Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we're very pleased you joined us for the second day of the Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The next presentation is from International Battery Metals. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter in a box that I left at the slides, and you can view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking "Book a Meeting." At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Joseph Mills. He's the Chief Executive Officer of International Battery Metals, which trades on the OTCQB Venture Market under the symbol IBATF and on the TSXV under the symbol IBAT. Welcome, Joseph.
Thank you, John. Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and I appreciate that introduction. I appreciate everybody taking the time to listen to the International Battery Metals story. Thank you. I think we've got a good presentation for you this afternoon. So, as John alluded, I am the CEO for International Battery Metals. Our stock symbol is IBAT, and as John said, we trade on the TSXV in Canada as well as the OTC QB, and you can see our stock symbols there on the screen. We have our requisite disclaimer, so I will just flash that just so you are aware. So let me launch into this. We've got 30 minutes. My presentation usually goes about 20 minutes. I certainly want to make sure we have enough time for Q&A, so please submit your questions, and I will try and answer as many as I possibly can.
If unable to answer all of them, we would encourage you to sign up for the one-on-ones. Happy to visit with you separately. So IBAT. So I'm really proud and excited about our company. We are a direct lithium extraction technology business, and I'll talk a lot about DLE. I'll refer to it as DLE, but that stands for Direct Lithium Extraction Technology. So we are in the lithium business. The company is headquartered in Houston, Texas. We were founded in 2018, so we're on our seventh year. We have a market cap as of last week of about $36 million and a cash balance of about $9 million as of December 31st. We're really excited about, A, you hearing our story, but B, what is in front of the company. We have a lot of opportunities.
We think we've got exceptional proven technology in the DLE space, and again, I'll talk a lot about what that means. We believe we've got an advantaged business model, and we're extremely focused on delivering value. So clearly, the company has had a history. We are excited about where lithium is today, how important lithium is in our economy. Obviously, a big driver for lithium's growth is in the battery business. Obviously, electric vehicles and battery storage are a big driver in lithium demand. I'm going to talk a lot about that. We have very unique technology that's built around modular technology, and I'm going to talk a lot about our technology and why we think it's differentiated and what makes us believe what we believe will be the key driver in our success over the next several years. So why invest in IBAT? Why even talk to us?
So first off, lithium. So lithium, I think as most of you are probably well aware, is a critical mineral, right? So I'll talk a lot about the demand growth, but first and foremost, it is a critical mineral. We are seeing very robust lithium demand growth, a lot of it being driven, obviously, by batteries, right? So lithium-ion batteries is a big driver of the lithium demand story. But lithium is used in many industries. It's used in the medical field. It's used in the atomic fusion program. It's used for military purposes. It's used in the plastics and the ceramics industry. So it has a pretty deep use, but the big driver, of course, is batteries, and so I'll talk quite a bit about what we see what's driving that and how we will play a big role in that growth.
The second thing I'm going to talk a lot about is nearshoring. I think it's in the headlines every day. Obviously, China is dominant in the critical mineral business, particularly in the supply chain. There's a strong movement across the world, not just the United States, but Europe, Japan, Australia, and other large industrial complexes, to re-engineer or nearshore the critical minerals away from China. Again, we see that as a big driver in our business, and so I'll talk quite a bit about that supply chain. While we are a Canadian-domiciled company, we're really a U.S.-headquartered company. All of us sit here in Houston, Texas. But our technology is U.S. sourced. It's very specifically on media, and I'll talk quite a bit about our media. That's our secret sauce. Our secret sauce is manufactured right here in the United States.
The materials are sourced here in the United States, so we don't have to worry about faraway places that may have geopolitical issues, not that we couldn't there, but we certainly think that our supply chain is more secure because all of our media is sourced right here in the United States. Modular DLE, I'm going to talk a lot about that. So as compared to a lot of the lithium projects that you may hear about around the world, whether it's the spodumene mines or the salars of Argentina, very large projects that involve billions of dollars and, more often than not, creating kind of a factory on location, our technology is all modular. So what does that mean?
It allows us to build our plants in fabrication yards right here in Houston or Louisiana or other locations at a much lower capital intensity, and then we would transport our modules to the location, put them together. And so that allows us, A, faster execution time. Our ability to build these is a lot faster. A, B, we can stage the development. These projects that I'm going to talk about are large-scale projects that will go for decades. As you can imagine, like most large mineral projects, you start with a phase one, a small, and then you grow over time. Our technology, our modular DLE, allows us to stage the development with the growth of the particular line resource.
Very important, we have a lower capital intensity, which means the economics are more favorable by being able to build our plants off-site and then build these to location. Last but not least is the new management team. I joined the company in April of last year. We have kind of retooled our commercial operations, and we really have a strong bench, a team that has done a lot of infrastructure projects, in particular in the energy world. I'm an oil and gas guy. That's 44 years in the oil and gas business. I have built large companies, upstream, midstream mineral companies. So we bring that experience to IBAT to really prosecute and focus on execution, and I'll talk quite a bit about that. All right, let's start with lithium demand. We are excited about what we're seeing.
You can only imagine lithium demand has been growing over the past really 10 years, but really starting to accelerate. These are projections that independent third-party projections. So today, lithium demand around the world is about 1.6 million metric tons a year. There are projections that it will grow up until the right over the next 10 years at about a 10%-15% CAGR, and people estimate anywhere between 4-6.5 million metric tons of demand by 2035. Either way you look at that, that's a 3-5x growth in lithium demand over the next decade. Where's that going to come from, right? So that's where DLE comes in. We think DLE will be a big proponent, a big driver in that growth.
A lot of it still will come from the salars and/or the spodumene mines, but a lot of those have sustainability issues, whether it be environmental, regulatory. And DLE can help accelerate that because ours is more environmentally sustainable, plus it's more of a closed loop. And again, I'll talk more about that here in a minute. The big drivers in this lithium demand growth is going to be EV adoptions as well as the battery storage. Those are clearly the largest sources of demand, and we don't see that turning over anytime soon. I mean, it's up and to the right. Yes, we could argue that maybe the United States EV adoption is slowing down. It's still growing, but maybe at a slower rate. But I assure you, China, Europe, and other locations, EV adoption only continues to grow. And then we also are excited about the energy storage.
I mean, it is the fastest-growing source of incremental lithium demand, and it tends to be long-dated. So that means it's less sensitive to the short-term price volatilities, and we've seen a lot of volatility in lithium prices, so I'll talk more about that. But these macro conditions we think are aligning for project advancement. So DLE has been around probably about 20 years, but really only in the past five years as it started to mature, in essence, coming out of the lab to now more commercial operations. It's still nascent, but I'm really proud of IBAT. We're one of the few companies that's actually been able to deploy the technology at a commercial scale. We think that's critical, and we think we can advance that. So first off, the DLE process is maturing, so that's one. The economics have definitely improved.
So lithium prices, it's been a long, cold winter for lithium prices, but we've now seen it rebound pretty dramatically. Just in the past four months, we've seen lithium prices rise by over 125%. It's pretty astounding that it's had this pretty dramatic increase. But I think it also echoes about how low it went, and that really created a vacuum of supply, right? Back in 2022, you had close to 25 projects get FID when lithium prices were high. Last year, there were only four projects FIDed around the world. And so clearly, we're starting to see supply roll over. Demand continues to rise. That's improved the economics, so we're starting to see more FIDs. Again, we're excited about that. That goes exactly to where we want to be. I'm going to talk about supply chains. They are being rebalanced.
There's clearly a movement around the world from local geopolitics as well as industrial to nearshore and secure your supply chains. So that'll drive more lithium supply in areas outside of your traditional lithium supply like Argentina or Australia or China. So we think you'll see more lithium supply coming from the United States and other locations, and I'll talk more about that. So that brings us to the critical mineral supply chain. I mean, it is being re-engineered. It's in the news every day. It goes without saying, and if you've studied any of the critical minerals, clearly China's share is enormous. And you have to tip your hat to China. They have been deliberate for the past 30-40 years to develop that supply chain stranglehold. But lithium chemical processing today, they accomplish 60%-70% of the global capacity.
Battery cell manufacturing, 70%-75%. The global capital, they're greater than 80%. So no surprise you're seeing policy and capital really driving this diversification. So obviously, the United States, really started with President Biden and has been followed by the Trump administration. The entire critical mineral supply chain is front and center. Obviously, we just saw the announcements of creating a stockpile. Lithium is definitely one of the critical minerals, and so we're starting to see more focus and attention on that. Europe, same thing. They have now had the Critical Raw Material Act. They're putting much more focus on that, Japan, Australia. So it's real, and I don't see a change in administrations changing that demeanor, whether it's a Democrat in the White House or a Republican in the White House.
I think people have really focused on, and the industrial complex is focused on, having to secure your supply chain. We think that's a good thing for lithium specifically and for DLE and for IBAT. Where does DLE fit in all this? Today, DLE is small. I'm not going to lie to you. Again, as I mentioned, really, the advancement of DLE has really accelerated over the past five years, and we're starting to really start to see it starting to be deployed. Most of the DLE today actually exists in China, so the rest of the world is only now starting to catch up. We at IBAT, our technology is proven, and so we think we'll be one of the leaders in the adoption of DLE outside of China. That's clearly what we are working on.
So the DLE market today is very small, but projections have it that it could grow to 15%-20% of the lithium supply market over the next 10 years. So what does that mean? So again, if you just use 4-6 million metric tons, call it, by 2035, and if DLE can account for 15%-20% of that, you're talking about 1 million tons a year of supply coming from the DLE sourcing. So we're excited about that. That's where, obviously, IBAT plays. So talking now more about our technology and what makes us unique, so we have real-world operations that we've been able to validate our core technology over the past 5 years. So what makes our technology unique is not only the modularity of it, and we held patents on that. I'll talk quite a bit about that here in a minute.
But it's really our media. Again, we source our media here domestically in the United States. We manufacture it ourselves. It has very unique attributes. So it has very high selectivity and capacity. That means that the media is very selective for only capturing the lithium and the chloride ions, and that results in a high purity effluent, a high lithium chloride product, which makes it better when you put it into the refining process. It reduces your refining costs. So that makes us a lower-cost solution. That's critical in a commodity business. It has a very high efficiency, meaning we can extract 98% of the lithium ions per cycle, which minimizes the number of cycles that we have to run, and that minimizes the cost structure. Kinetics, that means our ability to wrap and hold the lithium ion is exceptional, which again helps reduce the cycle times.
Resiliency, that means how long will our media last through repeated cycles of running the brine through it. It has a very high resiliency rate. We think our media can last up to two years before we have to replace it. That's enormous. That obviously drives lower CapEx and a lower OpEx structure, lower costs, higher profit margins. Last is cost of scalability, right? As I mentioned earlier, our ability to scale along with the resource development is staged, and so that makes it more economic for our customers as they look at how they deploy their capital over time. So we've built a plant. We have a plant that we built and deployed. The plant was originally built to be deployed in Chile. So it was supposed to go to the Atacama back in 2022. Unfortunately, political environment down there, the project didn't occur.
We ended up deploying this plant up to Utah back in 2024 and ran the first really commercial operations for a modular plant in the United States. We're really proud of this. We have 12 columns. These are 3-foot by 6-foot commercial-scale columns. We ran it for 83 days, not continuous. There were some supply issues from our customer. They had to deliver us a synthetic brine. But we had over 8,000 cycles. We generated over 25 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate right here in the United States. So we have proven that our technology works. Our plant is currently idle. The customer we had ended up having financial challenges. Mainly, commodity prices fell, and they had, quite frankly, too much debt. And so they ended up withdrawing the project, and so we ended up moving our plant out.
We are in the process of trying to redeploy that plant and in active discussions with a number of counterparties. We feel confident that this plant will be deployed sometime in 2026, and that is a high priority for our company, is to show and get our plant back into service, generating high-quality Lithium Carbonate. So one of the things that we have really focused on here at IBAT is what we call the full flow sheet. So for those of you that are new to the lithium business, of course, in our case, we're talking about a brine resource, right? So that's water, and it can be produced water from oil and gas operations, or they could just drill for the brine itself, the resource. And so you have the resource owners. Next comes our technology. So they would produce the brine into our plant.
We go through our process, and what comes out of our plant is Lithium Chloride, okay? Lithium Chloride then has to be refined, and that's what goes into this carbonation and refining process. That's a pretty high-capital-cost business. It's ubiquitous. It's been around for 100 years, but China is very dominant in that. But you're seeing more people look at the carbonation side because that's really the refining process. What comes out of that is Lithium Carbonate. That's what gets sold, and that's what ends up in your batteries. So we're now focusing on the full flow sheet. That means not just the DLE, but offering a carbonation solution, and we're working with strategic partners there in order to offer the full complement to our customer base. We think that's critical in being successful in the lithium business. So our proprietary extraction process is really protected by our patents.
So we do have 8 patent families, 6 major patents issued that cover 7 jurisdictions, jurisdictions being the United States, Europe, Latin America, Australia, locations. That covers us through 2038. Plus, we have our trade secrets, which really protect our know-how, right? That's critical in being successful. We continue to add patents. That's something that, as we develop our technology or continue to develop our expertise, we continue to develop and issue additional patents to protect our intellectual property. We are active. We are looking at a number of projects. We probably have close to a dozen projects that we're working on, and it's at all facets, meaning from testing brine to actually looking at designing modular plants, the engineering around it. We're looking at projects here in the United States, primarily in the Smackover. That's one of the largest geological plays. Pretty exciting.
You have a lot of large oil and gas operators. Some of the largest oil and gas operators in the world are very active in that place. So we have a lot of activity there as we're evaluating brine and testing results. We're also looking at projects in Utah, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Canada. So we're pretty excited about what's going on here in North America. But in addition to that, we're looking at several projects in the Argentine Basin, obviously the South American Lithium Triangle. We do have a partnership down there with a company called Ensorcia Metals. So they have an exclusive license, and we work with them as we look at these projects. And then most recently, we've entered into an exclusive collaboration with one of the largest oilfield suppliers in the Middle East.
And so we're looking at a number of brines, evaluating it currently with the idea that hopefully we will secure a license and deploy our technology in the Middle East. So we're busy. We have a lot of activity, and we're pretty excited about what we're seeing. So commercial structures, and we've talked about this before, but we clearly need to align with our customer needs. And so we really have identified three primary kind of revenue models that we are exploring. The first is what we call our licensing model, and that's a minimal capital requirement. Clearly, there are large multinational oil companies or multinational companies that have the wherewithal to execute full project development. What they want from us is our technology. They want us to deploy our technology, our DLE, and we're happy to license that to them. So we have a number of conversations there.
Obviously, capital requirements are fairly low in that regard. Then we have what we call our service model, and really, I like to refer to it as our mystery model. There, we would actually construct modular plants and deploy them under a lease or a cost-plus type structure. There, you have more fixed margins, right? It's more tied to $1 per barrel or a fixed cost to rent our plant over a period of time. So there, obviously, there's a capital needs because we'll have to build the plants and then deploy them. We get reimbursed as they run our plants on location for hopefully years, if not decades. The last model is what we call project participation. I mean, that's kind of a strategic partnership. There, that's where we would actually own a piece of the resource.
We would actually raise capital through a special purpose vehicle, partner with the resource owner, and help them develop the resource. Clearly, we're bringing our expertise, our technology, and for that, we will be rewarded. Obviously, in that scenario, we'd actually have more exposure to commodity prices, i.e., we would be exposed to actually the lithium commodity price. That's a good thing. We would have more exposure to some of the upside. All three of these are active. We're in active conversations with a number of companies on any one of these type of models. The team, I've been here nine months. It's been a really hectic nine months. Back in the summer last year, lithium hit multi-decade lows. Lithium prices fell as low as about $8,500 a metric ton.
Since really December, we've seen lithium prices really rebound, and so now it's close to $20,000 a metric ton. That is now at a level that becomes economic, and we're starting to see more FIDs. We're starting to see more customers approach us with the idea that, "Let's be ready to move this to the next level." So we're very focused on execution. Obviously, the first thing is to deploy our existing plant, but candidly, we're looking at building another small-scale pilot. So we have a number of projects that we're working on all in play, and hopefully, we'll be able to announce something sooner than later. So that's something that we're working on. So we have a lot of opportunities. I'm going to wrap it up by saying we're excited about what's in front of us. We see lithium demand continue to grow. That opens up opportunities.
The nearshoring is driving continued interest, especially here in the United States, but Saudi Arabia, other locations. Obviously, our U.S.-sourced technology we think is a real key advantage to our business. The modular DLE, as I talked about, allows us to scale the investment at a lower capital intensity. Last but not least, this management team is focused on execution, delivering on the promises made to our shareholders. With that, I'm going to stop. I've got about five minutes for Q&A. Let me turn to some questions, and give me a minute. I will try and read the question and then answer it. Let's see. First one is, what are the major positive catalysts for the next 12 months? Well, I touched on that. Obviously, first and foremost is deploying our existing plant. The good news for us, there's a lot of interest in the plant.
It's built. It's ready for deployment. Now, I've talked about this on several of my earnings calls. Our plant was built for a very specific project in Chile at a very high PPM. The project was supposed to go to the Atacama, where the PPM, the lithium concentration is around 1,500 parts per million. That's some of the highest in the world. Candidly, it's the highest in the world. A lot of the projects we're now evaluating, whether it's in the Middle East or it's in the Smackover or it's Utah or even Argentina, your lithium content is quite a bit lower, call it 200-500 parts per million. So not 1,500, quite a bit lower. That's going to require some modifications to our plant, in particular on the front end.
What it means is we have to move more water, a lot more water, to recover an equivalent amount of lithium. So that requires a modification to the plant. That's obviously a big question we get from customers is, "What's the level of modifications? What's the capital requirements? What's the time?" All of that is in play, but that's a major catalyst for our company that we're focused on. And I feel confident saying we are absolutely determined. Our plant will get deployed sometime this year, and then that enables us to then start building the next plant, more than likely a pilot or a small-scale kind of our Gen 2, our next plant with the best use of our technology. And then we'll be looking for that. So we think there's a number of potential catalysts, certainly in the next 12 months. Let's see here.
Can you please explain how much R&D is left to prove out the technology versus being commercial-ready? Are you commercial-ready currently? Yes, we are absolutely commercial-ready today. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. Look, R&D, we will always continue to improve our technology. I've talked about this. We are working on several of the next generations of our plant. So for example, I touched on this. Today, our commercial columns are 3 foot by 6. That's larger than anybody else, and we can move quite a bit of water through that. But as we look at some of these larger projects, one of the things that we're working on is a bigger column, a much bigger column that will allow us to move more water, which helps reduce the cycle time involved in moving the water through our columns. That reduces capital.
It also reduces electricity costs, power costs. And so a big driver in our goal is to be the low-cost operator in this business. I have worked in the commodity business my entire life, 45 years now doing commodity, mostly oil and gas. The one thing I've learned being a CEO and/or executive of commodity business, to be successful, you have to be the low-cost operator in that business. That is our goal at IBAT, is to be the low-cost operator in the lithium business. That will drive the economics. One of the things I hear from our customers all the time, the people, is that if all they are is the marginal producer, they're not interested in being the marginal producer. They don't want to be the swing producer in the lithium business, i.e., you only make money when lithium prices are high.
They need to be able to make money even when lithium prices are low. Unfortunately, in the lithium space, there's not a hedging commodity. You can't hedge lithium out. We think that will change. There are definitely counterparties looking at that, but today, it doesn't exist. So our ability to hedge out our risk exposure, i.e., mitigate the downside, doesn't exist. So we ride the commodity up. We ride it down. So we got to be a low-cost operator. That's what our customers expect from us. Let's see. I'm about to run out of time. So let me see if I can hit one more question. Great question here. For those that are skeptical about DLE technology, what can you say to address their concerns around the viability of DLE to provide a commercial solution? That's a great question.
Look, as I touched on, DLE has actually been around for 20 years. Our founder, Dr. Burba, actually built the first really commercial DLE project in the world back in 1998 down in Argentina, the Salar del Hombre Muerto. That plant is still running today. It actually was bought by Rio Tinto. That project is still so it's viable. We have taken that technology in quantum leaps through where we are today. So we are highly confident in our ability to take it to commerciality. I just talked about our columns. And a lot of our customers keep telling us, "We can't be the marginal producer," right? "Look, we've all just come out of a long, cold lithium winter," right, with commodity prices hitting really multi-decade lows. We think we're at the beginning of the next cycle, but we have to be cognizant that prices could fall again.
We don't want to be in that situation. So we're working really, really hard to prove not to our customers and ultimately our investors that DLE is commercially viable and can be profitable in any of these cycles. So with that, I've got to stop. I think I've hit my 30-minute mark. I want to thank each of you for your time. I please encourage you to sign up for the one-on-ones. I'm happy to visit with you. Look, we're excited about what we're doing at IBAT. We have a lot of things to be positive about. So thank you for your time this afternoon, and look forward to talking to you soon.