moment, it is not actually understood what we are trying to achieve with the company.
We have such a distinctive starting point with the change of management campaign. We have a completely different way of raising money and managing capital than pretty much everyone in this sector. I have only nominated a couple of peers here. There are a couple of companies there that are, all those companies are very well known. The first three have already achieved FID. Liontown is obviously in production. Arafura has declared an FID this year, even though they have got a long, long way to go to actually construct and commission. Core Lithium was in production, failed, had to go back into care and maintenance, had to recapitalize and Chalice Mining production. Just some high profile peers and wanted to emphasize here the salient difference between what we are trying to do for these companies and pretty much everyone else in the sector and Tivan.
When I took control, the company was on the brink of failure. That is obvious, and it is acknowledged, I think, and I hope by everyone. I have said repeatedly that the company was right on the point of liquidation. Had we not been able to acquire Speewah, that would have been the decision. There was really no way through. We had about AUD 5 million in the bank after the previous Board paid out previous management, which was one of the wildest things that I had seen. Even this analysis, book value or carrying value, you can see. We ultimately had AUD 120 million of accumulated losses from previous management, and they had raised AUD 135 million over 15 years or so by book value, call it AUD 15 million. That was the starting point. That was what we had. We have achieved a hell of a lot. You can question this or you can question that.
That journey is remarkable, and the way that it has been achieved is through extreme capital discipline and differentiated capital management, particularly the use of joint ventures. We have bought a whole series of assets on the cheap. Speewah, both vanadium and especially the fluorite, Molyhil Tungsten , Sandover Fluorite, all of our projects in Timor. Mostly funded by cash, but definitely some shares as well. Obviously, Speewah, but even Baucau recently and parts of Molyhil can be paid back in Tivan shares. A very creative deal path to get a portfolio of early-stage credible projects in minerals that people did not understand when we did. We were several years ahead of the curve in understanding that critical minerals would broaden out from lithium, driven by the secular breakdown between China and the U.S.
We narrated that extensively at the time. We went to Japan well ahead of everyone. We went to Timor again. These are bold decisions right at the top, risk-seeking decisions to turn around a failed company with minimal capital expenditure. We are parlaying that same mentality and framework into what we are looking to achieve with Speewah. As you can see from these slides, we have only raised AUD 65 million. Look at that in comparison to these other companies. Some of those companies are still raising big sums to try to raise the equity for their projects or to recapitalize. They have all racked up massive accumulated losses, which tend not to feature when they declare their final NPV. That just gets left behind. What we are trying to do, particularly at Speewah, is ultimately have a carrying value of only around AUD 50 million in terms of Tivan's share.
Then move into construction and ultimately profitability, making it much easier for us to achieve what I have referred to there as MOIC, a multiple of what was actually invested. That is ultimately the measure of value creation that you need to focus on. The concern I have with these companies and many other companies in the sector is just how capital-intensive they are and the inability of those companies to ultimately make the money back and then multiples upon that. You need to keep the denominator down hard, and that is what we are doing. How are we doing it? Yes, we did win international partnerships and critical minerals grant. Ultimately what we did was aggressive joint ventures, selling some of the projects that we had bought on the cheap.
Being able to use early proceeds to finance project development, to defray costs of the team as well, to ring-fence equity at FID, raise potentially debt against it, and work through project development without issuing hardly any capital at all. When you get to profitability, you can use those profits to continue the journey. So it is a fundamentally different mindset. We are not sitting here dependent on brokers trying to raise big legs, pretending that we have the capability to raise everything ourselves. We had to start from where we did out of circumstance. I think we have done an incredible job in recapitalizing the company. All the shareholders that could or should have been written off were made whole. Share price really went ballistic on high volumes, up until the last couple of months, providing everyone who wanted an exit with an exit.
We are here now with a great foundation and an opportunity to build what is going to be, I think, a generational company. It really does come down to differentiated management style, an extreme version of capital discipline. I think because we do have hardcore financial people at the company, myself, for example, Guy Debelle, I would include Jason. There are others. We do have a very different mindset in terms of how we think about capital. Our aim ultimately is to raise only what we need to get through, and to power on, and to generate a very, very significant multiple on capital, and to have a template where we can do that again and again. Please keep that in mind as we move forward. I would argue that we are working faster and with less resources than anyone.
I think ultimately it is that productivity that will drive super normal returns at Tivan, and I would argue we have already achieved that. To go from where we got control of the company to where we have got to already is an incredible achievement. Now, it is not enough. I am not saying it is. I think people sometimes should reflect on what we endured at the start, how resilient the company is. Right at the moment as well, as I said at the top, I certainly do not feel under any form of pressure, not like we did for those first two years. That was a very difficult time, and there is a very clear distinction between where the company is at and the vagaries of the share market.
As I will come to in a sec, I think there is a very clear sort of fallacy at the moment, which hopefully I can address conclusively on this call. Again, please keep that in mind. We are building Tivan completely differently. We are jealous about capital management, and we are striving to generate a really, really significant multiple over the years ahead. In terms of FID, we have put together a very comprehensive slide here. We are aiming to provide real transparency. The last grid chart I think that we populated was probably back in Q2. We have said FID is achievable this year. It still is technically. Is it optimal? That is a very different conversation. We have said DFS in Q4. Will we get there? Yes, we will. We are absolutely on track, particularly because the guys pulled through with the drilling.
The engineering is on track, and we will be in a position to have achieved two massive milestones for the project in 2026, like an FS and a DFS. Very few projects in the critical minerals sector hit a DFS in Australia. Again, the quality of our work, I think is extremely high. To get to an FID, you have actually got a choice. You have got a choice. If we want to rip through, I do have the leverage, I think under the Joint Venture Agreement. I will not go into the specifics, and we do know that there are various stakeholders in Japan that want us to go as fast as humanly possible. There are risks. The risks are easily sort of illustrated on that top right slide.
That is just a schematic, but the basic point is clear, and you will see some empirical evidence on the next slide, which backs this up. For those that go fast, and there are some crazy suggestions at the moment, particularly amongst the different people pretending that they can go as fast as next year even. When you fast track, you are taking almighty set of risks in terms of variability, test work, basis of design. Invariably, and especially in critical minerals, what that will mean is that one or two years down the track, you will not reach your design capacity. The project will fail, and it will need recapitalization. There are many, many examples of this in Australia. The Dolphin Tungsten Mine, Abra in lead and silver, Thunderbird in mineral sands, Core Lithium, another example, completely undercapitalized, completely rushed and failed.
It is a false economy in some ways. If you go as fast as you can and you cut corners, you will end up with massive flaws. The cost of recapitalization in years one, two, three will be so significant that it will destroy the company. You will end up with changes of management. You will end up with debt to equity swaps. You will have all sorts of problems if you have a look at what has happened at some of those projects that I have just mentioned. Whilst I am risk-seeking, and I have just explained the journey that we have been on, I am not reckless and I will not drive an expedited FID just for kicks. Tivan will not be succumbing to pressure from random pseudonymous commentators online. It is completely irrelevant to us. We are focused on building a robust project, the start of a new industry.
We understand that Tivan will be assessed on how the project scales, whether it reaches nameplate and when. How compliant it is in terms of our environmental commitments. How well we integrate with our traditional owner implementation committees and groups. How well the project is received in the East Kimberley. These are the metrics that we care about. I do not care if FID is in December or February. I care about building a great project, and I care about making sure that Tivan is on a sustainable journey. Whilst I believe we will achieve many, many milestones that can contribute to FID in the next couple of months, and that will create a lot of news flow and I think a lot of momentum, it will probably be me tapping on the brakes to make sure that we are absolutely as ready as we can be.
You can see from the table below, and we are being, again, as transparent as we can here. We are locked down confidentiality agreements, as I said, everywhere. Just have a look at that table to give you a sense of the work involved from our point of view. Like what a robust FID is. Not a bullshit FID, a robust FID, a Japanese FID, if you will. Not to neglect ETFS. I have mentioned before, Graeme Tuckwell is a very, very sophisticated investor. He has been around the traps in resources projects. None of us want to sign off on a huge, huge capital investment unless we have locked down everything that we can within reasonable time frames. I emphasize again, team effort. We have built the team out.
This is not just me anymore or a group of five of us at the start as it was for the first two years. We have scaled with some of the best operators in the country. We have brought people in with experience that is from all of the major companies. You can see the owners here across geology, which is largely de-risked now. I would argue that technical engineering is nearly there. Ellin and myself on government is a key portfolio. Myself, Anthony, Maddalyn on native title, cultural heritage, land access, tenure, commercial, that is myself and Jason. Regulatory, Mike, Chris, Daniel as well. Our Principal Environmental Advisor. Rob Gerrard, Jason, throughout some of the commercial spheres. Risk, insurance, all these other things. You have probably got 40- 45 items there on our FID checklist. That might sound like a lot. It is, actually. That is down from several hundred. Okay?
We're chopping wood, and we will continue to do so through Q4. I'm absolutely of the view that the DFS will be delivered, especially to Joint Venture partners. In terms of the risks around these processes, I think wherever it says low or moderate, what we're trying to say there is that we're really in control of large parts of the outcome sets in terms of not having much reliance upon third parties. Where it says high, those are much more laden with risk, I would say. That is to say, we need to wait to hear what the EPA's got to say about our 6,000 pages of incredible work. We have strong expectations in terms of how the project will be assessed, and we believe the work is done and the quality is absolutely there, and the impacts are absolutely manageable and quite negligible.
Until we hear from the EPA, we can't be sure. This is sort of the chessboard. Again, one of the reasons to break it open like this is to give everyone a sense of the tremendous amount of work that's involved. Absolutely push back against this suggestion that we've somehow lost focus on Speewah. That was one of the most sort of mind-boggling comments. There were many threads that kicked up. I still don't really understand where it came from or how it could be credibly understood. Then with the key deliverables, that's not everything. All right? That's just giving people a flavor. You'll see many of those outcomes are sort of negotiated as well. All of us are involved. It's really a firm-wide effort.
It's brought us all together as well because when you're working in such a unified way, you do get that synergistic response, and everyone really feel like they're working towards something important. Everyone knows that we can only go as fast as the slowest link in the chain as well, so there's a tremendous amount of coordination that has to go on. But yeah, listen, we're on track, and we're in control of the time frames as well, in my view. If we make decisions, they will be largely decisions that have been made in consultation with our Joint Venture partners, approved by the Board of Tivan, and communicated on a timely basis. I would say, I will be able to firm up guidance even further in the next two weeks. I hope this is enough.
I hope this placates people, and I hope people can see what we're trying to do and the reasons we're doing it. It's very important for people to understand. This approach is the best approach for Tivan. The idea of going faster is suboptimal in some ways. You can destroy NPV or take ungodly risks. We don't want to do those things. We want the optimal outcome for shareholders. Again, if that takes a little bit of patience with timely comms, then I think all shareholders really should get behind that. I really hope they do. I think invariably, people have been very supportive of our approach throughout. I think that's ultimately where it's going to go. The next two weeks, we will get really important feedback from the traditional owners and the KLC.
They have been briefed for about six weeks now on the full gamut of environmental documents. We had shared that progressively for 12 months. The really important documentation has been in their hands, and only their hands, for the past six weeks. We will receive their feedback. I think as well, this trip to Japan. You will see a slide in a sec, which is one of the most bullish things that has happened at Tivan this year, which apparently no one understood or saw. That is going to be very important in terms of our distribution strategy in Japan, and it is sort of really fresh news. We will see how we go with key commercial discussions in Japan for the next 10 days, as well as key sessions with the Japanese government.
Hopefully, whether it is through Twitter or certainly at the AGM, the updates will be frequent as always. Again, I think this is my fourth investor briefing for the year. I communicate pretty much every day on Twitter. Our ASX channel runs red hot all the time. I think there is a tremendous amount of visibility, and hopefully, people can understand the strategy and the thinking. The final thing I would say is that because many of these items here, even though I cannot even explain all of the counterparties, are negotiations. I do not necessarily want to go into some of these rooms with a sense of urgency. Because to get out of a room when you are the person bringing the urgency, you are going to have to pay more than you want to.
The best thing to do for a whole range of reasons, technical, strategic, tactical, diplomatic as well, because we are at the top table as between Australia and Japan, is for everyone just to stay cool. Trust us. Given the journey that we have been on, I really believe that it is warranted. Let us take care of business. Let us take care. We will. Okay, next. This is a very salient slide, which I have pulled from SGS. I saw this presentation earlier in the year, and I made a mental note to share it with people at some point in time.
I mentioned when I was just going through those remarks earlier, that there is strong empirical evidence, particularly in the critical minerals sector, that if you rush it, you do a butch job, you are going to pay and you are going to suffer, and you are going to get recapitalized or worse. McNulty curves are a very classic empirical tool. I think we introduced the Lassonde Curve like two or three years ago. I think people have embraced that framework. This is a new framework for you as we head into commissioning, construction, and building projects. The real deal. The way to think about the McNulty Curve is just a measure of time versus ability to achieve capacity, nameplate, essentially. Very few McNulty I outcomes where they have been successfully scaled within a year. There is a stalking horse top right. That is a gold project.
Gold McNulty Curves are generally more stable because it is well-worn territory. There are some outstanding projects like the HPAL project in Indonesia, top line second from the right. You will see many, many failures as well and some really huge misses. Again, it could be because they have botched the test work, it is because they have felt pressure from stakeholders to go too fast. They have not done enough front-end engineering. There are all sorts of things that can go wrong. Particularly in novel complex metallurgy, the risks are significant. Many of these rarest projects have limped out of the gate. Some of them have taken five, 10 years. Even successful projects like Mount Weld is that. Have a good look through. The lesson is obvious. It is obvious. That is if you rush, you can come unstuck and you can lose it all.
Not just the project, but the company. As I said at the top, I am a risk-seeking individual. No one would have done what I did three or four years ago, I do not think. In fact, I know. But I did it. I am proud of it. Here to tell the tale. But I am not reckless. Never have been. I measure everything in terms of risk and reward. The thing about FID is that you are putting down a huge chunk of capital, AUD 300 million, AUD 350 million. Therefore, by definition, you have material downside. Material downside. It is not like buying an asset like what we have been doing for AUD 1 million or AUD 2 million or AUD 10 million or even AUD 20 million. The upside on those decisions is tremendous.
At FID, you have got all sorts of people in the project finance pool with all sorts of different risk spectrums and all sorts of different payoff profiles. If you get it wrong and like these purple curves that is getting it wrong, you are screwed. Particularly as the project proponent, you will be hurt in ways that you do not even understand in the years ahead. I will not take those risks lightly. Again, the clear message from myself tonight from the Board and I expect from JV partners is that if we want to push through and declare a preemptive FID because the demand for what we are doing is so strong and it is so pressing and the Chinese export controls are really starting to crunch. We could look at it.
But I think what you will find, particularly from me, is prudence, and a real desire to lock down all of those items on our FID checklist as much as possible and to declare harmonious FID very early next year. I think that is essentially the base case at this point. Okay. Look at this headline. It is an amazing headline. I am really surprised no one picked it up. September 16. I did not tweet it because I wanted to save this up. I think last year I said on one of these calls, probably September when ETFS joined us, "This is the most bullish thing that has happened in the history of Tivan or this year." I think this is hugely bullish. Massive.
METI, in their wisdom, has made a decision to use the supply assurance plan to effectively contribute a large component of CapEx for a new AHF facility that is going to be in Ube City with Central Glass. That is a tremendously important development for us. Why? Because for two or three years, we have been the only greenfield project in the world moving forward credibly in fluorite. The whole time we have been said publicly saying that we are doing this in order to distribute prescribed tonnage of acid spar to customers of Japan. That is on all our materials for two years. Listen, I do not want to say too much, but if you read the press release carefully, like those quotes, that is even very un-Japanese language, I would say, especially using the C word so publicly China.
Literally describing the very raison d'être that I have been publicizing and pushing for two years. We saw all of this very, very clearly before anyone, and we know how important our project is. I think this decision, more than anything that I could say, demonstrates how important the fluorite value chain is to Japan. You have not just got Central Glass saying it. You have got the Japanese government kicking in AUD 160 million to co-finance as a grant a new AHF facility. I will not go on. I think there will be those followers online that will understand the significance. Maybe they can go back to some of my tweets from March and find a few photos. Pro, thinking of you. But yeah, guys, this is massive. If there is an opportunity for Australia and Japan to work together collaboratively in terms of elevated cooperation, not just upstream, but midstream. Wow.
Wow. Okay. Have a good think about this. I think this is strongly corroborative of everything I have said. We have had some questions around why have not you finalized the offtake? Well, I hope it is clear now why. I hope it is clear. All right. As I said before, we are in multiple commercial negotiations at the same time, and sometimes you can get a little bit, or not even a little bit, a dramatically different and more beneficial outcome with a little bit of patience. A little bit of patience, okay? We have known about this for some time. We are delighted to see a public recognition of it. It is a massive announcement and it will be foremost in our thinking over the next couple of weeks as we head to Japan. To finalize, sorry, final comments. On Speewah because it is already less than half an hour.
We are very focused on embedding the project in the local community. I have been in and out of Kununurra more times than I care to think. I have been staying there for extensive periods of time since April. We really value our community relationships. We hosted these forums in Wyndham and Kununurra. Very important that we did that at the time that we did it as well. I feel like we have got the town right behind us. The towns, they know how important the project is, and I think our team has really built great rapport. The challenge will be to really drive to include as many locals as possible. We are off to a really good start because some of our key contractors who are coming off Argyle as well are deeply embedded. They are already working with us and for us.
My sincere hope is that we can enmesh the project deeply in the community, and ultimately extend life of mine, and to provide a real opportunity for the community to benefit economically, socially, and for the traditional owners to really have an opportunity to break the cycle of Indigenous poverty that is in the region. It is the poorest part of Western Australia by some distance, and there is a lot of social issues. I think the Nganjuwarr determination and the claimant group coming together in July was just such a wonderful thing, and I think there is a unification of different parts of the mob going on pretty much in real time. We want to contribute to that, and we really want to make sure that the project has these positive externalities as we go through.
Localization is a word that you will hear more and more from us into next year. Okay. That is a wrap on Speewah. There are obviously questions which I will pull through. The purpose of this monologue at the start is, again, to give that reassurance. Hopefully, a number of the comments I have already made will mean that I can skim through some of the questions at the end as well. But yeah, really wanted to drive these points home publicly tonight. Okay. As everyone knows, we are working on two different other areas. Central Australia has been a great year of progress, especially in terms of the scoping study back in Q2, and then really important approval processes. These are really hard-won approvals around Molyhil. Getting the sacred site clearance certificates without impeding the project development pathway was an absolutely critical outcome.
You cannot take that for granted in the Northern Territory. It is a very common occurrence that if and when you work through these processes, whether it is with Central Land Council, or Northern Land Council, or what is known as AAPA, that you can get restricted work areas or sacred site definitions which are adverse. We are extremely pleased and relieved to get through both with Sandover Fluorite and with Molyhil. It is absolute key outcomes. Now, it did take some time, and so right at the moment, we are on track with Molyhil. The big drilling was always going to be next year.
But I would say, and I think we say on the next slide, that we are going to push out the small Walsh's Wall program because it is not critical path, and it has proved actually challenging for such a small program to get what I would say is a quality drilling company this late in the year engaged because it is so far to mobilize, and they have got obviously a lot of other things on. So I think Walsh's Wall will be kicked into next year now. But pretty much everything else is on track. We have applied for significant ground around Molyhil. A couple of areas got freed up. These are contested processes, but I am pretty confident Tivan will prevail. So that is something to look forward to. Then in terms of the joint venture, we are on a very similar path to what happened at Speewah.
For those that remember Speewah, we inked the key terms MOU right at Christmas, I think 2024. We said optimistically it would take three months to get to long-form joint venture documents. We got to March 31 and we had to extend the MOU for a month. Then we finally got everything wrapped up around May 6 or 7 and announced it. One of the key features of that extra month was we had to work through some delays with FIRB, Foreign Investment Review Board. We are pretty much in the same position, and I have had this question, and it is a very fair question about where we are up to here.
My expectation is that, and we have already agreed, that we will extend the key terms MOU probably through to November 15. That extra bit of time will provide the runway we need to get through FIRB, essentially. The documents are shaping really well because we already have the templates from Speewah. The deal is a bit different, but the core of it is the same. Obviously, we have got some strong what is known as RFIs, like requests for information, and these are very extensive because Japan is always so meticulous. I think the thing that is going to push the timeframe a little bit is just FIRB, and that is, again, a third-party component that is really out of our control. The destination is the same. I do not think people should be concerned about it.
I remember when we delayed, or not delayed, but when we did push the MOU at Speewah out a month, people lost their shit online. I would respectfully ask that you do not do this. There is no need to. It was completely unnecessary at that time, and again, here, it is not necessary. It is just ordinary course of business. Stuff takes time. You are talking about seven or 800 pages of legal documentation and very important governmental processes because we are working on a very, very critical project with a foreign investor, and the government is not just going to hand over the keys. They will do their thing, we will do our thing. I think paths will converge, and we are working as normal in terms of the project progression. That is Molyhil. Sandover, we did complete this really, really significant drill program. Again, credit to the team for pulling it out.
Yeah, tremendous outcomes. We think the fact that it is open at depth was a big surprise to us, and it means ultimately that if Japan wants more fluorite, even at a price, it is there. The strikes are massive. We have sort of now drilled up to 200 km . We can see at least 4 km, but there is much likely to be more undercover, and so it is just really a journey now. I would say that we do not think Sandover will be cost competitive with Speewah just because Speewah is so close to the port. It is a reality that Sandover is a long way away from a port, and you would have to move a lot of tons, and each of those tons would probably cost an extra $100-$120, something like that.
It is correct that Speewah goes first, but it is fantastic to have potentially a long duration asset looming on our balance sheet. It does give us that leverage in Japan to be able to say, look, Speewah ultimately may time out at 12 years or 15 years or whatever it is going to be. Over that time, the price of fluorite should just be incrementally higher and higher and higher. The forward curve is definitely in what is known as contango, like the forward price is higher. If we are thinking out 10, 15 years, and if we have drilled this out progressively, jagged it, done the test work, you will be able to move I think seamlessly at that point, even if there is an extra cost for travel.
The reality is this stuff is running out around the world and the demand is ferocious. We are seeing that now that we are into lender's due diligence and so on and so forth. We have updated all of the marketing reports and we can see the supply-demand outlook and we can see price curves now. I will address that in a bit in Q&A. The outlook is extremely good and it is great to have just a long duration asset that is credible. It looks massive. People can do the maths themselves. We are not in a rush. Mollyhil Tungsten is still the priority as the short duration project and obviously with tungsten prices doing what they have done.
Absolutely, the idea is to define this, have it ready, and if and when, provide that continuity to key customers that we would have built such a strong track record with. Noting that the metallurgy and the mineralogy is very, very similar, very similar to Speewah. It has got all the right characteristics once again, which puts us in very, very select territory on a global basis. So lots of progress in Central Australia. Frankly, I would say the most exciting stuff into year-end is going to be Timor. I have said repeatedly that I will be spending more and more time in Timor. It is really important, my presence up there. It is also appropriate. I want to be at the frontier of the company. That is how I can add the most value, I think. We have been working in Timor for nearly two years and we have achieved incredible things.
We are now, I think the largest concession holder. We certainly have the most prospective ground. On this chart, you will see that we have added creatively three different concessions over the past three months, all at pretty much negligible cost. There was an option agreement to get the west of Baucau because we knew that for [Famas], we have been finding incredible copper in terms of surface samples, and we were right up against the boundary. So we approached Fortune and we cut an option deal, which was great and gives us that call option through to mid next year. We worked with government to extend Baucau to the east, and that was on the basis of us finding this huge geophysical target. We call it the spaceship because it is just so massive. We have not even gone on there yet, but we managed to secure the ground.
It was a really remarkable moment because when we briefed the government on what we found, I think in different jurisdictions, different governments would have responded differently. They would have just snaffled it for themselves. But in our case, because we built, I think, so much trust and they value our relationships and capabilities so much, they agreed to use what was a pretty novel section of the mining code and to recognize continuity geologically. On that basis, we were able to extend to the east for no consideration either. That is an incredible win. Then up in Turiscai, we won through a competitive tender, which is sort of the first competitive outcome that we had. Everything else has either been direct or facilitated acquisition. So we have the commanding heights. We are super excited. We have been working hand in glove with community leaders.
I mentioned Major Michael Stone coming on board several times. He is a real difference maker. But I would say the local teams really found their feet as well. As I said before, I am intending to spend more and more time in Timor, let us say. Got two football teams and various other objectives. Building a country is no joke. This is what we are about in Timor, and there is other things that we are working on that are not even being referenced here. So, tremendous opportunity and we absolutely want to max out in terms of the opportunities there. In the very near term, we think we can get a drill rig in from Indonesia in the second week of October. We have pulled through the first phase of environmental approvals in no time flat.
Again, the contrast here, Australia, Timor is just so stark if you are living it, and all of the things that we have to get through in Australia to build a project. The transfer from category C to category B license in Timor took two days. Two days. It was done very, very thoroughly. Very thoroughly. But this is the difference. So, if and when we find something, people will be shocked in terms of how strong the support is and how fast we are able to mobilize. It is partly because the country is young and it has got a very credible government, but it is because it is unified as well. There is a real purpose. They want to build a nation. They are coming out of abject poverty. They are coming out of conflict. There are great opportunities. So the start is drilling.
We will drill probably five to six holes at what we refer to as the Scorpion project. Casa Tivan is on this map. That is our forward operating base. It is only probably 25 minutes from the target. We think we can get there, and commence drilling end of the month. The rain will come, but because we have got this super El Niño event, which looks like a catastrophe for the planet, it is actually likely that the monsoon will be delayed in Timor this year. So we are racing against the clock a bit. We chose this prospect because it is highly accessible. We probably got four or five other drill targets into next year. So Ossu Bridge, [Famas], [Ovelala] in the mountains in Turiscai, potentially the Spaceship.
Part of the objective of this campaign is just to prove that we can fast-track drilling, drill five, six long holes with a man-portable rig, build the entire supply chain, have community on board, and then rinse and repeat. In other words, we're obviously hopeful here. We should find out by Christmas if we've hit what we've hit. We have magnetic data coming in as well from the drone survey. We've got conviction. We've also got four or five shots next year, which is really exciting. That's the maturity that we've built throughout the project suite over the past two years of really, really challenging work. We're in a good spot, and listen, we're excited. But again, I just want to emphasize that my presence in Timor will grow and grow and grow.
Again, we're an hour back to Darwin, an hour from Cairns, straight down to Central Australia. The center of gravity for the company is Northern Australia and increasingly Timor as well. Final slides just on corporate. This is our team, continues to grow. I can confirm that we've agreed terms with a CFO. We were inundated. I think we had 55 applicants. We really did get our pick. She's serving out a notice period, and we'll announce that pretty shortly, I think. Excited to have that capability added. Obviously, the geo team is still very large footprint, but you can see how busy we are across all these projects. The executive team, I think I've mentioned on the previous call, but that's been a really, really important development this year, being able to build that out. It's not static.
I think the executive team will change again even before year-end, so letting you know that. Again, when you look at that FID checklist and you see the owners and how much responsibility people have and how we all need to pull together, it explains why the company is shaping in the way that it is. If we are on track, if we head into construction and commissioning next year, this will double, just to give everyone a sense. That's not even including the contractors that'll be working on Speewah. The company's on a really, really significant growth path. We need to hit the milestones as we go. But what a great team we've brought together. The morale is super strong and everyone's just fully committed to each other and to the projects.
I'm already nearly an hour in, not quite, which is longer than usual. I hope, because we do have quite a few questions, that many of these questions will have already been addressed in what I've said. Nonetheless, as I've said many times before on these calls, AMA is really fundamental, particularly at this time. We don't censor questions. We did have a few questions this time around that we took out. That was only because they were right at the limit of what I would regard as sort of racially charged, and Tivan will never countenance that. That's a heads up. That's probably the only time that we've pulled some things down. Otherwise, we're here and we're, as I said at the top, here to answer questions, always accountable to shareholders, even if there's pressure on the share price, especially if there is. Time to show up.
That's part of the mantra, and you'll always have that from me and from Tivan. Without further ado, again, if I've answered this on the way through, then yes, I will quickly skip because there's four pages of questions and I want to be able to add value in the last 15 minutes of the call. In terms of being on track, yes, I've explained this extensively. DFS very much on track, like November, December with JV partners. I think FID by choice is Q1. Contractual close is actually different again. Contractual close is when can you draw down the money, essentially, a financial close. That can take another six weeks, but there's ways to bridge things like that. Yes, essentially, absolutely is the answer. Brock, I think again, pretty much addressed that, Brock, with the big FID slide.
There are many moving parts, but to me it's the approvals, and the LOIs where the third party risk lies, along with the project finance round, which everything is sort of conditional upon. I would say the engineering and geology is extremely mature now. That's why we can confidently go ahead with mineral resource or reserves DFS. That's essentially my view. I think we've received really strong cooperation on the commercial side as well, both in terms of the market studies and the forward curves and the supply-demand outlook, because there really is no supply. This news out of Central Glass, Brock, wow, you would know. You would know how important that could be, or is. How many fluoride end users, Dean? Yeah, great question. Taking away the Central Glass announcement, I think we're in front of 20-25.
I'm heading to Italy, bit of Fluorine Forum at the end of October to meet many of them in person. They are spread across Japan, Korea, India. India, there's a tremendous amount of demand and sort of diffusion. In India, there's many hydrofluoric acid plants. Europe, the U.S. as well. China, obviously the Australian government has its preferences and we are absolutely abiding by them. We have received incredibly strong overtures from China pretty much the whole time, including now Chinese companies working out of Singapore and so on and so forth. We have to be very careful in communicating on that front. Without including China, Dean, I'd say 20-25 is a fair estimate, and I can confirm the project is significantly oversubscribed even without the Central Glass news recently. We feel like we're in a good position for sure.
In terms of NAIF and EFA, I can't say too much here because whilst we made those announcements last year about the fact that we'd moved through to letters of support and matured within NAIF's pipeline. If we are working with them, it's obviously locked down and obviously confidential. You'll have to take that on trust. I think I can say that obviously we're looking to debt finance the project. The project is of clear national significance. The project was one of six named on the Australia-Japan list of elevated cooperation. Of those six, take out Mount Weld because that's built. You've got five. Of those five, Speewah we're miles ahead of anything else in terms of maturity. We are the tip of the spear, I would say, for Australia and Japan in terms of elevated cooperation.
Therefore, draw your own conclusions in terms of EFA and NAIF. Wolfram, yeah. The independent market studies, as you go through what's known as lenders due diligence, they will typically ask for independent market studies of the fluor spar market, and they will typically want visibility on demand and supply, projected supply. They will want a forward curve on fluor spar. I know from time to time, people have criticized our gradual upward sloping forward curve in the PFS, and the FS, even though it was completely transparent and effectively just a trend model, extrapolating the growth in fluorite prices over the past 10- 12 years forward and then capping it at 900. Well, now that we have the benefit of these reports, I would say that they are pretty much on top of what we said. They are very similar.
They have used different methodology to get to very comparable outcome. Very few, in fact, none of them I think forecast outside 2035. I am not sure what they are thinking out that far. Seems like a long way away. That is still within the life of mine horizon as well. As I said before, the market is clearly in contango. All of the independent experts are saying the same thing. The supply appears to be in deficit by 2,000 to 3,000 to 4,000 tons of acid spar over all horizons, and no one can really see where it is going to come from. Particularly high-grade stuff or high-grade stuff with low impurities.
Then if you segment the market and you say, "Okay, we are going to think about this ex-China or ex-China and ex-Mongolia." There is hardly anything in the West and there is tremendous demand, particularly if you include India and the U.S. I think we are in a fantastic position. It gives us a lot of confidence. I still think we are long the call option of China putting in big export restrictions at some point and the market getting fully segmented and us having a divergent moment where we get a real shock and acid spar goes up a lot. But most of the forecasts are just 2%- 4% compound annual growth in price. That adds up. That is fine. I do not really want a shock. I do not actually want right now acid spar to go through the roof because that will induce a supply reaction.
It is much better that we are where we are because no one else is trying to build anything, and then we will be standing alone at some point. So we are in a great position, I think, and I think the independent market studies corroborate and will give comfort to anyone looking to provide debt finance. Brock, that is a long question. I think Brock is asking how much of our head count are we deferring. Yeah, that is a fair question, and I think the big comment I made at the top about jealously guarding our capital and keeping expenses down is partly because a lot of our head count is deferred. If we have, I do not know, 30 or 40 people, probably 40 now on that slide. There are more people being interviewed and coming in all the time. I am actually not sure the number, Brock. I would have to check.
I think I can say, in a sense, there are two large reductions on overhead. The first you're touching upon because it is true that we are able to, and we do actively expense key staff or some part of key staff. It could be 50% of a person or 75% of a person to the joint venture, and therefore the joint venture funds it. Then, of course, we've got 10 or 12 people in Timor, and the cost of labor in Timor is incredibly low. We have gone to great lengths to ensure that our team in Timor is overcompensated versus peers and certainly versus the wage and so on and so forth, which is shockingly low. As a rough guide, I would say one person in Australia is roughly five in Timor.
That's obviously a huge source of reduction of overhead, and it actually gives me grand visions of should we build a back office in Timor? If we're going to end up with 500 people, why not have 200 people there? Because they work really hard. They're super honest. They've got great skills and so on and so forth. So this is all ahead. Yeah, Brock, without getting too far off track, you're right. When we have a second and third joint venture, this will continue. Again, trying to keep the pressures off the head company to avoid head company dilution where possible, but making sure as well that we don't just stuff costs into the JV at the expense of the JV partners. We're always respectful on that front as well.
So it's a balance, but we're able to achieve more than it looks like we should be able to because of these sorts of structures. Then finally, Dean, I've mentioned a bit here. I understand where the question's coming from. I can't say too much other than we are in the market for classic debt financing. Dilution of capital is not likely. I can't explain tonight how I'm solving for what might look like a small gap, but I can confirm that I will solve it, and I don't think any dilution is likely at all. I think we might have surplus capital in the end. So again, a few times on this call, I'm sort of like, "Trust me on that." It's again one of those moments. I can't say anything more, but I've answered your question. Is dilution of capital likely? No. Okay, moving on.
Product and stakeholders and approvals. Again, Dean, no. Trying to push the spec further is not helpful. Any premium is really about the fact that the underlying arsenic contact looks great. We've managed silica down to a good level. But it's really about security of supply. The idea that we're Australian does actually matter. It's not that we're green or anything like that. It's security of supply and the underlying mineralogy. We still have to work through with the continuous pilot and variability. We've got to be able to have confidence that we can hold spec across fresh ore, oxidized material. There's different lithologies and so on and so forth. We are in great shape overall. So I don't think the conclusions are going to change. But there's no merit in trying to either slow down or spend more money to achieve something that is potentially out of reach.
In terms of the next couple of questions, let me just sort of group them because they all go to the same topic, which is traditional owners, which is, again, complicated, sensitive, locked down behind confidentiality agreements. What I can say, and again, I am doing my level best here to communicate, is that Tivan has been on this incredible journey for three or four years. We have inked all sorts of first in kind agreements with traditional owners and land councils and Aboriginal Investment NT, for example, across Central Australia and the Kimberley. We have prioritized as well. If you go back to one of the first slides I showed today, we prioritized our relationships with the KLC and the TOs from the start.
I think in terms of our Indigenous engagement register and all the meetings I did over the first three years, and it was not just in the Kimberley. It was in many places. I think we are up to 90 or 100 different meetings. That is how committed I was from the start because I knew that this was going to be the longest lead item and the most challenging. We have already differentiated ourselves completely. That is recognized at the highest levels of the KLC. I have no doubt about that. The fact that we are invited along with Sumitomo to attend the Nganjuwarr ceremony was really remarkable. I think just the run of agreements that we have signed is just so unusual that it speaks volumes. Now, it does not make it easy. Can I give you absolute surety. Can I give you 100% timing. Can I give you transparency.
Unfortunately, I cannot. These are very sensitive processes. They are culturally complex. The TOs themselves will be watching tonight, and the last thing they want me to do tonight is to break confidence. It has taken several years to build these trusted relationships and to build that deep respect and even to go through this apology, which we recently did. That dates back to some lapses, I guess, or shortcomings that we had right at the start because we were so short-staffed. I want to be clear as well that nothing there involved a statutory breach, like harm to heritage. This is just a contractual matter that we wanted to close off before we reached the final agreements, because we do not want to have things like that carrying over. So we have managed that very respectfully, I think.
I think it built further trust, and these are the challenges that we have to work through. In terms of worst cases and de-risking, we have already avoided the worst case. Again, this is hard to explain for people that are not familiar with Native Title law, not familiar with these remote regions in Australia. The worst case from the start, which I knew for sure, was referred to as what is polygon claim. Because Speewah was not a determined Native Title area, it was sitting there and different people had tried to establish Native Title over a long period of time as well.
There was a risk that if we did not work hand in glove with the Central Land Council to support a specific Native Title determination and a claimant group coming together, the claimant group has got 400 or 500 people, the mob could fracture into its different constituent elements, and they all could start lodging competing claims. That is called a polygon claim, and that happens a lot. When that happens, it fractures everything and you end up in federal court for years. It is interminable because the federal court has to sort through precedent and try to figure out who has got what. That has happened in the Kimberley. It has happened all over Australia, and I knew that was our biggest risk from the start. That is one of the key reasons we went down the path we did, which was to work hand in glove.
To sign up to heritage protection, to sign up to resource protocol agreements with both groups and the KLC from the start, even on mining leases. Again, you have to know the nuances of Native Title and tenure throughout these regions to understand how significant that was. There are other projects in the Kimberley. They are not in non-determined areas, but they were on mining leases, which were granted pre-Native Title Act and pre-Mabo, and so were Speewah's and so were the ones at Tivan. But none of them have done what we did. None of them have gone preemptively to the KLC and said, "Look, we can see that there will be major problems. We want to work respectfully. We want to have the fullest sense of land tenure. We want to support the traditional owners to strengthen their land rights.
We want to have a partnership. We do not want to have an adversarial model, and we do not want transactions, we want trust." We did all of these things for three or four years. That will carry us through. We have already avoided the polygon situation because Nganjuwarr is now recognized, and that is a huge outcome, and it has created tremendous goodwill. I believe the traditional owners that I have been working with the Tonks, and I must have done 15 of these multi-day meetings over the past couple of years. My honest belief is that they want to embrace the opportunity to build better lives for themselves and especially for their kids. I think we are providing that opportunity.
I think it is a unique opportunity, and I think with the strength of the relationships that we have got up and down, I think we will be able to reach agreement on a timely basis. That is probably as much as I can do for tonight. Other than to say we are fully committed. We will say more where we can. The agreement with [Nganjuwarr], which is the mob in Halls Creek, which is for the access road, is extremely close. Essentially, I think we are there. Everyone always wants to learn more about the environmental aspects, and that is understood. But I feel like we are absolutely on track, and I do not see scenarios where that it is this complex area that will ultimately undermine a project or forestall. I think things will come together. That is my firm expectation.
In terms of the environmental stuff itself, I've said, again, if you look at the call back in June, as the first person to say that working next to the Dunham River is challenging. All of the work that we've done has been around de-risking that outcome, managing it, mitigating it. We will be in a position very soon to submit all of that to the EPA, and the EPA will have to make its own decisions, and we look forward to that. We're confident in the work that we've done. We're confident that the impacts are very, very low and manageable, and also that Tivan's having positive impacts at other parts of the project sites, particular like the Alma Gorge. Listen, we're optimistic, but we have to wait and see. There is some spurious stuff floating around.
There's an environmental group in Broome that sort of lost their minds recently. We've offered to brief this group for three years, and they never take us up on it. Then they launched, I think it was a website, and we had all these people from the East Kimberley writing in on the website with positive comments, and they were furiously deleting any positive comments. You're going to get people like this, but they really don't matter. They don't have any standing. It would be a shame and completely counterproductive if they try to transgress upon everything that I just explained, which is like a three to four year journey of Aboriginal self-determination. What a wonderful thing that we're on the cusp of achieving.
I'm not really going to entertain a sort of renegade environmental group. I think they've completely discredited themselves through their actions so far, and I know they have no standing whatsoever in places that matter. Some of the comments are around taking water out of the river or fracking, and it's mindless stuff. We take the environmental portfolio extremely seriously. We've done that from the start. We want to be great fiduciaries. We look forward to sharing everything that we've been working on in the public domain soon. Hopefully, when shareholders see that, they'll understand just the amount of work that we've all done, and that we can discharge those really important obligations with great confidence over the life of the mine. Briefly on the high-level stuff. Got great visibility coming up in Japan. I think I'm giving two speeches at high-profile conferences.
There's a very special event that's being organized between Australia and Japan, which I, again, can't say too much about, but I'm attending and it's very select. We're right at the top table. We're excited to be there. In terms of the critical mineral strategic reserve, yeah, listen, it will be discussed, no doubt about it. I don't think the strategic reserve is vital for an FID. But there's ways that it could be mobilized to ensure there is that elevated cooperation between Australia and Japan. If there's opportunities to prosecute that, then I certainly will. We're in direct touch with the key decision-makers in Australia, obviously. I would say that these moments ahead, these next 2 weeks in Japan are a really important time for everyone. To briefly wrap up. Molyhil, we've addressed that.
Sandover, we are not trying to get to an MRE anytime soon. The next step will probably be an exploration target and then maybe late next year, MRE. It is not that important to invest. We have proven the point, I think, already. Timor-Leste, we have discussed. Josh, I think it will blow people away, not just in terms of hopefully the drilling and what we ultimately discover, but project facilitation, the lack of sovereign risk premia, the willingness of other large financiers in the region. Think here Japan, think here Singapore, where I worked for a long time as well, to fund large-scale projects in Timor-Leste infrastructure. There is so much goodwill towards Timor-Leste. As I said before, we have got the commanding heights. I think it is the biggest risk-reward opportunity that we have got at the company by far. It is just spectacular.
We are absolutely all in and we are excited all the way through next year and beyond. Again, please understand, if you see me spending lots of time up there, it is for very good reasons. It is the most important allocation of my time and presence in terms of what it can mean for project facilitation going forward. Little to say about EARTH AI and Speewah Vanadium. We have done some scopes for EARTH AI, but we have really prioritized the approval processes for Molyhil and Sandover fluorite this year. They are so fundamental to the critical path. The Central Land Council has extreme capacity constraints. You cannot go to the Central Land Council and ask for five or six things. You will get nothing. We focused on what we needed to get through this year. That will free us up more into next year with EARTH AI.
Nothing to say on Speewah Vanadium because we just want to keep the focus of the community and the tradition is on the fluorite and our near-term objectives. Finally, project sequencing. No change here, David. It is Speewah first. We have to prove ourselves there. Molyhil is absolutely second. We cannot utilize the same plant as Molyhil and Sandover fluorite, but we can use the same infrastructure, which is the key. That is the water bores, that is the roads. There can be other things, of course. Listen, that is 10 years away, so we do not need to obsess about those things.
The big decision we made at the start of the year, of course, was not to do two fluorite projects at the same time because we would cannibalize ourselves and because I was still confident that Molyhil was going to. Sorry, that tungsten was going to rip and here we are. Tivan. I think the hint Tivan is like. I think going local in Timor was just such a transformative step for us, and I am very interested in building out larger capabilities for Tivan out of Dili. I really am. I think it could ultimately make us a more efficient company in the long term. In terms of the corporate questions, because I think these are all pretty much the same question, which is why is the share price weak? Let me conclude with this.
I've mentioned at the top, quite forthrightly, that I feel as though there's a narrative fallacy that's set in in the online community. The online community is relevant because it amplifies itself. Even institutions read HotCopper, and then you end up in this odd situation where something that's completely false is presented as consensus, as received wisdom, and it takes on a life of its own. It can even self-perpetuate a little bit. I have superior information than all of you, and I can say hand on heart that where Paul's pressed that question is completely incorrect. It's not an issue of the markets failing to recognize Speewah's value. It's certainly not an issue of execution. Our execution's been perfect all year. I would also push back hard against communication.
I think we've got one of the most progressive communication policies and strategies of any company on the ASX. I would say without the way that we've communicated, the company would have failed a long time ago. The reality is it's got nothing to do with any of those things. The reality is that we've suffered through three shocks, exogenous shocks, things that we could do nothing about pretty much in a row, that led to a really significant supply-demand imbalance in the stock. There was a lot more selling than buying, and there were three sources of supply that all pretty much happened at the same time. Here we're talking about July, August, roughly. The first was retail. Retail, in general, has been a large or net buyer of Tivan's shares in aggregate, like just dribbles in.
What we saw at the turn of the financial year was pretty abrupt, and I think directly attributable to the federal budget and the decision around capital gains tax. I saw some of this in May when it became clear that they were going to change the capital gains tax. But into the new financial year, for whatever reason, a lot of people, I think independently of each other, either received the same tax advice or made the same decision, which was, "Tivan's gone up a lot. We got out of jail here. Grant bailed us out, more or less." Because I did get some of those phone calls from very well-meaning shareholders, even apologizing. I was like, "You don't have to apologize to me.
Just do what you're going to do and do it respectfully." But we saw a very significant wave of retail selling for the first time, and it probably lasted for six to eight weeks. It has abated or finished, I think, but I think it was very specific, and I think it was in response to an exogenous shock. Again, nothing to do with Tivan's management or execution or cost, nothing. The budget changed tax policy in Australia. We have a huge proportion of retail shareholders. They all decided to do the same thing at the same time. What can we do? Second, there's been, and it's referenced here. We don't mention individual shareholders at Tivan out of respect, and we've been very, very respectful the whole time to legacy shareholders.
We've managed a big sell program before with L1 over a prolonged period of time, multiple block trades, incredibly professional relationship for mutual benefit. The account mentioned here sold a lot of shares on market, I think around 20 million shares. It's in our top 20 report, so you can see it. This, again, is not to complain, it's just to explain. So a non-economic decision to liquidate a large number of shares at the same time as retail was doing their thing. A third source of flow was that our broker, our underwriter on the last deal, was raided by the police. I don't mean to laugh, and they are absolutely entitled to their presumption of innocence, and I understand there's been no charges at this point. But obviously, they took down quite a number of shares at AUD 0.30.
If you have that incident, you are going to dispose of those shares very quickly. Again, nothing that we could have foreseen. We were working with that group because they enabled me to price deals aggressively. We wish them well. Obviously nothing to do with us. But it did induce another large sell order in a very short period of time that took us down through some key technical levels. So there you go. The narrative fallacy at the moment is the stock's gone down, we don't understand it. I do empathize in a way, because the scariest thing when you own a stock and the price action's weak is if you don't understand. It causes fear. It causes anxiety. But into that anxiety, we've had trolls, we've had well-meaning shareholders as well, write stuff online that is completely wrong. It has no basis in fact.
As I've explained extensively tonight, we're absolutely on track. There's no skeletons in the closet. Everything is humming. We're also fully funded. We had the foresight. We didn't get giddy at the highs. We did the underwriting deal. So the company's in rude health. I hope you all can see that after this very long and extensive call tonight. As I've mentioned, I think there were three very specific sources of flow that took us lower. Those are things that we cannot control. Even the reference here to block trades, as I've mentioned before, I've organized many block trades for the company. But you can lead the horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Okay? So again, I don't want to mention specifics. It's not appropriate to do so.
But we have done everything we can and more, and I really feel as though what happened was a very localized point in time in response to completely exogenous factors. So I push back respectfully against some of the things that or certainly some of the comments online, and I hope that I've been able to establish and address the run of these questions quite specifically. Because I think you're in that mode of fear inducing fear. Now, can we turn that back to so-called greed? Are there catalysts to wrap up the questions? Yes, of course. But I'm not here tonight to broadcast those. I'm here tonight to provide that assurance. I do believe now the company is really fundamentally undervalued. I think when you see specific flows, and now that I've described them, hopefully people have that comfort.
It actually creates a buying opportunity because for people that are disciplined, that have capital, once they understand the valuation gap that's been created, they can buy in with confidence, and then ultimately things can rebalance. I do trust the market. The market has great inefficiencies, particularly at this tinny end of town. But ultimately, the market will find its own path through. Again, we've managed big programs before, and I'm confident that the underlying value is not just there, but it will be realized and recognized once again. I hope that gives everyone a sense of the journey. I've addressed, I think, all of the key questions here. I'm way over time by my standards, pushing an hour and a half. I'm going to stop sharing the screen and I'm going to wrap it up right here. All right.
As I mentioned, Rob and I are on a plane to Tokyo in about three hours time. We've got really important meetings for Speewah lined up. I can, I think, confirm as well that we've got several meetings on our other projects with different Japanese counterparties in the Japanese government. Tivan is a big deal in Japan. We really are because we've committed ourselves so respectfully and with such discipline, and we've achieved so much in a short period of time. Really looking forward to this trip. In the meantime, I hope that by expounding all of the various complexities that we're working through in such detail tonight, rare detail, like even I don't normally go this deep, I can give or I have given everyone a sense of really where we're up to, the decision making frameworks around what's ahead.
And I hope and look forward to welcoming everyone to our AGM. It's only six weeks away. We will continue to push as hard as we can. We've already achieved a tremendous amount this year, and I will be inviting new team members, particularly the executive team, to the event in Melbourne. So keep that on your radar. And yeah, keep the faith, I would say as well. The team's working really hard for you. I am as always as well. Huge travel week or month ahead, but huge opportunities and I think as well, my final comment would be, as much as we are really locked in on delivering Speewah, do not lose sight of Timor-Leste. Okay. It's really fundamentally important to Tivan. It might sound exotic or even a stretch from time to time. It's not. It's right on our doorstep.
We know exactly the opportunities that are ahead, and I personally feel that this will be absolutely foundational to the future of the company. So with that, good night. We'll be on the red-eye into Haneda in the morning and straight back at it in Tokyo. Thank you very much. Please share this to anyone that is having misgivings right at the moment. Again, providing that assurity that Tivan is absolutely the company that you know and hope it will be. Thank you. Good night.