Next we have First Phosphate Corp. It trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol PHOS and on the CSE under the symbol PHOS. It is a mineral development company dedicated to producing high-purity phosphate for the LFP battery industry. Happy to have its CEO, John Passalacqua. Welcome, John. We are very much looking forward to hearing your presentation today.
Thank you, Anna. Great to be here. Just before I start, just letting everybody know that this presentation should in no way be recorded or transcribed in any format, and especially not rebroadcast onto the Internet or any other public news articles derived from it, with AI or without. I just ask everybody to please immediately turn off any AI-driven note-takers and transcription devices. Any violations will be stringently enforced by our legal team.
If you would like a quote or to do an article after this presentation, please present yourself to me directly in human fashion. Send me an email, and I am always glad to speak to anybody. I will be making forward-looking statements in this presentation, and I now welcome all human ears to sit and to enjoy the presentation. Thank you, everybody. We are First Phosphate.
We are igneous phosphate for the lithium iron phosphate battery industry. This is not the sedimentary phosphate that is really generally used in the fertilizer world. What really distinguishes First Phosphate is we are a pure play for exposure into lithium iron phosphate, LFP, battery chemistry, which is the leading battery chemistry right now in the market. We have a mine-to-market platform supporting the onshoring of the LFP battery supply chain, and we are high-purity igneous phosphate rock, and we are currently a resource that is under Quebec fast-track status for permitting.
We are near term feasibility, and we have a critical path to commercial production. We have bankable offtake agreements in place and we have development and support for the financeability through these offtake agreements. We are also a G7 critical mineral strategic project, and we have support from Western governments because of that. Why lithium iron phosphate battery?
LFP batteries are now 77% of all the batteries that are produced worldwide. As you can see, the trajectory is growing only stronger. The reason for that, obviously, is LFP is a versatile technology and a technology of mass adoption. If you look over to the left, you will see electric vehicles is only 13% of the category.
Whereas, there is a number of other very important industries, such as large-scale energy storage, AI data centers, robotics and factory automation, marine and agricultural, defense, and also small mobility things such as drones and also telecom. The reason is, if you look here at the right, it is superior fire safety, well-defined performance, and lowest cost battery on the market. What stands in the way right now is that we really need to onshore this LFP battery supply chain.
As you can see, it's mostly based in Asia, mostly in China. We're just starting to basically onshore in other countries of the world. The G7, if you look here on the right, has a focused strategy on wanting no more than 60% of any one of these very critical supply chains to be based in any one country by 2030. We've got a long way to go. We've got to reduce this dependency down to 40% by 2030. That's where you see First Phosphate down here ready to fill that gap. As we look to onshoring the LFP battery supply chain, what are the things that we need? I guess it's best to start here. If we look at the pie, right?
We start with what makes up the cathode of an LFP battery, the cathode being the positive pole of the LFP battery. It's only 4% lithium, and we have over 150 companies that are looking to develop that, companies that are in the extraction and purification of lithium. It's got 35% in iron. We have a lot of companies that are in iron that can produce the high-quality iron that's necessary. When it comes to phosphate, look at this. It's the blue area here in the pie chart.
That's 60% of the cathode of the LFP battery. Really, if you look at phosphate in the public markets, there's only a handful of companies in phosphate in the public markets, and they're almost all for phosphate for agriculture. As far as we know, First Phosphate is the only company that is fully 100% dedicated to phosphate for the lithium iron phosphate, LFP, battery industry. That makes us also a category leader. Now we're a first-time asset class available on Nasdaq. Let's talk about why phosphate is so important. If we look down here on the left, you'll see purified phosphoric acid.
It's the second big bubble. That tells you it's the second most important element in terms of the elements needed for electrification, and it sits right after copper. If you look on the right, you'll see the chart of purified phosphoric acid right now. You'll see this very pale blue line that goes from left to right. That's a supply of purified phosphoric acid, and we can't really seem to increase that.
The reason for that is that the purified phosphoric acid right now is being made from the highest purity phosphoric acid that comes from the fertilizer industry. We can't expand that any more because there's only a certain amount of purified phosphoric acid that you can have from sedimentary phosphate rocks, which is what we're using to make the fertilizer-based phosphoric acid. If you look at the gap where you see the little dotted yellow line and the red line, all that has to be filled with purified phosphoric acid.
How are we going to do that? It's not possible to do that with the current fertilizer stock because we're limited. Only a certain portion of that stock can be converted to purified phosphoric acid, the most pure stuff. Is there a way to fill in that gap? Is there some form of magical rock that can do this? Actually, believe it or not, the answer is yes. If you look here on the left, the igneous phosphate rock is a very clean phosphate. It is phosphate that was trapped in lava millions of years ago.
So it descended to a certain level in the lava rock, and then it froze. Since it froze at that level, it stayed very pure. It did not collect all the cadmium, uranium, thorium, arsenic, heavy metals that the sedimentary phosphate rocks do because the sedimentary phosphate rocks are precisely that. They are sediments which are found at the bottom of old lakes, seabeds, and streams and swamps. So the igneous phosphate rock here on the left is extremely pure, and about 91.1% of that rock can be converted into purified phosphoric acid for the LFP batteries.
Whereas when you are dealing in the fertilizer world, most of it goes into making commoditized fertilizer-based, low purity phosphoric acid, and only a small amount can go into the LFP battery, as you see down here on the bottom right. Now let us move on. Let us talk about this magical rock. If igneous rock is so magical, well then, let us just use magical igneous phosphate rock to produce a lot of purified phosphoric acid and the problem will be gone.
Well, the problem is this. If you look on the left here where you see the map of the world, all the red dots are really the sedimentary phosphate deposits in the world, and that is 95% of the world's phosphate, 95%. All of that is obviously the less pure fertilizer-based phosphoric acid.
If you look at the blue dots, you will see some here in Quebec, you will see some down here in southern Brazil, southern Africa, and then northern Russia. Those dots there are basically igneous phosphate rock. It is 5% of the world's phosphate. The areas in Brazil, the areas in southern Africa, and the area in northern Russia, those are carbonatites. Sometimes they can be difficult to separate, and they mostly go into fertilizer industry.
In Russia, they seem to be the only ones that can separate them properly, and they are the only exporters, but obviously now they are behind the sanctions. So when we come here to Quebec, where we have got the igneous anorthosite rock, it is different than an igneous carbonatite rock. It is extremely pure.
We separate magnetite, ilmenite, and silicates, and we are left with, if you look here at the top right, a 40.4% pure P2O5 phosphate. That is one of the world's highest purities ever achieved, and that is precisely because of the purity of the rock. Because of that, 91.1% of that can then be converted into purified phosphoric acid for batteries.
So think of sedimentary phosphate rocks for fertilizer and think of igneous phosphate rock as bypassing the fertilizer industry and going directly into the purified phosphoric acid industry, for the LFP batteries. Now let us talk a little bit about the deposit itself. We had a recent drilling program that did really well. We were able to increase our indicated reserves by a full 378%, and that has now given us the confidence that we can move into our feasibility study.
But what's more important is, we discovered full continuity of the resource, full homogeneity, and it's very consistent throughout. Meaning that it's one set of mineralogy, which leads to one set of metallurgy for the project as well. The project will be an open pit. It's 2.7 kilometers long, it's about 500 meters wide, and it descends down to about 400 meters. It is slightly open on the sides and it's open at depth as well.
And we also have a full 89.5 million tons extra of inferred resources, which are not even going to be calculated in the feasibility study. So it's a big resource. What we knew of the resource even before the last bit of drilling, we knew that we had enough to basically electrify half of the fleet of new vehicles in North America for the next 23 years.
That's 6 million cars per annum, and now it's only grown since then. We've got good project economics, $2.1 billion NPV, IRR of 37%, 2.9-year payback, and 1.5 to one strip ratio on a 23-year mine life. Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about the logistics. We're sitting in a very nice area here in Quebec. If you see the big area with the lake right beside where it says Bégin-Lamarche Phosphate, that is the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean area of Quebec.
That's where all the aluminum is processed. It's the old Alcan aluminum, which is now Rio Tinto, and it's also the forestry industry. Those are the two big industries in that area. And, because of this, we benefit from very good logistics, very good equipment suppliers, and a lot of very qualified industrial workers in the area.
At the Bégin-Lamarche Phosphate mine, we are 70 kilometers, 7-0 driving distance from the deep-sea Port of Saguenay. And from there, we benefit from major logistics shipping to the rest of the world, and also rail that can go to the heart of North America. So think of this as a critical mineral, but in the right spot, right where the logistics are.
Port of Saguenay, right where it says deep sea Port of Saguenay, we've got our industrial lands where we'll be able to transform and to ship around the world. So that's extremely important there as well, is the connection to the world and to North America through the Port of Saguenay. This is something we've already been able to do.
If you look at the left where it says high purity phosphate rock, we've been able to convert the phosphate rock into apatite, which is phosphate concentrate. From there, we've been able to make the purified phosphoric acid, and from there, we've been able to get into iron phosphate precursor, LFP cathode active material, and eventually the LFP batteries. We were able to make these first LFP batteries made in 25 years of North American critical minerals in the cathode, and the anode, and this took in our phosphate from the Bégin-Lamarche project.
T he reason we've been able to do this, obviously, is we've got a whole host of very large partners that are commercial. None of what you see is R&D in any way, and it's basically the whole supply chain for LFP batteries landed here in miniature. And it could be easily scaled up very quickly. This is very important because if you remember back in October of 2025 when there was discussions between the U.S. and Chinese government, three things on the table were rare earth materials, semiconductors, and LFP cathode active material.
In fact, if you see here the LFP cathode active material that's in the third bubble, that is still under export restrictions in China. It's very difficult to export that from China at the moment. We benefit from great government and strategic initiatives to de-risk the project. We are under Quebec fast-track status for permitting. The Canadian government has already given CAD 21.5 million of total non-dilutive government contributions to the project. These are in the form of contributions that allow us to advance the feasibility study, the roadwork, and also the electrical line.
We've got great local support as well from all local chambers of commerce, mayors, and industry groups, as well as our indigenous community locally. What's really important is at the G7 level, we were just made a G7 strategic project that was in June of this year at Évian, France when the leaders met. Because of that, we had the government of Denmark come to the table for CAD 190 million of financing, the Swiss government for CAD 212 million of financing, and the Italian government and three of its entities and engineering group are at the table for the support of the phosphoric acid plant.
Lastly, we also signed offtake agreements, definitive and bankable, with a Western ally for 200,000 tons of phosphate concentrate and 60,000 tons of phosphoric acid. You'll see here's a little bit of our timeline. You can see where we've been and where we're going is Q1 of 2027 is when we expect to have our feasibility study out. Q3 of 2027 is when we expect to finish our environmentals and our Quebec local consultations. Q1 of 2028, we hope to have permit applications in place. Q2 of 2028 is when we'll start the final investment decision.
Now, if you look at it, the company is firmly financed from Q1 of 2027 until Q2 of 2028. So that's almost a two-year timeline of basically a burn rate in place. Beginning at Q2 of 2028, that's where the guarantees from the Swiss government, the Danish government, and also we would hope that the Canadian and the Quebec government will be at the table as well to be able to finance the project.
Between the Swiss government and the Danish government, we already have at the table 80% of the CapEx that's needed to build the mine. So that's about $400 million on $500 million USD that's needed to build the mine. You can see this project is already quite well de-risked, and we are de-risked until here, the final investment decision. From there, we've got the nation states that come to the table to support. This is a G7 project, so it's really important to the economies of North America and Europe, and this is why the nation states are at the table, and that's the best capital that you can get. It comes with the best levels of interest. It is the friendliest capital.
It's capital that's there to see us succeed, and it's not capital that wants to see you fail so that they can take over the project. Nation states have no interest in running the project. They want First Phosphate to run the project. They want us to get into production, to hire people, to buy equipment and services from the various countries, and basically to de-risk the supply chain, right, for national security and industrial needs.
Getting into the share structure, we've done really well. We've got a very strong market capitalization. We have very little dilutables in the company, just a few warrants, which are mostly owned by management. The rest are expiring on December 31st of this year. We've got a board and management that still own 20% of the company. We've done a lot of the financings on our own.
We've raised CAD 80 million without any formal underwriting agreements. We've done that, so we've been able to see every single person that's come into the capital of the company, and we've been able to stay away from any kind of toxic financings. Management and board have put in over CAD 4 million of their own funds. All of the board and myself as CEO, we're paid in stock so that we internalize the funds in the company for growth and development.
As you can see, we've got no debt either, so we're in very good shape. The company's got about CAD 22 million in the bank. We've got access to about another CAD 20 million from the Canadian government. That gives us available cash of over CAD 40 million, which like I said, gets us all the way through to the final investment decision.
There's no need to raise capital at any time here unless it's something strategic. When we get to final investment decision, we've already got the $400 million between the Swiss and the Danish governments at the table. We are a good group of business leaders here. We are strong in business. We're strong in capital markets. We are strong in mining, but we really look at the mine as a means to be able to get to the final end product, which is the LFP battery.
I think that's it for now. I thank everybody for coming. I'm just going to start answering some of the questions that I see coming up here. I see the first question here on the LFP battery supply chain. I've just gone back up to the slide. Yes, like I said, the intent of the company is obviously to help to onshore the LFP battery supply chain as much as possible. Our focus is really going to be here on the left, that is in the mine producing the phosphate concentrate, which then goes into step two, which we'll also be involved in.
That's in making the phosphoric acid. From there, step three, as you can see, is making the iron phosphate precursor, the LFP cathode active material, and the LFP batteries themselves are then made by other off-takers down the road. I had another question here about our timelines. I think I've answered that already, but I'll go through that again. The timeline is Q1 2027 is our feasibility study that's going to be out here in a few months.
From there, we go into Q3 of 2027 for the environmental studies and the social consultations, which we have already started. Q1 2028, we hope to have our permits under the Quebec fast-track status of the Filon program, which is three companies have been fast-tracked. We are one of three. After that, we go into final investment decision, after which we already have the capital at the table from the Swiss and the Danish governments to get the mine into operation.
I have a question about capital raise here. There is no immediate intent for any capital raise unless obviously it is something that is going to be accretive for the company that is strategic. Right now, the company has about CAD 23 million in treasury, access to another CAD 20 million from the government of Canada, which is coming in every quarter, non-dilutive and non-refundable. So that is about access to capital of over CAD 42 million, CAD 43 million.
That does get us all the way out to, like I said, right here to this Q2 2028 range, where then we have the nation-states coming at the table to build out the project. Question here about the Quebec fast-track process. The Quebec fast-track process that I am showing right here. There are three companies. It is a pilot program that started about four months ago. We were one of the three companies that was chosen to start this pilot program. We are very happy for it because we are building it together with the Quebec government in a sense.
We give our feedback, they give their feedback, and it is going really well, and it has already accelerated quite a few things. We think that we will be able to hit that Q1, Q2 2028 timeline for permitting just based on what we are seeing and feeling and hearing that is coming through the program. Another question here about the G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance. Yes, this was something that was started in the 2025 G7 Leaders Summit in Kananaskis, and it was repeated in the 2026 G7 Summit, which took place in Évian, France.
At that summit, this is where it was discussed certain critical mineral supply chains and why they were important to the West and it came out that there was a number of supply chains that the G7 wanted to have at least no more than 60% concentration in any one country for these supply chains, and one of them was the LFP battery supply chain. There were 13 projects that were selected for this, and two of those 13, the First Phosphate mine and the phosphoric acid plant, were the ones that were suggested to be able to benefit from this program.
Which is what obviously brings all of the countries of the G7 to the table to help to advance the First Phosphate project. This is why, like I said, we have the governments of Denmark, the governments of Switzerland, the governments of Italy so far at the table to be able to advance the project, and it's also what helped to secure our offtake agreements as well. Okay, look, I think that's everything here. If there's any other questions, you can feel free to send them in to me. It's been great, Anna. Thank you very much, everybody, for your support, and I look forward to seeing you in the future.
Perfect. Thank you so much, John, for this thorough presentation. We're so excited to follow along with your journey at First Phosphate.
Thank you, Anna. Thank you, everybody.
All right. Thanks, everyone, for watching. We'll be right back with our next presenter.