We have the CEO of Zeotech, Mr. James Marsh, here today, who's going to talk through the recent announcement about the fantastic results from Zeotech's AusPozz metakaolin trials in concrete and cement. We'll probably run through a few questions at the end of this video session. I'll hand it over to James.
Thanks very much, Peter. Pleasure to be here. Thanks, everybody, for listening today and tuning in. There is a lot to go through here because the announcement we put out this week did contain a lot of data, a lot of results. My job today is to explain those and hopefully clarify what the actual opportunity is here for AusPozz Probably best to start with a little bit of background. AusPozz is known as a pozzolanic material. Pozzolanic materials were used over 2,000 years ago by the Romans to make some very high-quality, very durable concrete. This is nothing new. What we are doing here is not a new product. There is no IP involved. This is something that has been around a very long time. In fact, 30 years ago, it was used globally to just make concrete better.
It was a very expensive additive, though, and there was no pressure to decarbonize. It was only used in very small amounts. It still is used here now in Australia in small amounts, but it's imported and it costs over AUD 2,000 a tonne. What we got here is another version of this. We've got a manufactured pozzolan. It's known as a metakaolin, which is a heat-treated kaolin. What we have here is something special. We have an ultra-high purity kaolin resource near Bundaberg in central Queensland. This kaolin is so pure that we don't have to do any refining. That's quite unique in the world of the kaolin industry. Normally, you have to refine. You have to use water. You've got to take sand out. You lose more than half of the material you mine is lost as a waste.
It is very hard to dry, very hard to dewater. It is expensive and it has a high carbon footprint. What we have here with AusPozz is a product that we do not do any of that. We just take it straight out of the ground. We put it through a kiln at a much lower temperature, half the temperature of cement. We have a product that can replace cement. These results that we published this week demonstrate how effective AusPozz is. What we have here is a product with three key properties. It has very high reactivity, so about the maximum reactivity you can get from metakaolin. It is extremely low cost and economic. That is because we do not have to refine it. We process 100% of what we take from the ground as what we process. It is very economic.
It has also got a very low carbon footprint. Our carbon footprint is coming in around about 200 kg per tonne, which is compared to cement, which is around about 900 kg per tonne. You can see that every single tonne of cement that is replaced by our material gives a huge impact on the embodied carbon of concrete. If I move on to the results that we have got, just to give you a bit more idea of what they actually mean, what we have done here, we started probably over six months ago with our own testing program using an independent expert consultant. He spent six months putting AusPozz through its paces through over about 41 different concrete mixes and various iterations of those, pushed it, pulled it, and broke it and found exactly what it can do, what it cannot do.
The culmination of that testing program was released this week. We'll start off looking at the 40 MPa concrete. Peter, if you just bring, I've got one slide to show you today. Otherwise, I'll just be talking through the results that we published. This one is quite significant. What we're looking at here is a 40 MPa, 40 megapascal concrete. It's a very commonly used, very widely used throughout the industry, throughout the world, actually. This is a very good benchmark to test our AusPozz in. What we're showing you here is a replacement of two different cement types. General purpose is the GP. That's the most commonly used everywhere. There's a GL type, which has got limestone, which is a green version that is gaining traction in the market.
It was a good idea to test it in both types because that one's growing. You see there on the left-hand side of all of these bar charts, the two grayed-out bars there are the two controls. Then we've got a range of colors, which is the AusPozz replacement. On the left, we went to 20%, 30%, and 40% replacement of the cement. You see there that even in seven days, which is normally a weakness of metakaolin, you normally have a bit of early strength loss. At the 20%, it's already flying way ahead of the normal cement in the concrete. The good thing is that just keeps going and going. You see over 28 days, 56 days, all of the AusPozz at all different levels of cement replacement are way ahead of standard concrete. That's a great result.
Also, when you consider that when you replace cement with metakaolin like ours, certainly a higher activity one, you do not just get stronger concrete. You get a whole range of other benefits. It makes it more durable. It makes it longer lasting, more impervious to attack by all sorts of chemicals. There is a lot of add-on benefits here to the concrete. Another major benefit we have seen that is actually bigger than we expected, and that probably is a feature of our high reactivity, is the shrinkage. Shrinkage in a concrete is a major problem because that causes cracking. Any cracking in concrete can be very costly and even quite dangerous. Here you see at seven days, shrinkage is about the same. At 14 days, it does not change very much. After 21 days with the AusPozz, it just levels out. That does not change.
It just stays. No more shrinkage, so no more cracking. Whereas the standard concretes just keep going and going. That is another huge advantage. Any engineers in concrete experience will tell you that that is something very significant. This was a 40 MPa mix. We can take that one down now. Thanks, Peter. What we've got there is you see a huge strength gain. Potentially, we've got a massive strength gain there. That doesn't just make of interest because we've reduced the carbon significantly. We've also got this huge strength gain. When you're designing structures, columns, for example, in concrete, that means you can make them much smaller, so reduce the dimensions of concrete structures and yet still get the same performance. That is another huge benefit to carbon offset because less concrete, it just means less carbon. Another benefit there.
That was one test mix. We used six different mix designs in our work we focused on. Those results of those were published. One of the other very significant ones there was the high-volume type concrete mixes, which is a material that's used in things like wind farms for bases of the big turbines. These are big concrete pours where you have maybe 1,000 cubic meters of concrete. Now, those concrete pours are very demanding. You have huge hydrostatic pressure built up. Also, there's a lot of problem there with the temperature. What happens is it gets very hot in the middle. This isn't exclusive to these wind farm type applications. It also applies to high-rise buildings, anywhere where there's lots of concrete. These very high temperatures are a massive problem because that causes all sorts of curing differentials and cracking and failures.
What we did with our work and the results that you're seeing, hopefully in the ASX release, show that when you mix in AusPozz and you take out the cement, then that problem is eliminated. The results we showed had a temperature differential of about four or five degrees, which is absolutely negligible. It means that what we've done, we solved that problem. We've also made the concrete much greener. We also made the concrete stronger and more durable. We're offering here a total solution to those types of big concrete pours. AusPozz is a total solution here. It was so good that we actually ran a demonstration yesterday. We did a commercial demonstration at Holcim's biggest concrete plant in Brisbane yesterday, where we had about 40 engineers from various companies. Main roads people were there as well. We reconstructed that.
We did a hot box pour, it's called, where we poured a cubic metre of concrete, put temperature thermocouples in, took samples, looked at other issues of the concrete, other properties. We will send some news out of that, hopefully in the next few days. That went extremely well. We had probably veterans of the concrete industry who've been around in the business for probably 30 years actually stating that this was what they believe was a game changer for the industry. We are getting fantastic results. We'll keep that testing going. Probably just quickly, I'll cover the last thing to mention is we tested a shotcrete mixer that you'll see in those results. That was interesting because we not just removed a very expensive component of the mix, we've made the shotcrete better.
Indications are that the other chemicals that need to be used in shotcrete, accelerator primarily, can be reduced by at least half, which is going to be another potentially huge saving, which is associated with the AusPozz. We are very happy with those results. Testing is going to carry on. We have still got mix designs going. We have got that big pour mix testing that is still going. More results will come out in due course.
Very good, James. Obviously, we have quite a few questions lined up here, which is good, and some very knowledgeable questions too. I am going to just kick off with more broadly. How does the AusPozz product that Zeotech is applying here compare with existing market products? We have gone through the data there, but I guess in a more general view from yourself on that question.
As in, yeah.
Compared to competitive products, which there's sort of two gradings of metakaolin. There's one that's more generically called a calcined clay. Calcined clay is a sort of a low-reactivity metakaolin. They're quite popular in Europe, especially, and parts of Africa and even parts of the USA. Now, they're used mainly to replace things like fly ash, which are very cheap, low-carbon footprints, and slag, those sort of things, which are supplementary cementitious materials. We're not looking to replace them. We actually work well with them, so they can be left in the mix. Those are already benefits to the concrete. AusPozz will be added to the concrete in addition to those materials and take out cement. When it comes to the world of metakaolins, and there are some around, I've been involved in producing metakaolins in five different countries over my working career.
I can say that none of those others to date have been produced specifically for concrete. They've been produced for other applications like coatings and polymers. They were over-engineered for concrete and also high carbon footprint and very expensive. What we've got here is we've got a metakaolin, high-reactivity metakaolin that has got better reactivity than any of those I've seen anywhere in the world. We measure every single batch we're making. We measure every batch of 150 kg, so we know exactly what we're producing on our pilot plant. It's high reactivity, but also the economics of our product are way beyond anyone else has got in the world that I'm aware of and we're aware of. I mentioned before that there are products available in the market, but they're in Australia, but they're selling now for around about AUD 2,000 a tonne.
Huge cost. They would never replace cement. They're too expensive. We've got something that's more reactive, but also it's economic. Also, by having it domestically here, it means that the whole domestic Australian market is available to us, which is currently standing cement is around about 10 million tonnes of cement per year. Those results that we've just shown prove that we can go up to maybe 40% replacement. That represents several million tonnes of business, so way more than we could ever probably supply. It means the market there for us is very clear, and it's just on our doorstep. There's no one else in the world who could produce metakaolin and ship it to Australia and get anywhere near our price, let alone the reactivity.
James, what was that Australian market size for the cement?
There is about 30 million tonnes, 29 million tonnes of concrete poured per year in Australia, which equates to about probably 10 million-11 million tonnes of cement. Cement is the binder in the concrete. What we are doing is we are looking at directly replacing at least 20%, 25%, maybe 30% of that cement. It shows that we can do that and just give results that are completely off the scale when it comes to concrete performance.
Now, James, at the trial day, there was some discussion about some of the other additives that AusPozz could replace, other additives such as accelerants, which are quite expensive. What other products go into the mix that AusPozz could replace?
Yeah, there is a whole host of chemicals that go into concrete. The concrete industry, people like to call them drugs. They use the drugs that go into concrete.
A lot of those drugs are used to solve problems like the temperature differential problem I just mentioned, like the accelerator for shotcrete, silica fume that's used has to use to stop bleeding. All these additives that are used, expensive, high carbon footprint, the concrete people don't like using them. The results we're getting are showing that we can eliminate a whole range of those. The results we published show that we can knock out silica fume, for example, and that is a very expensive product. It goes for around about AUD 800 a tonne. It's not very user-friendly at all. We've got a user-friendly version that can replace it and, in fact, even get better results. The accelerator, Australia has got the largest number of underground mines in the world. All those underground mines use huge amounts of shotcrete for stabilizing the underground stopes.
They use huge amounts of accelerator because by virtue of the fact it's going underground, it needs to be high strength, early strength. That's very important. What we're seeing is we can knock out half the accelerator and make the concrete better and greener. Yeah, there's a whole lot of advantages there. These engineers who came yesterday to the demonstration, I could see the light bulbs going on in their head about all of the modifications, improvements they could make to the concrete by adding AusPozz in there.
Yes, there was a lot of excitement in the room. I'm going to move on to a couple of more detailed questions here. Firstly, involving commercialisation partnerships. We've seen the MoU with Holcim. Are there any other advanced or near-term negotiations with Holcim or other industry players for supply agreements or joint ventures based on recent performances?
Can you sort of give an overview of that?
Yeah, so the MoU with Holcim, that was signed a while ago, and they've been a development partner. We published some earlier work with them, but we did in concrete. The results from that were way better than they expected and, in fact, better than we expected. That is progressing very nicely. That has led to the demonstration we did yesterday in the Holcim yard, where that was all helped by Holcim to organize that. That is going very nicely. They are moving on to a lot more testing, a lot more detailed testing. They've had another 1.1 tonnes of AusPozz delivered to them to expand their testing. They are also looking for probably up to about 80 tonnes to do a big live trial next. That is progressing very quickly and very well.
We have sent samples out to a large range of other concrete people, though, because the MoU with Holcim is not exclusive. It gives them certain advantages, but it's not exclusive. We are open to work with anyone on this. Virtually all of the majors, independents, and major concrete people in Australia are testing it at this moment. They are, without exception, finding good results. That is moving forward very well. We have other people interested, people who are interested in possibly small lots supplying because cement is used in a whole range of bag products where there is a lot higher value to be had there from those products. Anywhere where cement is being used, AusPozz can potentially be used as well, whether it is your bag of mortar from Bunnings or whatever it may be.
There are a lot of opportunities springing up around in that part of the world and also overseas. Now, the news has got out overseas. Now we have one company, for example, in the Middle East that uses more cement than Australia uses in a whole year. They are now testing the product. It looks like if anywhere, whether it is a marine environment where you are building concrete that needs to be nice and bright and white near the ocean, then it is absolutely perfect for them. We are expecting some good feedback from them. Even as far away as Europe and in Europe and in China, not China, you are not China, Europe and the USA, where a product called Geopolymer. Geopolymer is a green concrete solution. It generally needs metakaolin to go in the concrete with it, though. That is a very important additive.
Anyone using geopolymer is also interested. We have several companies in the geopolymer space testing samples as well.
A broad market, a number of interested participants, which will be wanting to see the data. I have a question here on the validation. Do you plan to release more detailed information or technical reports from the trials? Have you any other external audits or reviews being conducted to verify the results to date?
All the testing was done by NATA-approved laboratories. We have certificates for all of those test results. That means that NATA accreditation stands behind them, which gives it a lot of credibility. We are giving out more details to any partners, any potential customers, but it is all done under NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, because that is what we are selling here to these people. We are not selling a product to these people.
We're selling a solution. We can tell them not just how much to use, but how to use it, what water they've got to use, what the admixtures have to be. We can short-circuit all of their testing and give them a solution right away. That information is available, but we are using that now to best advantage the company and to the product and to commercialisation.
Hence the tech in Zeotech, not just a mine and a quarry, James, but some technical and solutions for potential customers as well, which leads me to Toondoon. What's your approach to the Toondoon asset, and how scalable will it be? How will you approach the initial mining plan for Toondoon?
That is all part of the pre-feasibility study that we are now nearing completion. The mining plan is about 90% complete, so it's very well advanced.
It's very easy mining. It's only about 2 meters of overburden, which is absolutely minimal in the scheme of things. It means that we've got extremely cheap mining. It's just free dig, and there's nothing else involved. Just dig it out and truck it down to the production plant, which will be ideally positioned in Bundaberg. The mine plan is now being developed around the existing resource, which is about 14 million tonnes. That's going to give us a mine life around 20 years, which is what we're looking for for the pre-feasibility study. Once the PFS is released, our plan is to do a lot of drilling around the area because that 14 million tonnes is only on 5% of our total exploration area. Also, it's only in a small proportion of the land we own freehold.
That's about 150 hectares of company-owned land, which is where the mining lease sits. There's another 500-600 hectares around that the company owns immediately around it, which is open. The resource is open in multiple directions. We will drill as much as we can around there because now the big players in the industry are asking us. They're saying, "This stuff looks great, but how soon can we have it, and how much can we have?" As you just heard previously, the demand just in Australia is probably millions of tonnes. From a global perspective, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
James, given the simple quarry-style mining required and not a lot of refinement required, how long, once the PFS is delivered and final investment decision made, ideally, in an ideal world, could the company be producing a commercial product?
We can mine tomorrow. The mining position is all, everything's in place for that. We have, in fact, we took out 200 tonnes recently, which is down at a plant in Melbourne for a commercial trial. There are 200 tonnes sitting there. We'll get that processed in the next few weeks. That's going to be used for some big live trials. There is an opportunity there to actually go into commercial production very quickly. If that works, then we're happy with it, and the deal can be done. The opportunity is actually very near-term in that respect. If we're going to build our own plant, which we plan to do, because capacity is going to be probably a constraint, we have to be aware of that and build our own plant as well.
We're looking at possibly 18 months to two years from FID, financial investment decision, to build a kiln of around about 300,000-tonne capacity. There are opportunities that are arising where people, there are other companies who've got kilns that could be potentially utilized because it's nothing special. It's just a standard rotary kiln that they use for cement plants, lime plants, mineral sands, bauxite around the whole world and around Australia as well. If we build our own kiln, we're talking 18 months to two years. If we use one of these opportunities, then it could be very quickly.
There's a few questions here around financial strategy and funding. I guess that'll come out in the PFS, which is underway. How on track is that for delivery, James?
It's going very well.
Just mentioned the mining plan is about 90% complete, which is sort of the core of the business. We are looking at, we have told the market we will release it before the end of this first half of the year, which is before the end of June. The plan is to complete it in May and then release it as soon as we can after that. It will take a bit of time to write the release and get that approved by the ASX. Certainly, we are on track to get it done before the first half of this year finishes. We will move quickly into a definitive feasibility study. Luckily, a lot of the things we are doing, a lot of the aspects of the project are very simple. They have been simplified for a very good reason.
That means that a lot of them will be close to DFS level anyway. We should be able to move very quickly forward from that. We're looking at locking in some binding offtakes as soon as possible based on the back of this work that's ongoing right now. We've got samples going out in all directions. On the basis of this work we produced this week, we just had a request from a very large amount of AusPozz to a very high-profile mining company in Australia that wants to do an underground trial right away. Things are moving quickly in that respect.
There's a lot going on there, James. Thanks for the report on the current status and on the announcement, the demo day, the outlook.
You'll be attending Sydney Resources Roundup in May, so investors can come along and see you there at that booth and have a bit more of a discussion.
Yeah, we'll have some samples there. Very happy to talk to anyone who wants to come along and hear about the story. Thanks a lot, Peter.
Thank you very much, James. Thanks, everybody, for attending. We'll look forward to getting this video out as soon as we can. Thank you.