Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you all for joining today's Energy Fuels ASM acquisition conference call. As a reminder, all phone participants are in a listen-only mode to prevent background noise, but you are invited to signal for a question by pressing star and one on your telephone keypad. Also, please be reminded that today's session is being recorded. And now, for opening remarks and introductions, I am pleased to turn the floor to Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Mark Chalmers. Welcome, sir.
Thank you, Jim, for that introduction, and welcome to everybody listening to the Energy Fuels call here. As Jim indicated for the proposed acquisition of Australian Strategic Materials, and in this presentation, I'll refer to it, or many of us will refer to it just ASM, and this acquisition will create, through the acquisition, a mine- to- metal and alloy rare earth champion, which we're very excited about. The acquisition is another material step in our integration strategy in the rare earth sector. In five short years, Energy Fuels has progressed a very long way, and this transaction will make one additional leap forward.
Today, we'll be giving a short presentation on why this acquisition makes so much sense, and I'll be joined today by Ross Bhappu, President of Energy Fuels, and also Rowena Smith, CEO and MD of ASM. Rowena is 12 o'clock midnight in Australia, so we appreciate you joining us. They'll be co-presenting with me, very similar to what we did last night or yesterday, depending on what day you're talking about, with Rowena and ASM's presentation in Australia. As always, there'll be time for questions at the end, and we'll have replays on our website. In addition, I will have Dave Frydenlund, our Executive VP and COO, available to answer any questions with regard to legal or process.
Also available when we're in the Q&A session. This first slide, and I always say I love this slide, not far from the White Mesa Mill, and I still love this slide. We are announcing this acquisition through a scheme implementation deed to acquire 100% of ASX-listed ASM, which is a Perth-based company, which includes, subject to all conditions being met in the scheme, an operating metal and alloy plant in South Korea, the Dubbo Project in New South Wales, Australia, which has both light and heavy rare- earths, zirconium, niobium, and hafnium, and that becomes another pipeline project for Energy Fuels. And it really complements our Donald, Bahia, and Toliara projects that we're advancing as well, too.
We also, with the acquisition, have plans to build and operate a metal and alloy plant in the United States of America, and in addition to all that, ASM has a very capable and well-regarded management team. The transaction is highly strategic and solidifies our plans to become an ex-China Western integrated mine to alloy rare earth platform. And that is very, very significant. It strengthens our critical mineral positioning across uranium, rare earth, vanadium, heavy mineral sands, including titanium and zirconium. And the acquisition adds downstream metals and alloys capabilities to our existing U.S. rare earth oxide capabilities, expands our product breadth, resilience, and captures margins across the larger rare earth value chain.
Next slide. I'm making the standard disclaimer that's included on page two of the presentation, and that will be included in the replays and also available to you as required. Next slide. So let's talk about the strategic rationale. And firstly, there are significant benefits, we believe, to both Energy Fuels and ASM shareholders. Energy Fuels is committed to becoming the largest fully integrated rare earth metal and alloy producer outside of China. ASM, and this is important, adds to Energy Fuels a weak link in allied supply chains, which is the downstream rare earth metal and alloy steps. However, what's really exciting about this is that when you add that missing link and that weak link to our strengths, which includes the fact that we have significant building sources of feed through oxides, we are stronger together.
And that is called integration. So we also gain a state-of-the-art metallization facility, which has structural cost advantages and momentum. Momentum is important in this market, and this acquisition gives us additional momentum and further growth options in Australia and the U.S. The ASM acquisition is also accretive on a NAV basis and enhances our vertical integration that I've already mentioned in margin capture, which Ross will talk about a bit later, across the entire supply chain. Dubbo strengthens our long-term prospects, providing a secure, low-cost source of feedstock. And we believe that we can do this potentially with more revenue in a way that only Energy Fuels can capitalize through the shared synergies. So now I'd like to hand it over to Ross to talk about the transaction overview and timing. And over to you, Ross.
Thank you, Mark. Again, we're very excited by this opportunity. I'll just describe the transaction as it's outlined on page four. You'll see it's quite a lot of detail there, but let me provide a brief summary. The acquisition is being structured as an Australian scheme of arrangement, and that's done through a scheme implementation deed that calls for the 100% acquisition of ASM. The total offer price is AUD 1.60 per share. That provides an implied value of AUD 447 million for the company, and that's priced above 100% premium. The payment terms are a 0.053 share of Energy Fuels common shares or CHESS Depositary Interests for each share of ASM. That represents AUD 1.47 per ASM share. We'll also be dividending AUD 0.13 cash per share to the Australian shareholders or the shareholders of ASM.
ASM option holders will also receive AUD 0.50 per ASM listed option under the ticker ASMO. That's via their option scheme. And just as a bit of an aside, the SID scheme is not conditional on the option scheme, but the option scheme is conditional on the SID scheme. Post-closing, ASM shareholders will hold 5.8% of Energy Fuels. And we're pleased that we've gotten full unanimous board support from the ASM board. They've recommended shareholders vote in favor of this transaction, and all directors have committed to voting in favor of it. Of importance, Ian Gandel, who owns 13.6% of ASM, has committed to vote in favor. Approvals, there's a number of approvals that are going to be required.
First of all, ASM shareholders will have to approve it. There's federal court approval in Australia. There's the Foreign Investment Review Board in Australia. And then, of course, the various exchanges that we operate on, the TSX, the NYSE, and the ASX. We're anticipating closing of the transaction sometime in the Q2 and certainly hoping that it'll happen prior to June 30th of this year. So with that.
Yeah. So now, thanks for that, Ross. And we'll hand it over to Rowena because there's nobody better to talk about ASM than the CEO and MD. So over to you, Rowena.
Thanks very much, Mark, and to Ross. It's a pleasure to be here with you for what is for me this evening, but for you this morning, and to introduce ASM. We are a leading Western producer of rare earth metal and alloys. We've been building this global supply chain now since we listed in 2020 on the Australian Stock Exchange. And we have been, over that time, working on developing three key assets. We have our Korean Metals Plant, which is in operation and has been operating since 2022.
And we make there a light rare earth metal, the neodymium and praseodymium metal, as well as the specialist alloys, the NdFeB alloys that are the major constituent for these high-performance magnets that are so critical for the advanced technologies that the particularly Western world is really growing use of at the moment. So we have got our operation there in Korea. We have got a project in America that we have been progressing to replicate that capability in the US. And that is in study mode at the moment. And then we have got our project in Australia, which is. We have a resource there that we have been developing now for a number of years that contains an array of critical minerals. It's what we call a polymetallic.
It has light rare earth. It has heavy rare earth. And it also has the zirconium, hafnium, and niobium. And that project has been developed to the point now where it is construction ready. We have got the permits all in place, and we are in the final phases of securing funding and finalizing the initial construction phase to be able to take FID inside the next 18 months. The three key projects are unusual in that we have started the mine to metal strategy that we've been developing at the metal and alloy point, which does mean that we have a very unique capability because most people have been working from the resource forward.
And so really, we are one of very few operators who've got established capability in that metals and alloys piece of this emerging supply chain. And in late October last year, we sought funding from our shareholders through the ASX, and we got AUD 55 million to progress expansion of our metallization capability, which we are progressing at the moment. So perhaps if we move to slide six, I can talk in a bit more detail about what we have been establishing there in Korea, which we are extremely proud of.
The Korean Metals Plant is, as I say, a very unique facility outside of China. It's one of very, very few that are capable of producing these rare earth metals and alloys. What we've currently got installed there in our Ochang Foreign Investment Zone facility, which is just south of Seoul in South Korea, we currently have installed capacity of 1,300 tonnes per annum of the NdFeB alloy that is supported with four furnaces and one strip caster, and what we're able to do is make a product range of both the light rare earth metals, the neodymium and praseodymium metals, as well as those specialist alloys. We've been delivering product to customers since 2022, and we have been ramping up the utilization of that installed capacity as the emerging Western magnet producers have come online.
With that recent equity raise, we have been able to commit to the phase II ramp-up. You can see there on the slide that fully funded phase II, where we will take the capacity from 1,300 tonnes per annum through to 3,600 tonnes per annum with the installation of the additional 14 furnaces and one additional strip caster. We have already commenced the ordering of those additional pieces of equipment in order to progress that expansion, and we anticipate that we will be continuing to deliver that over the next sort of 15-18 months. What we are also doing in that facility at the moment is we are expanding the product mix. In addition to an operational team that we have established there in Korea, we also have a dedicated R&D facility in that location.
We have, with our research and development team, been developing the technologies. Initially, they supported the development of the technologies for the neodymium and praseodymium metallization and our strip casting, but currently, they're focused on the development of metallization for the heavy rare earth, the terbium, and the dysprosium. We had success in the middle of last year with our pilot and were able to sell our first terbium and dysprosium metals to market that went to Neo Performance into their Estonian magnet facility that they have just recently opened. We have been continuing to produce the dysprosium through the second half of last year in that pilot facility.
We are this quarter going to be now running a second pilot of the heavy rare earth technologies that are sized up from the original pilot as we progress towards commercial scale by the end of this year. And then the last piece of work that we're doing there in our Korean metals facility is that we are doing the preliminary planning for a phase III where in situ, in the current location, we have the space to be able to do a further expansion with additional furnaces and additional strip caster to take the total capacity installed here to 5,600 tonnes. The customers that we have been supplying from this facility, in addition to some of the emerging magnet producers in Korea, include Noveon Magnetics, who are a U.S.-based (they're based in Texas) emerging magnet producer.
And they've been a very exciting inaugural customer for us, as well as Vacuumschmelze, who originally have been operating in Germany, and we've been supplying them into their German facility. But they have just recently opened a magnet facility in South Carolina. So they are two of our U.S. customers that are taking alloy, as well as Neo have been taking the light rare earth metals as well as those initial volumes of heavy rare earth metals. And we're excited to be continuing to grow with our customers as this market really starts to establish itself in the coming year.
If we go to the next slide, you can see there is a summary there of what we have been doing with the development of the American Metals Plant. As we've been talking with our American customers and also with the U.S. government, there has been a lot of interest about us, not just to be providing this product through our Korean facility, but for us to replicate this capability domestically. And so we have, over the last 12 months, been progressing this. We have done site selection due diligence in six different states for the location of this facility, one of them being Utah, which understandably is now at the top of our list as to where we would love to build this facility.
The facility that we've been contemplating is intended to have an initial capacity of 2,000 tonnes per annum of alloy, with the ability to be able to expand it, as we have been doing in Korea, in modules to be able to take that through to 4,000 tonnes per annum and then beyond. The opportunity that we have here is to leverage the capability and the IP that we have developed in Korea to be able to then very simply replicate that into the US. When we did the work in Korea, we did it with all local hire.
We would expect to be doing the same in the states, all local hire with up to 150 skilled jobs for the community that we established this plant in, and we'd be very excited to be doing this with non-China feedstock and to be doing that really in an accelerated delivery timeline.
When we did the facility in Korea, from the point where we broke ground to when we had first product going out to customers was 15 months. That was during COVID and having never done it before, so we're very confident about being able to rapidly establish this capacity stateside once we have decided that the market is ready for this additional capacity, so that is the story for ASM, and we are very excited about the opportunity to be working together with Energy Fuels, bringing our assets together. As Mark says, we know we are stronger together and excited to be part of the call here this evening. Thanks, Mark.
Thank you, Rowena. And again, for those on the call at the Q&A sessions, Rowena will be available for further questions on ASM. So now I'm going to turn it over to Ross for the next couple of slides.
Great. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you, Mark. Look, I think this next slide is really an important slide because it really does demonstrate how ASM fits incredibly well into Energy Fuels' capabilities. You can see that both ASM and Energy Fuels have mining capabilities on both the light and the heavy rares. But then Energy Fuels brings our separations capabilities for both lights and heavies, and it marries up very, very nicely with ASM's capabilities on producing metals and alloys with the light metals, the heavy metals, strip casting, and ultimately alloy production. You can see that with our Western peers that it really does separate us from anyone else operating in this space. We've got proven execution capabilities across the value chain now with this combination.
We've got the potential to accelerate our growth, and there's a very diverse portfolio of assets across numerous geographies.
What it allows us to do is capture incredible margins, and so if we flip to the next slide, what this does is it insulates Energy Fuels from commodity price exposure, which is a really critical aspect when you're operating in this space across multiple geographies. I think one of the keys is we will own our own molecules that we're running through the entire process, so we're not buying molecules or products from third parties. It allows us to participate in margin uplift across the value chain, and it provides a gross margin uplift of on the order of 20%. There's a tremendous structural advantage by us combining with ASM and the ability to sell products at any stage in the value chain if it's desired. We have that capability.
Furthermore, we have a diverse source of mined material, so we'll have multiple sources, including Dubbo. That provides low-cost feedstock. And then when we look at KMP, we hold labor and power advantages that are unique, and the proven technology is incredibly important. So look, the acquisition provides incredible margin capture. It allows us the opportunity to expand into the U.S. via the AMP, and we'll be able to service customers across the United States, Europe, and Asia with this combination. So with that, I'll turn it back to you, Mark.
All right. Thank you. We'll move on to this next slide. Really, Energy Fuels has a proven track record for creating value through M&A. And if you go back over the last 15 years to 2012, the company had a market cap of $34 million. And today, we're in that mid-$5.2-$5.4 billion. So when you look at in the early days, it was mainly focused on uranium. And then when you look at the acquisition of the Bahia Project, the Astron joint venture, Base Resources, and now ASM, we plan to continue that trajectory going forward with the integration. So it's really impressive, I believe, on how successfully we've been able to launch that. And really, so that's ASM's next step, and it's another part of our playbook. The near-term Western world, I'm on the next slide here.
So anyway, that's an impressive slide on value creation through M&A. Let's move to slide number 11 and talk more about the near-term Western mine-to-alloy supply chain in delivering light and heavy rare earth. Really, this is a really interesting slide, and it gives our shareholders, ASM shareholders and our shareholders, immediate access to a larger proposition here in the value creation chain. It adds the producing metals, NdFeB facility in Korea, as we've discussed already. It's highly accretive to our plans. And it's also. I talk about the speed element into the United States is very important because speed is important. And it's complementary. We've already talked about it to our upstream operations. And this graphic really shows how this thing is growing.
When you look at the current assets we have with our molecules in Australia and Madagascar and Brazil, and including feed coming from Chemours going to the White Mesa Mill, and then the ability to send product back to Korea or to the American Metals Plant, we're getting there. And we couldn't be prouder of how this all fits together as part of the puzzle here. So we'll move to the next slide and talk about how this creates value for all shareholders. And again, it uniquely unlocks ASM's potential for that integration, combining our unmatched solvent extraction capabilities, these world-class feed assets into both global markets and to governments. So it covers and ticks all the bases, and it creates value for all stakeholders, all stakeholders, including our shareholders from this broader suite.
So we really look at this as being able to advance our cost position and scale and possibility and how this positions us with our suppliers going forward, all ex-China. So again, in closing, and we still have other slides on Energy Fuels on its own, but it is value accretive, strengthens this whole integration process, and combines with our unique downstream technical capabilities of not just Energy Fuels, but also ASM. So that is it on those first slides. But now we'll go to some of our Energy Fuels overview, which many of you are aware of. And Ross and I are just going to tag team this. There's only a few slides here. But I think the important part is that really Energy Fuels is three companies in one.
The uranium side of our business is ramping up and ramping up very well. We are exceeding guidance in a number of cases on the uranium front, providing us with near-term cash flow at very good margins, very low cost. I think there's a lot of uranium producers that wish that they could be doing as well as we are right now. Certainly, the rare earths, we've talked a lot about that in these first slides. The addition of the heavy mineral sands provides us with the monazite feed for the monazite sands, and that's all advancing very quickly, and that is what equals Energy Fuels. This next slide, Ross, why don't you talk about the portfolio, which is significant. This is an asset-rich company, asset-rich company in all aspects.
It is. It's an impressive asset list. We hold this diverse portfolio, and we've had many of these assets for a number of years. As you may recall, Energy Fuels started as a pure-play uranium company and today we're the largest producer of uranium in the United States. We hold seven mines or development projects, including two operating mines, one on standby. We have one in development and two in permitting. I think the key here is that we hold the only operating conventional uranium mill in the United States, the White Mesa Mill. Mark and I were fortunate to be there yesterday, and the mill's in great shape. It's operating. It's fun to see.
It's sort of the crown jewel, I think, that allows us to pull all these various assets together and become a dominant player in both uranium, rare earths and then, of course, the heavy mineral sands that supplies the monazite to that mill. Certainly, that mill is unique. We've got incredible expertise at that mill. Over years, they've developed the ability to process monazite. As we moved into monazite production, we went out and we had to identify sources of monazite. We didn't want to be subject to having to source it externally. We decided to source it internally. That led to the acquisition of Bahia, transaction with Astron for partnership on Donald. Of course, last year or a year and a half ago, the acquisition of Base Resources, which brought us the Toliara, formerly called Toliara project.
So we really are an asset-rich company with a great future.
Yeah. Ross, why don't you do the next slide, and I'll do the last slide on the White Mesa Mill specific, okay? So if you do that.
So again, I mentioned the White Mesa Mill. You'll see that in the middle. At the upper part of that slide, it shows the uranium and vanadium ores that come from our various mining operations. I should mention that one of those operations is an ISR project in Wyoming. The ores are fed to the mill. We produce uranium and vanadium. You'll see on the right side of the chart the various products. On the uranium side, we have uranium U₃O₈, also called yellowcake. We have vanadium pentoxide. And then we're working very hard to move into the medical isotopes, targeted alpha therapies side of the business, which is a fascinating business in its own right. And we hope to talk more about that in the future.
On the heavy mineral sands side, we will produce various titanium products. But then again, the value of those heavy mineral sands operations is the monazite, which we now have the ability to treat and process at White Mesa. That allows us to produce NdPr, dysprosium, and terbium, all critical elements to producing rare earth magnets, permanent magnets. But we also have the ability to do further processing of those rare earth ores if we choose to do that and move into other minerals. So when you look across the line of products on the right, we are truly a critical minerals company. Everything we are supplying is in the critical minerals bucket, and we are a very diverse provider of those or a provider of diverse critical minerals. So really a fantastic asset base once again. Mark? Yeah.
Thanks, Ross. Okay. So this last slide, and again, we really beat on to White Mesa Mill for the right reasons. The only operating conventional uranium mill in the United States, and incidentally, I can't help but say that in December, it produced 350,000 pounds of uranium, which when you look at production from other companies, it's pretty staggering on what it has done. And it's the largest processing facility in the entire United States. Nobody can touch it when it comes to the 8 million pounds of licensed production capabilities. We have, as most of you are aware of, we've submitted the phase II expansion, rare- earths expansion. That's been submitted to the state of Utah. It's about a 700-page submission. And we're really excited about getting that fully permitted and ready to go.
It's the only facility in the U.S. capable of processing monazite and production of rare earth oxides. We're continuing to do our piloting. We've done substantial piloting of Dy, and we're moving towards the terbium, the Tb. And we're looking at commercial capabilities for separation of the heavies later this year into next year. And at when we have all the feeds and these facilities completed, including phase II, around the same scale of Lynas currently with 6,000 metric tons per year of NdPr and 240 tons per year of Dy and about 66 tons of Tb oxides per year. So world significant. And so if you look at the picture on the left there, the phase I, that's where we have the solvent extraction, the vanadium circuit, and the rare earth circuits.
And so that's phase I, and we share the mill on that. So we can do we can swap around there to produce these products right now. But the phase II expansion is to the north there. And that will be completely brand new once it's permitted and we make a decision to construct that facility. So you will have a critical mineral hub on steroids with all the elements that will come out of that facility. And it is impressive. And when I go and visit it, like Ross and I did yesterday, it is staggering at the momentum that we have right now and this entire strategy we have, including the uranium production. We are really going in leaps and bounds.
And again, so proud to have ASM as part of our team going forward. So now I'll just open it up for questions.
We have one final slide just on timeline, project timeline.
Okay. Sorry about that.
I'm just really quickly.
Yeah. Okay.
For everybody's benefit, we're targeting an implementation date for the scheme around mid-June. That means that a lot of hearings and activity has to happen between now and then. We'll hold our first court hearing in April, scheme meeting in May, second court hearing in June. And again, we're hoping to close around mid-June on the transaction. So a lot of activity between now and then, but we feel like this is an incredibly accretive value for our shareholders. It's valuable to the ASM shareholders. And yeah, we'd love to open it up to questions now.
Okay. Sorry about that. That was at the back of the presentation, and I missed it, but it was important. So all right. Any questions? Fire away.
To our phone audience today, that is star and one. If you would like to signal for a question, pressing star and one will place your line into a queue, and I will open your lines one at a time, and you'll be invited to address your questions to our presenters today. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star and one. We'll hear from Mike Kozak at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Yeah. Good morning, Mark, Ross, and team. And good evening, Rowena. Congrats on the transaction. I think it makes a ton of sense, a very logical next step. I did have a few questions, if I may. The first one that Rowena kind of already partially answered is my understanding is that ASM's proposed American Metals Plant is still in the site selection process. I mean, it obviously makes the most sense to build it right next to White Mesa. So my question, my first one is, is that even possible, and when would you expect to finalize that site selection process?
So that's a question for Rowena or for us, for Energy Fuels?
I guess it would be for Rowena because I don't know how far advanced that process is or when it's expected to conclude.
I'll be very happy to give my views on this. We've been going through a process of due diligence around the site location, looking at the various different incentives as well as looking at the location options in various different states. And that is a very competitive process, but there's no doubt that we would expect when this transaction completes that leveraging Energy Fuels' relationship locally in Utah, as well as with the economies of scale of an existing team and facility in Utah, that that would, as I said before, bring the Utah opportunity to the top of the list. But that would be a process that we would finalize once we finalize this transaction.
So I think once we finalize the actual location, then the next step in the process is to progress the permitting. We allowed in our timeline 12 months for permitting. Obviously, if we were to co-locate this facility with the White Mesa Mill, then there would be advantages in the permitting process for that as well. But we may find that actually it makes better sense to, whilst we were to locate it in Utah, that it might be better to locate it closer to a larger population for workforce because we do need that 150 staff in the expanded facility. So that will be some of the considerations. But my expectation is that we would be able to finalize that quite rapidly once we were confident that this transaction was complete.
And then that permitting process will probably be more swift than we've allowed for. And as I said before, the construction timeline was quite quick even when we were doing it the first time. So we've allowed again another 18 months for construction beyond the permitting, but I think there's opportunity for that to be compressed as we go forward.
Okay. That's good.
I'll add to that too. Yeah. So there's more work to be done there. But at White Mesa in Blanding, near Blanding, we have 5,500 acres of land that we've owned for many years. And so we're not constrained on land in Utah near the White Mesa Mill.
Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. I'll ask maybe one more, and then I'll jump back in too. And it's on the Dubbo, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, I hope, the Dubbo Project in Australia. My understanding is that there's various government agencies that have given you preliminary indications on debt funding. And you mentioned earlier on the call a timeline of 18 months. Is that 18 months to get the government agency debt funding finalized, or is that 18 months construction period once an FID is made?
This again, Dubbo for Rowena?
Yeah. You did pronounce that correctly. It is Dubbo. So thank you for that. The 18 months that I was speaking about was actually the finalizing of the engineering and finalizing of the funding. So that is the work that we would need to do prior to doing the construction. The construction phase will be longer than that. It's about just over two years to go through the construction phase once we have completed the engineering and funding piece of the work. So at the moment, we're predicting that if all was to go seamlessly, that we would be having first production from that Dubbo facility in 2029. Did that answer your question?
Or you were also asking about the various different ECAs. So the ECAs, we've got support from US EXIM, from EDC, and from the Australian EFA. We would expect that if we were going forward with this transaction, that that would actually enhance the discussions that we've been having with those various debt funding opportunities because we will be coming into those discussions off the base of a much stronger balance sheet, which they will certainly welcome.
Yeah. That's very helpful.
And the other thing too, Mike, is that we're looking at there could be some unique synergies between that project and our infrastructure in the United States with the ability to separate into oxides and perhaps take things further downstream. So we've still got some work to do there. But again, we have diversification of these feeds that we're building up over time. And we see that continuing because we're planning to go big here, world significant scale. And we don't think small at Energy Fuels or ASM.
Understood. Thanks, everyone. I'll hop back in queue.
We'll hear next from the line of Nick Giles of B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thanks, operator. Hi, everyone. Just want to send my congratulations as well to both teams. Maybe just following up on the last one there at Dubbo. I mean, maybe a question for Mark and team. How do we really so you now have a portfolio of multiple development stage mining projects. And so how should we think about force ranking these projects in terms of priority development timeline and ultimately capital needs, just given that Dubbo does have the conditional support from multiple governments? Just was looking for some more commentary around that.
Yeah. Look, I would start off with Donald because Donald is fully approved and really close to making a final investment decision on that. And then after that, these other projects, Toliara and Dubbo and Bahia are still in the process of how they stack up. We're still hoping that we think we're making really good progress in Madagascar, and that's a very, very significant project. And with Dubbo, we still want to look at those synergies because we think that can also help reduce the capital cost. They're, again, unique to Energy Fuels. So if there's an intermediate concentrate and that can make it over to Energy Fuels and we can process that, that could help the economics on that project with lower capital upfront costs.
So step by step, Nick, but I would put Donald at the front of the line at this point in time. The other three, and there could be others in the future potentially, will be building up from there.
Got it. No, thanks, Mark. That's helpful clarification. And obviously, this is a transformational deal for both platforms. So don't want to get too ahead of myself here, but do want to ask just about the appetite for Energy Fuels to continue moving downstream. I mean, how do you weigh incremental M&A, specifically something like a magnet-making opportunity versus, say, all of the organic growth within the now newer platform?
Yeah. Look, we've always been looking at integration kind of on a step-by-step basis on what makes sense, and we've always been careful not to try to tell everybody we're going to do every step. Some people talk about every step, and we've been taking it very, very focused strategy where we started off with processing, we moved upstream for the molecules, and moved to oxides, and then also to the heavies, and now into the metallization, so I don't know what the future has in store, but what I do know is that these integration steps that we're putting together and building together are gaining a lot of attention globally because there was this weak link that I discussed, which was the metallization and the alloys, and we're filling that in now.
So the magnet makers, and that's sort of a specialty business on its own, we'll just see where it goes. But I think that people are looking for somebody that has all those steps with diversification and scale and good cost structures and trying to get the best margins possible. And that's what we're focused on at this point in time.
Mark, if I could just add that one of the issues has been that metallization has been a choke point in the supply chain. And I think the key for us is solving that choke point, and we've done that with ASM. I think there's a lot of magnet manufacturers out there, but there aren't a lot of metal producers, metallization companies. And so that's really the key of this transaction is solving that point.
Yeah, and it accelerates it. This acquisition accelerates this choke point to reduce it for us.
Understood. Well, Mark, Ross, Rowena, thanks so much for all the detail. Congrats again, and continue the best of luck.
Thanks, Nick.
Thank you.
Our next question will come from the line of Noel Parks at Tuohy Brothers. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello. Thanks a lot, so a couple of things. I definitely wanted to start with the discussion of Dubbo, and I believe there is a mention in the ASM materials about it being anticipated to achieve lower quartile costs versus other ex-China sources, so I was just interested in hearing a bit more about that with the cost positioning?
Okay. Rowena, I'll turn it over to you.
Thanks, Mark. Yeah. So we've been developing the flowsheet for Dubbo now for many years in conjunction with an Australian government-funded research facility, ANSTO, and when we were originally doing the flowsheet, we were going to do a flowsheet that delivered all of the products because it is polymetallic. We were going to do all the products in one step, but what we did most recently, and in the study that you're referring to, we decided that to lower the capital because to do all the products in one step was very capital intensive. To lower the capital hurdle to be able to get this into operation, we would focus first on a rare earth-only step.
If you're only looking to extract the rare earth from the Dubbo ore body, then you can do it with an atmospheric leach process as the first processing step rather than a more traditional cracking process that is needed if you are going to extract the zirconia and hafnia and niobium as well. And so you do get a much lower cost profile when you're using that atmospheric leach process. It does reduce the CapEx, but it also significantly reduces the reagent use that you need, and therefore, it reduces the costs. And so what we put out in that study is when we looked at the OpEx for that proposal, we were saying that we were in the very bottom of that first quartile cost across the dysprosium, terbium, and neodymium praseodymium oxides.
As Mark has said, though, the opportunity here with this transaction is that we could reduce the CapEx further by only processing the ore through to an intermediate product. It would possibly be something like a mixed hydroxide, and if we do that, then we're going to see those costs drop further because we would be able to export that intermediate through to the Utah facility and get the advantage of the economies of scale and the established capital that's already been expended there in the Utah facility for the separation and refining of the oxides, so I think we'll see it be stronger again, but we've got a 75-million-ton resource there in Dubbo.
We're planning to be operating at a million ton per annum, so we've got a multi-generational asset there that will be able to provide that low-cost feed into this integrated supply chain.
Great. That scale is impressive. So I'm just thinking about how much the Energy Fuels strategy has been focused on lowest being the lowest cost or lower- cost producer across its products. And so I don't know if this is exactly the right sort of nexus point, but does this change sort of the unit I'm thinking about the unit transportation cost outlook for rare- earths, the supply potentially from Dubbo versus from Donald and Toliara? I'm just wondering if transportation cost is something in the mix that gets more favorable as you integrate additional sources.
Look, I think transportation is an issue, but if you'll note with the recent releases of the feasibility studies that we released on Toliara, which was formerly called Toliara previously, and the White Mesa Mill, all those transport costs were included in our final cost estimates. And we've really shown or told the market that with the Toliara project, with basically a monazite coming along for free, that we have or we're projecting cost structures around $30 per kg for NdPr, which is extremely low in a market that currently is about $100 per kilogram.
And even with these mixture of sources, and we haven't put that into the model Dubbo yet on what that looks like, but even with some of the higher costs that we see from some of these other projects, we're looking at sort of a rolled-up average of around $60 per kg of NdPr.
So again, very long low-cost structures. So even though the costs are a part of that, I mean, we announced that to the market with that is all-inclusive once we process at the White Mesa Mill. So I think it just adds another project. And if you look at the China strategy focusing on monazite and rare earth strategies, they get products from all over the world, from different types of projects. We've been focused on the monazite strategy. We're looking at opening that up a bit with IMREC to have more capability to handle other feed sources, to continue to build something that is world-significant and has this flexibility for multiple feed sources.
Great. Thanks a lot.
We'll take our next question today from the line of Joseph Reager at Roth Capital Partners.
Hey, Mark and team. Thanks for taking the questions. Just in the interest of time, two kind of high-level things. I guess, Rowena, just looking at kind of the performance of KMP to date, where does the confidence come that the EBITDA will turn positive with the growth? Is it just a matter of economies of scale or something else? And then for Mark, can you kind of give us your thoughts on the premium you're paying compared to kind of industry norms that are more like 30%-40%? I understand the strategic rationale of the acquisition, but why the 100% plus premium?
Okay. Over to you, Rowena, first.
Thanks, so the confidence around our modeling in Korea is based on, first of all, we are in production, albeit on small scale there at the moment. So we do understand what our costs of production are. The work that we've been doing over the last two years, while we have been running at lower volumes, and we have definitely been underutilizing the facility, but what we have been doing is working with all the various different emerging magnet producers and validating the specific alloys for them and working as they've been going through their product validation processes with their emerging customer base, and so we've got a pretty good understanding now of what the pricing model is for the various alloys and how that flows through that part of the supply chain.
And so we've got a fairly straightforward margin assumption that we're making that we know that there will be alloys where we will make larger margins on them than those, but we've got a fairly conservative average margin that we are anticipating. And then we predict what that will look like when we're running at full capacity, when we've got the economies of scale that we don't have at the moment. So we're very confident about that. The biggest variable really in terms of whether we hit the economics or not will be the cost of feed because the variability in your raw materials is much more significant than the actual margin that we're talking about for processing the materials.
And so to be able to be in a relationship with Energy Fuels where we have our own feed and you have control on the cost of the feed is, I think, the most important piece to being really confident that we'll be able to hit those EBITDA forecasts.
Okay. Thanks. And Mark, on your end?
Yeah. Look, I mean, when we look at everything, we always want it to be creative, okay? And so if it's creative, then we're adding value here. And so there's a number of variables, Joe. And the rare earth business, and people try to compare rare- earths to the gold business or the copper business or where there are really no real scarcity premium. There's a lot of companies out there that you can do stuff with. So it's really because it's accretive, it's speed-to-market, it's expertise, it's know-how, there's scarcity premium. There's this weak link when it comes to metals, alloys, that there really are not other options to invest in, and it completes our integration steps. And right now, the world is screaming for integration, low-cost control, not having to go to China.
And there is a lot of people, we believe, what you see some of the non-China supplies and values being placed on the NdPr and the Dy and the Tbs, the premiums placed on that for non-China. And we're going to realize that, Joe, because we have that basically integration established. And so speed-to-market is important, and scarcity, there just really isn't any speed-to-market if you do this from grassroots up.
Okay. Fair enough. I'll turn it over.
We'll take our next question from the line of Justin Chan at SCP Resource Finance team.
Hi, Mark, Rowena, congratulations to all and everyone for all your hard work seeing an announcement over the last 24 hours. My first question is just in terms of diving into the margins and long-term prospects for metals and alloys. Maybe my first question is on volumes. When you ramp up White Mesa to 40,000 tons a year of monazite or 6,000 tons of NdPr or however you conceive of it, how does that compare to the metal and alloy capacities in Korea and planned in America? Will you have more material and you'll actually be looking to add to that capacity? Will you need to source material? Yeah, maybe let's just start with that as a first question.
Yeah. Well, I think the beauty of sort of where we are with KMP and AMP is that they're modular, right? We can ramp them up in a stepwise kind of basis, Justin. And really, when you look at our whole business strategy as a whole with the fact that we already have phase I with certain capabilities, phase II with much more significant capabilities, I think, Justin, we're just going to kind of build it as we go. I mean, if you look at KMP, for example, it's got significant expansion capabilities. And the AMP, even though Rowena tossed out the 2,000 tons-4,000 ton s, there's nothing saying it can't be 6,000 tons or 7,000 tons.
So I think we will scale to what the requirements are, pick the locations based on cost structures, power costs, people costs, all those things to get the best outcome here. I don't know, Ross, if you or Rowena have any other things to comment on in that regard?
Well, look, I would say in terms of NDPR production, we'll be able to supply roughly 1/3 of the need here in the U.S. But when you look at DY and TB, it'll be much higher than that at a time when other producers don't have the DY and TB. So we've married up very nicely with other production out there. And I think we'll be a net supplier of DY and TB for those that need it to produce the magnets. So I think the size actually works very, very well for domestic production.
One just thing that I would add is that the ratio of the oxide to the alloy is about 1 to 3. So if you've got 1,000 tons of neodymium praseodymium oxide, then that will support a 3,000-ton alloy capacity.
Yeah. So I think you can kind of work the math from there.
Yeah. This is Dave Frydenlund. I think it's important to note that the Donald Project is shovel ready already, and that's about 10,000 tons of monazite. That is ready to go. That could go through our phase I, which is permitted at the White Mesa Mill. And that quantity would be handled by, I think, currently about half that quantity could be handled by the existing KMP plant. But with the planned phase II expansion that's underway, that would handle at their existing facility with all of Donald. So Donald could, permitted in Australia, permitted at the mill, the first phase of expansion at KMP would handle all of Donald.
Understood. And in the long run, when you look at margin capture, as you mentioned earlier, do you think that ultimately margin capture makes the most sense if you also have magnets and that's the main way? Or do you think that selling metals and alloys would actually be the ideal long-term margin capture given that's a choke point in the supply chain?
Yeah. Look, Justin, obviously, margin capture and margins are critical, and right now, even though we're not ruling out where we may go as a company, right now we're looking at margin capture through the alloy step, so that's how we're doing this. We have extensive models that we utilize to make our decisions on, and when we've gone through this, ASM had some really, really great data that we were able to use, and we get increasing confidence to make sure that our models remain accurate in terms of how we build and move ourselves forward, so yeah, step by step, but right now, we're really looking through the metals and alloys as the new step and how that margin capture helps us get these projects advanced towards FID.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks very much. I'll free up the line.
We'll move to Katie Lachapelle with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the acquisition. With the proven technology that you've got in Korea and then the potential for now increased vertical integration in the United States, can you discuss, Mark, maybe how you think this better opens up the combined company for potential U.S. government support for either phase II or the metals and alloys plant? I understand that ASM was already in some discussions with the Department of Defense prior to the acquisition, so maybe some context on how those discussions were progressing as well. Thanks.
Yeah. I think when you look at it, whether it be the government or private sources, people want a one-stop shop. They want to deal with a company that has to scale these integration steps. They don't want to go to China, and I've got Deb Bennett. I'm sitting across from her. First time I met her when she was working for GM, she said, "I don't care about oxides. I want metals and alloys," and that was the first thing that came out of her mouth, and she's sitting across from me and she's smiling at me right now, so the fact that we have the ability to do that one-stop shop and everything, we think it helps us on all fronts, both private and with the U.S. government, and the government wants it simple.
So we're trying to simplify it for everyone that we're dealing with for the right reasons and showing that we have the full integration. So does it hurt us? I don't think it hurts us. I think it helps us. But again, and we've always said this, we're looking at things that make sense for our company, and we see this as making a lot of sense on a lot of different fronts.
Understood. And then maybe just one quickly on the mechanics of the transaction. In the press release, it noted that the consideration included a special dividend of up to AUD 0.13 a share. It says up to. So what would cause, I guess, a special dividend to be less than that? Or what are the triggers or conditions that are needed to be met to receive the full AUD 0.13 a share?
Yeah. It's Dave Frydenlund. The intention is that the dividend will be paid by ASM to its shareholders. It's in the discretion of the board as all dividends are. The intention is that it will be paid. That's just recognizing the fact that there are sometimes legal constraints on granting dividends, but the intention would be to do the full dividend.
Understood. That's it for me, guys. Thank you.
Thanks, Katie.
That was our final signal from our audience today. Mr. Chalmers, I'm happy to turn the floor back to you, sir, for any additional or closing remarks that you've got.
My closing remarks are, this is a very important piece of the puzzle that was missing in our strategy. We're filling that in. We're still continuing on to be aggressive but not reckless. Uranium business is ramping up really well, as I've mentioned. We're pushing towards 2 million pounds per year plus. And we're over-delivering on that front. A lot of people thought we were getting out of the uranium business, and we're beating a lot of the people that were saying that. But meanwhile, the rare- earths, the heavy mineral sands side of the business are also advancing. We've got a strong balance sheet. We've got great people. We've probably got some of the best.
We've accumulated some of the best people with the best technical skills to execute. A lot of companies don't have very many people to execute. We have a company with real critical mass, hundreds of people, 700 people total, including what we have in Madagascar and Kenya of doing some of the reclamation work, but a lot of technical skills that have been missing outside of China. And we're very proud of that. So all I can say to our shareholders, including hopefully our new shareholders at ASM, we're planning to go on a growth trajectory. We're focused on catching up to these other companies that we're dealing with that have market caps over $10 billion.
So that may be a forward-looking statement. It's included on page two of the presentation. But thank you for listening. And we're going to keep busy, and we're very busy because we don't have a lot of time between the next opportunity that arises. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference, and we thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.