Hello, and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets and Skyline Corporate Communications, we are very pleased you have joined us for our first day of our Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The next presentation of the day is from First Phosphate. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter at any time. You can also view a company's availability for a one-on-one meeting by clicking "book a meeting." At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome John Passalacqua. He's the Chief Executive Officer of First Phosphate, which trades on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol FRSPF, and on the NASDAQ and CSE under the symbol PHOS. Welcome back, John.
Hello, everybody. Great to be here. Just to give us a little bit of background, we are First Phosphate, and we are igneous phosphate for the lithium iron phosphate, the LFP battery industry. This is phosphate that's very different from traditional phosphate that's used in fertilizer. We are extra high purity, and we're targeting just the lithium iron phosphate, the LFP battery industry, high technology only. The key highlights of our project, obviously, we're a pure play on the LFP battery technology. We are mine to market. That is starting from the igneous phosphate rock in Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, all the way to producing the downstream cathode active materials that are required for the battery. We are a high-purity igneous phosphate resource, as I mentioned, under Quebec Fast-Track status. We are approaching feasibility study, and we have a really strong path to commercial production.
We have bankable offtake agreements signed that de-risk the project. We are also mentioned now and fully endorsed as a G7 critical minerals project with strategic support from many Western governments. When we look at the lithium iron phosphate battery industry, you can see that it's an industry that's growing. It has grown now to a point where LFP batteries are 77% of all batteries produced on planet Earth, and they are still growing. This started from about 30% market penetration about 2023 and has grown already to the 77% figure. The reason for this is that these batteries are batteries of mass adoption. They are versatile, and you can find them in many different industries. They're not just about EVs. If you look at this quadrant here, that's EVs. That's only about 15% of the industry.
If you look at the biggest sectors that are growing, it's large-scale energy storage, AI data centers, robotics and automation, marine and agriculture, defense, small mobility, EV charging stations, and telecom. The reason that LFP has grown so much and it's so versatile is because it's got superior fire safety, well-defined performance, it's the lowest cost battery in the market, and it has longer life. Obviously, the issue right now is that all of the concentration of LFP battery is focused in China. Under the G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance, they are now trying to reduce that factor down to 60%. But look what's happening. Only 1% is in the rest of Asia, 1% is in Europe, and less than 1% is in North America.
There's a big catch-up to do here, and that's where First Phosphate is here, to help onshore this LFP battery supply chain into the Western world. When we look about onshoring the LFP battery supply chain, let's understand a little bit first, what is LFP? This is the cathode of the LFP battery. This is the positive pole of the LFP battery. When we look at it, look at it. It's 4% lithium, it's 35% iron, but then it's a full 61% phosphate. That's really interesting, right? We talk a lot about lithium, and there's over 150 public companies out there that are either extracting or purifying in the lithium industry. When we look at phosphate, First Phosphate is the only company as far as we know, that's out there that's 100% fully focused on phosphate for the lithium iron phosphate battery industry.
While you have a lot of players that are going after a small tranche, you have basically one predominant player that's 100% focused on going after this big tranche, 60%. That's why we feel that First Phosphate is really well-positioned now, as a NASDAQ-listed company as well. We give investors access to exposure to lithium iron phosphate, but more so to igneous phosphate rock from Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, as an asset class. Let's understand a little bit of what's going on in the critical mineral space and where phosphate is positioned. Phosphate is positioned as the second most important mineral after copper in the energy transition. That's very important. But how much high purity phosphate do we have out there to make LFP batteries? This is the supply of phosphate right now, of purified phosphoric acid.
As you can see, it's a very flat line because this right now is what comes out of the fertilizer industry as the purest component of it. If you look at traditional use, it already is going to start to outstrip the supply of purified phosphoric acid. But we need to make this much more purified phosphoric acid here in order to supply to the LFP battery industry, which is growing. How are we going to do this? It's not possible to do with sedimentary rock without making a bunch of more fertilizer. Is there some type of a magical way or a magical rock where you can make a lot of purified phosphoric acid without having to have recourse to the fertilizer industry? The answer is actually yes. It's igneous phosphate rock.
Igneous phosphate rock is so pure, at least the one that we have in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, that we are able to convert a full 91.1% of it into high purity purified phosphoric acid, which then goes into the LFP batteries. This is different than sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock is primarily used in the fertilizer world. With this sedimentary rock, there's a lot of cadmium, uranium, and thorium in it. The gypsum that comes out of the process is obviously contaminated. That's a big issue. But even more importantly is a lot of that or a big majority of the phosphoric acid that's produced has to go into the fertilizer industry. The only reason that it can go in the fertilizer industry is because it doesn't have the purity to go into LFP battery.
Only a small portion, as we were saying, can go into PPA, purified phosphoric acid, which goes into LFP batteries. Think of igneous phosphate rock, very clean processing, gypsum that can be recycled and makes a lot of purified phosphoric acid for LFP batteries. If igneous phosphate rock is truly the solution, then let's look at igneous phosphate rock and where we can find it in the world. The problem is that it's very rare. Igneous phosphate rock is only 5% of the world's phosphate deposits, and they're predominantly found right here in these blue areas, if you look. We have here in Quebec, we've got Northern Russia, and we've got Southern Africa, and we've got Brazil. That's 5% of the world's phosphate. That's igneous, the blue dots. Then 95% are the red dots. That's the sedimentary phosphate deposits out there.
Let's talk about the igneous. The igneous are in four zones. These three zones, Northern Europe, Southern Africa, and Brazil, are igneous carbonatites. While they're very pure, sometimes they can have a lot of rare earths in them. They can have even high thorium counts. The mineralogy sometimes is not consistent. In Brazil, they're mostly used here in the fertilizer world because obviously there's a big breadbasket, a lot of agricultural activity going on in Brazil. In Southern Africa, they're not really exploited. They're found in regions that are hard to get to. Then obviously in Russia, they're able to separate them. They do a good job at it and they actually export. But obviously the problem now is the sanctions. Let's come back to here, First Phosphate's deposits. This is in Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec. This is an igneous anorthosite.
We are very blessed that the igneous anorthosite rock is very pure. It's very consistent. The mineralogy is set. What we're able to do is we're able to extract through solventless recovery the ilmenite and the magnetite and the silicates, and we're left with a very pure phosphate. We get to this phosphate reading of 40.4%, which is amongst the world's cleanest and highest purity phosphates out there. Again, like I said before, 91.1% of it can be converted directly into purified phosphoric acid for the battery. Let's talk a little bit about our mineral resource. Here's where you see it. It's an open-pit resource. It's about 2.7 kilometers long. It's about 500 meters wide. It goes down to a depth of about 400 meters. It's fully open at depth.
We recently just did our updated mineral resource estimate, and we increased the indicated category by an extra 378%. That's really exceptional. Before that had been done, we already had our PEA, which showed an NPV of CAD 2.1 billion, an IRR of 37%, a payback of 2.9 years, strip ratio of 1.5 to one on a 23-year mine life and 900 kilotons per annum. This is enough to basically power 50% of the fleet of new vehicles produced in North America for the next 23 years. So it's a lot of phosphate. Let's talk about where the deposit is located. We're here in the Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec. This is Quebec's fifth most populated area. It is that for one reason, and that is because of the industry. Right now, there are two industries up there. There's the forestry industry and there's the aluminum industry.
This is where Alcan Aluminum, now Rio Tinto, has been located for the past 100 years. Because of that, we've got deep sea port access from the Port of Saguenay to the rest of the world, as well as rail line that goes down to the rest of the world. The mine is here at Bégin-Lamarche, which is 70 kilometers from the deep sea Port of Saguenay. Here is where we'll be producing a phosphate concentrate, which will be shipped to the Port of Saguenay, and a portion of it will go to our offtakers by vessel.
The other portion will stay back here at the Port of Saguenay, where we are going to be producing phosphoric acid, which will then be sent down the rail or across the vessels as well, or be processed right at the Port of Saguenay to make the cathode active materials that go into the LFP battery. This is something really great that the company has done. We've been able to go from igneous phosphate rock to phosphate concentrate, and then to purified phosphoric acid and to iron phosphate precursor and lithium iron phosphate, LFP cathode active material with major partners. We've been able to then make that with Ultion, one of our partners out of Nevada, into LFP battery cells.
These are the first LFP battery cells that have been produced using North American critical minerals in the anode and the cathode in the last 25 years. The reason I say that is because LFP technology, believe it or not, was invented in North America about 2001, but by 2003, had completely left our shores. This supply chain is very important because during recent trade spats between China and the U.S., there were three supply chains that were threatened. One of them was rare earths, the other one was semiconductors, but the third was this, the LFP battery supply chain.
What we've been able to do with these batteries that we made, and we only made 150 of them, but it was really just to prove the point that we have the North American critical minerals, especially our phosphate and phosphoric acid, that can go into making these batteries. Also, we cycle these batteries 2,000 times. That's batteries that are cycled at full commercial scale, 2,000 times they're charged and discharged. They work just like any other battery in the market, which means that all the critical minerals that went into them, and the process and all the partners, are now validated. That's extremely important. These were some of our partners that are at the table. What's very important is our strong relationships locally, with the local and Indigenous community and with all the local groups in Saguenay.
What is very important about the project is the project has major support from Quebec government. We are now a Filon fast-track process company. There are three projects that have been fast-tracked. We are one of the three. This is great because it helps us to accelerate with permitting. At the Canadian government level, we received 21.5 million of total non-dilutive support from the government. These are contributions that are non-dilutive and they are non-repayable. They go towards developing the concentrator for the feasibility study and they go towards power line transmission, as well as road infrastructure development. Another very important thing is in June at the G7 Leaders' Summit in Évian, France, we were recognized as a project under the G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance. There were 13 strategic projects that were brought forward. We were two of the 13.
That is our mine and our phosphoric acid plant. Because of that, we have been started to get support for the build-out of our mine from major international governments such as the government of Denmark has got an export credit guarantee of about 190 million, and the Swiss government as well for 212.5 million USD. When you add those two up, it is about 400 million on a total current CapEx of 475 million. You can see that already almost over 80% of the CapEx is spoken for by two sovereign governments and ones that are friendly, right? Capital that comes from the government is friendly. They want to see you succeed.
They want to see you succeed because they are looking for the critical minerals independence, they are looking for national security, and they are looking for jobs, obviously, for their people and also for their suppliers to be able to produce the goods that will go into building the mine. At the same time, under the G7 Critical Minerals Alliance, the government of Italy and three of its entities and its largest engineering group supported the phosphoric acid plant.
We also had a Western ally come to the table for 200,000 tons of phosphate concentrate offtake and 60,000 tons of phosphoric acid concentrate. That is all definitive and bankable offtake. This is a little bit of our path here over the coming years. Right now, our biggest milestone is going to be to get into feasibility study. That is by Q1 of 2027. After that, we are going to go through environmental work.
That is by about Q2 of 2027. From there, we are looking to complete permit applications and have our mine permitting. That is by early Q1 2028. Final investment decision by mid-2028. We hope to be building out the mine all the way up to a production date of 2030. What is really important to note is that we are fully funded right now. We have $15 million in the bank, plus access to the federal government contributions of 21 million, which pretty much gets us to here to the final investment decision. At which point, like I said, we have got the Danish and the Swiss governments at the table for 400 million of the CapEx that will get us down to the mine build-outs. We have got a very tight share structure. It is debt-free. Our market cap is around the $400 million mark. We are debt-free.
We have raised $80 million to date. That has been raised through our own means, not with any underwriters, so it is really good, tight capital. Our management and our board have over $4 million invested since inception in the company. To date, our board and myself, as CEO, we receive full payment in shares, so that we continue to internalize funds to develop the company. Our management also receives a good portion of their salaries in stock. That comes to a point where you still got management and board that are over 20% of the total equity structure of the company. Equity is really important to us, right? Shareholders, we are primary shareholders. Market cap appreciation, equity appreciation is very important. You have a management that is aligned with shareholders. We have our board and management.
Obviously, we are very strong in a few things. Obviously, it is management, it is business, it is mining. It is also technology, right? When we look at it, we look at this LFP battery, not as being just the phosphate in the ground, but we look at the mine as being an enabler of this, right? The technology to get to the LFP battery. Thank you very much. I see that some questions have come in. Here I am going to respond to the first question, which was about the LFP battery supply chain. How far do we think we are going to take this down the LFP battery supply chain? That is a good question.
The answer to that is that the first part of it is that we are really focused on here, which is the mine, which is where we mine the rock and we produce the phosphate concentrate. This is by far the most unique part of the company. It is not easy to replicate. Igneous phosphate of this type is very hard to find. We have a very good mining operation that is going to be coming online. It is very close to infrastructure. This is our strength. It is really going to be the mine. Then we are hoping to get into the production of purified phosphoric acid because obviously that is a very good cash flowing business and it also takes in the feedstock from the mine.
Then as far as it goes, making the LFP cathode active materials as well, either happen in partnership or another company will take it over to do that. From there, the LFP cathode active material goes into the batteries that is sold to the cell producers, which then they use it to make the products that we have out there such as bikes, scooters, EVs, stationary energy storage systems, factory automation, robotics, whatever it might be. The other question I got in was here about the resource and why we are strategically located in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec. Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec to us is very strategic, right? There are a lot of great critical minerals projects out there, but what we found in critical minerals, especially a commodity like First Phosphate, such as phosphate, which can be a little bit bulky.
To be very close to infrastructure is important. The mining operation will be an open-pit mine. Obviously that's the best form of mine you can have. It's only two kilometers from major road and from major electrical. From there, obviously we are 70 kilometers from the deep sea Port of Saguenay. That's where our secondary facilities will be to make the phosphoric acid. It's all very integrated. We're in a very strong region. We've got a lot of equipment suppliers in this area because they've been there for 100 years supplying Rio Tinto. A lot of good industrial workforce as well. This is really important, obviously, is our location here. The other great thing I will say is because we're here in Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean, there's about 250,000 to 300,000 people that live right in this area right here.
People will be able to commute to the mine very easily. It's about a one-hour drive. We won't need to set up camps. That's a big advantage. Also right here at Saint-Honoré, which is not too far, it's about 40 kilometers east of us. There already is an operational mine. It's a niobium mine, by the way, and it's an underground mine, and that's been there for decades. It's been really well-received by the local population. I have a question here about indigenous relationships. Our relationships in the area are very strong with local community be it the municipalities, be it the chambers of commerce, the suppliers guilds, and the indigenous group that we work with in the area as well. They're a full contributor to the project. They have helped out a lot to develop the project.
Some of the contributions that we received from the federal government, they needed to show their support for. They showed their support on getting phosphate on the critical minerals list of Canada and Quebec. I thank the chief for that. He helped to write some letters for us along with other dignitaries. The relationship is really good. We've been using a lot of workforce already that is associated with the local indigenous group. It's been going really well. Since the beginning, we've tried to stay as integrated as we could with the local community and give off as much of the local benefits as we could. It's working very well on that level. I had another question about financing. We have a cash runway of about two years as it stands right now.
At the end of those two years, that's when the non-dilutive financing would step in from currently the government of Denmark and the government of Switzerland. We also know that Quebec and the Canadian government will be interested at that point as well. Right now there's no need for any further capital raises for another two years. If we did have to raise capital at some point, it would be something strategic, but it's not life or death. We've really de-risked the company and given the cash that we have in the coffers which at the moment I believe is sitting at over $25 million, and also with the access to the contributions from the federal government of another $21 million. That gets us well past our final investment decision. I see some other questions coming in.
I got one question that came in French that was asking about igneous phosphate in Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean, if it is found anywhere else in the world. Well, igneous phosphate, like I said, is found in primarily these four regions of the world. There is Quebec, there is Brazil, there is Southern Africa, and there is Northern Russia. Like I said, the carbonatites are mostly found in Northern Russia, Southern Africa, and in Brazil. The igneous anorthosites for the moment, what we know of, they are mostly in Quebec. There is a really big extensive area of igneous anorthosites in Quebec. But again, there is a lot of phosphate in Quebec, but it is about finding it in the right place, in the right spot, and in the right concentrations. Bégin-Lamarche is like a real anomaly. Anything that becomes a mine in the mining world is usually something freaky.
It is kind of freaky in that it is this big blob of phosphate about 2.7 kilometers long by 500 meters wide, 400 meters deep, and still open on surface. It is like God just pushed it right up out of the earth for us. It is just sitting at surface. We are able to mine it, and it is really close to infrastructure. It is right in the perfect spot. So there are other spots for phosphate. We do have other properties. Right now, we are really focused on just bringing forward Bégin-Lamarche. We find it really important that the company focus on developing a mine. We do not want to be a company that just stays in exploration all the time. But if ever the industry grows, we will have much more phosphate to go after. I had another question here about phosphate companies in fertilizer.
As far as we know, there is about a handful of companies in the fertilizer industry that trade publicly. First Phosphate, as far as we know, is the only phosphate company that is 100% fully focused on phosphate for the lithium iron phosphate for the LFP battery. Like I said, it is 60% of the cathode of the battery. We are sitting in there as the bellwether, right? The one company that is leading it, and we are not in a crowded space like lithium is. All the power to everyone in lithium. Lithium is very important, don't get me wrong, but we are taking care of the space that is really wide open, which is phosphate, right? All the phosphate we are going to need. Just think about it. There is 15 times, one five times more phosphate in an LFP battery than lithium.
Think about the quantum of the amount of LFP cathode active material that is going to be needed in the battery. For every one ton of LFP, there is 0.8 tons of purified phosphoric acid that go into that. That is a staggering number. This is why we have to start taking care of this side of the equation, because there are a lot of guys or a lot of companies in there taking care of lithium, but who is there in phosphate, right? That is where First Phosphate really stands out. Okay, I think I might have time for just one more question here. I am getting asked a question on the G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance.
The G7, it started two G7 meetings ago, where they created this Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance. They did it because they noticed that the G7, the countries of the West, were behind in their ability to respond to these supply chains, which were predominantly based in China. The G7 came out with a statement at the last meeting, which was in Évian, France, in June of this year. They said that they do not want any one supply chain to be concentrated in any country of the world with more than 60% concentration. They picked out certain supply chains that were of interest. One of them was the LFP battery supply chain. Then they looked around to see companies that could support them in developing that, and First Phosphate came up.
Like I said, two of the 13 projects on their list were First Phosphate project. That is the mine and the phosphoric acid plant. Because of that, we were selected under the G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance. This is why the other governments of Europe as well as the offtaker have come to the table to support First Phosphate. You have to think of this as a project that everybody really wants to see succeed. On the local level, the local communities, the local indigenous community, the mayors, the municipalities, they want to see it succeed. Quebec government has fast-tracked the project. Canadian government has put non-dilutive funding behind it. After that, an international organization, the G7, has come behind it. Countries in Europe have come behind it. We still got to get through our feasibility study.
It is very rare that you get a project at this level of development that is fully endorsed and everyone is just pushing to get it into operation. It just shows you how important these supply chains are. Because of this, we have the support that we need to continue to advance and to get this project into a mine, hopefully by the end of 2029 or early 2030. Thank you, everybody. It has been a pleasure to be here. If you have any further questions, I would ask that you kindly send them in to us. You can just go onto our website on the Contact Us form, and you can reach us that way. You can also reach us via LinkedIn, via X. You can find me on LinkedIn, especially.
Before we finish off here, let us just remember one last thing is that in the LFP battery, the cathode of the LFP battery, we have got 60% phosphate. First Phosphate is in there leading this category with high-purity igneous phosphate for the LFP battery industry. Thank you very much, everybody. Really appreciate it. Have a good day.