Good morning, Kurt, and warm welcome. You can start your presentation. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Can I just check you can see the slides?
Yeah, no problem.
Yeah. Okay, brilliant. Sorry I'm not with you in the studio this morning. I'm at a Rare Earth Industry Association conference in Frankfurt, apologies. My presentation this morning on Leading Edge Materials will focus on our Norra Kärr heavy rare earth elements project in Sweden, because that drives the investment case for the company. Really, Norra Kärr has been known about for many, many years and is one of the answers to Chinese dominance in Europe of the heavy rare earths that we need for some critical supply chains. I draw investors' attention to our disclaimer. Just to give some background on Leading Edge. We're a Canadian-listed company. We've got a listing in Toronto on the Toronto Stock Exchange. We're also listed on the Nasdaq First North in Stockholm. We bring expertise across exploration, mining operations, and also sustainability.
Our flagship project, as I've touched on, is the Norra Kärr Heavy Rare Earths Project, which is situated North of Jönköping. Then within the company, we also have other critical raw materials assets also within Europe. In Sweden, we've got the Woxna Graphite mine, which is a built and permitted mine, and we're currently looking at options to restart Woxna. Then in Romania, we have an exploration alliance joint venture called Bihor Sud, and we put out a press release a couple of weeks ago how we'd moved to 90% ownership of that joint venture. Bihor Sud is an area that has got cobalt, nickel, but also polymetallics, and a history of uranium mining. Coming onto Norra Kärr. What makes Norra Kärr unique is its composition in terms of heavy rare earths.
Now I know heavy rare earths are not something that's easily understood by investors, but since Donald Trump came to power, they seem to be hitting the headlines very frequently, especially last year with restrictions by China on exports of rare earths and technologies associated with rare earths. Europe and other parts of the world have been placed in a situation where these become critically important. They're most well known because they go into permanent magnets, and permanent magnets go into energy transition, but also a lot of defense applications. We were speaking to a Swedish company yesterday who's looking for future supplies of yttrium because they can see that that is going to be a risk to their business. What makes Norra Kärr so important is because it's concentrated in dysprosium, terbium, and yttrium. These are three of the most important heavy rare earths.
In April this year, we commissioned Edison Group to produce a research document on Leading Edge Materials, which focused on Norra Kärr, and that research found that our deposit could supply all of Europe's annual dysprosium needs. So incredibly important asset, and I'll come onto value case later in the presentation. What's most interesting really is that we are completely aligned with the policy drive within the European Union around Critical Raw Materials Act, which came in in 2024, and is looking to produce from the region 10% of annual consumption of all critical raw materials. Then also the politics in Sweden with this government that's been very supportive of both industry in general and mining, and taking issues of critical raw materials and security and defense incredibly important.
This is the elephant in the room, is that Europe relies 100% on China for its heavy rare earths supplies, and this is something that needs to be resolved. The Critical Raw Materials Act has gone some way to do that, and other European Union initiatives, but Sweden and Europe need to create as many options as they can for establish their own domestic sources of supply. What isn't well understood is that because the conversation around rare earths is mainly around China, there is actually an ecosystem of activity taking place within Europe. When it comes to mining projects, they're predominantly located in the north. Ours is the most advanced mining project, in terms of the contribution it can make to the EU's goals of 2030. Then also in terms of downstream processing, you have great centers of activity in France with Solvay and Carester.
You have our fellow Canadian company, Neo Performance Materials, operating in Estonia. You also have magnet manufacturing taking place in Germany and in Finland, with Vacuumschmelze being the leader in that field. Not forgetting metallization as well. Less Common Metals, a U.K. company established in the northwest of England, but now expanding into France. Really France is becoming a real hub for activities around the rare earths industry, and that means the deposits like Norra Kärr become critically important when you are trying to create security of supply. This really touches on why Norra Kärr is so fundamentally important. It's the pie chart on the right-hand side that shows you that 52% of the deposit is made up of heavy rare earths. There's a lot of rare earths projects out there.
There are a lot of companies that talk about total rare earth oxides, which is usually a great percentage that investors will focus on. Actually, not all rare earth projects are created equally, many rare earth projects are focused on the lights, and the lights do not go into permanent magnets. They're not the dysprosium and terbium which I describe as being the magic dust which gives a magnet its permanent magnetism. You can see on the left-hand side that we have relatively small amounts in terms of percentage of dysprosium and terbium, but their contribution to the performance of different advanced technologies is irreplaceable. If you don't have them, you can't make your piece of equipment or what have you.
Dysprosium and terbium have been the focus, more recently, yttrium has also come to the fore, that was the conversation I said we had with the Swedish company yesterday. It's not just me as the Chief Executive Officer of a junior mining company telling you that Norra Kärr is important. The Swedish Geological Survey actually discovered the deposit in the 1900s. In 2011, gave it national interest because of its rare earth elements and their importance to Sweden and Europe, restated that importance as we prepared a new application for a mining lease, which went in in December 2024. They restated the importance specifically around the heavy rare earth elements.
The Swedish Geological Survey's job is to demonstrate the asset that Sweden's bedrock is and also the importance, especially in this day and age with uncertain geopolitics, widespread conflict, and uncertainty around what global trade alliances will exist in the future. It's their job to actually say, "These are the deposits. These are the potential sources of critical raw materials," and in our case, heavy rare earth elements. Our project has been around for quite some time in terms of modern technical work. The first exploration licenses were granted in 2009, we actually have 15 years of continuous technical development work since 2011, that is across many disciplines. Of specific importance when it comes to Norra Kärr is metallurgy and also environmental studies because of the location of our site.
Those have been across a range of specialist suppliers. We've used world-leading consultants to do this work. In 2015, we had a pre-feasibility study completed on the rare earths-only project. That project was then redesigned before 2021, industrial minerals were added into the economic case. What we actually have at site at Norra Kärr now is a quarry where we are looking to make products out of virtually everything that we mine. Following that redesign of the project, we then wrapped everything up in a preliminary economic assessment. The engineering and the understanding of the rare earths is to a pre-feasibility study stage. This is just to show you that timeline again. Long history.
The project actually had a mining lease back in 2013. Permitting at that time in Sweden and the way appeals were processed, the case eventually got to the Supreme Court after the company had done a pre-feasibility study in 2015. It got to the Supreme Court in 2016 and the license was revoked. The company then took the decision to redesign the project and decouple effectively quarrying and mining outside at Norra Kärr and the downstream industrial activities, which will now take place at a remote location. That was really done to smooth the permitting path for Norra Kärr and to place the industrial activities on a site that's used to permitting and controlling those processes. A sensible thing to do.
As I touched on, we made a new mining lease application in 2024. The result of all that work is that in December last year, the two county administrative boards for Östergötland and Jönköping endorsed the application. In my experience of working in Sweden since 2014, this doesn't happen very often, especially with a project like Norra Kärr, which has a long history. Then in March this year, the Swedish Mining Inspector recommended that the exploitation concession be approved. The final decision is now with the government. The Swedish Mining Inspector handed the final decision to the government, really the only reason we're on the government's desk is because of technicality.
When I see the decision that the government took on Boliden's Nautanen project a week last Friday, the logic that they applied to granting that concession and rejecting the appeal that had been made of the Mining Inspector's decision. They talked about critical raw materials. They talked about strategic importance. They talked about the size of the asset. If you change the government's announcement words to Norra Kärr and heavy rare earth elements instead of Nautanen and copper, you could effectively use the same logic for granting the concession for Norra Kärr. When I talked about the redesign, we've got two rectangles here. The top rectangle is what happens at site, the bottom rectangle is what happens midstream on a industrial site. At site, all we're doing is mining, crushing, milling, magnetic separation. Then we produce two products, possibly three.
We produce industrial minerals and nepheline syenite product for which there are established markets, going into ceramics, glasses, glass manufacturing, and fillers. We produce a mineral concentrate, which has the heavy rare earths in it, and that's the product that then goes to our midstream facility. The box on the right-hand side shows you a life of mine, 26 years. That is only 30% of the resource that is currently defined. The Norra Kärr resource is open for further expansion with more exploration. Like a lot of mining projects, that you start with your base case, your business case, but it doesn't mean that the project stops at the end of 26 years. This is only 30% of the resource.
What makes Norra Kärr, again, so strategically important is those numbers highlighted in black on the right-hand side, which are the dysprosium and the terbium oxides, which go into permanent magnets. Lynas Rare Earths is one of the largest players in the rare earth space. They announced last October around an expansion of their Malaysian facility to produce rare earths. Their stated nameplate capacity for dysprosium oxide was 250 tons, and they're one of the biggest players in the market. You can see here that our dysprosium oxide is 248 tons a year. In addition to the rare earths and the magnetic rare earths, we also have these other by-product streams. The industrial minerals, the nepheline syenite, and also zirconium and niobium oxides. This slide shows you the economic numbers for the preliminary economic assessment done back in 2021.
On the right-hand side is an updated set of numbers produced by Edison Group and the initiation report that they did on Leading Edge Materials. You can see the significant uplift in the net present value of the company, the internal rate of return, and also the payback period. Because of the nature of the market structure at the moment, what we're seeing is because Europe can no longer rely on China for heavy rare earth elements, that there is a bifurcation in terms of pricing in the market. This means that the price which China has basically told the rest of the world is the price, is no longer the price because downstream users in the supply chain cannot rely on supply.
We are getting a higher price in Europe, and that is driving the economics for Norra Kärr, and it's driving the investment case for Leading Edge Materials. This is just a summary of the most important points. I've touched on the fact that Norra Kärr is one of the most strategically important heavy rare earth deposits in Europe and globally. That's validated by the Geological Survey of Sweden. Specifically when it comes to dysprosium, it could satisfy all of Europe's needs. Ebba Busch has said herself that rare earths are an asset to Sweden and Europe, specifically Sweden's rare earths. We've got the additional optional value within the company of our Woxna graphite mine. As I touched on, we're looking at restart options for Woxna now.
In Romania, we have, further ahead, the exploration potential demonstrated by the work that we're doing there to identify cobalt, nickel, and polymetallics. We're looking specifically to attract investment directly into Romania. When it comes to looking ahead, the major near-term milestone is a decision being taken by the government on Norra Kärr and the mining lease being granted. This, to me, is a significant inflection point, both in terms of de-risking the project, but also in the value re-rating that we will get as a company. We're also driving very hard this year to complete the new pre-feasibility study. As I touched on, we have a significant body of work which enables us really to leverage all the knowledge we have to move quickly to pre-feasibility study. You saw the Edison Group's numbers.
The economic case is as strong as ever in terms of the future of this project. What happens when we get the mining lease is we effectively go from being a theoretical project to a real project. The discussions with everybody else in the rare earth ecosystem that I showed you on the slide earlier becomes a lot more meaningful. That's why I'm in Frankfurt today, and I'm attending the Rare Earth Industry Association Conference where all the players are here. The possibilities that flow from that are the strategic partnerships. What we're seeing across the Atlantic is huge investment going into rare earths projects, mainly from the U.S. administration. What that's doing is giving confidence to capital markets that these projects are investable, and it's taking a little bit longer to happen in Europe.
It's already started with the European Union's Critical Raw Materials Act and strategic projects. We will be reapplying for that status once we've got the mining lease, once we've completed a pre-feasibility study, and ideally when we have offtakes in place. What I foresee is that getting strategic project status will not be a problem. Our firm goal is to be up to production in four years and making a contribution to the EU's goals of having assets that can produce 10% of critical raw materials domestically and within the region by 2030. Thank you very much. Oh, sorry, just one final point. For more information, please go to our website leadingedgematerials.com. We have an account on LinkedIn, Leading Edge Materials Corp.
We're also on X, if you Google Edison Group and Leading Edge Materials, you will come up with both the original initiation note that was done in April, but also an update that came out yesterday in terms of demonstrating firmly that Leading Edge is a standout candidate when it comes to heavy rare earth elements, and Norra Kärr specifically. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Kurt. I will start with some questions. Have you been given any timeline for the decision from the Swedish government? In September, we have elections in Sweden, I know for sure you were the chief executive of Beowulf earlier and when we had this green-red government, it took several years for them not to take a decision on the mine. Do you think you will get a decision before the elections? Have you got any input to that?
I think it's important to realize that we're on the government's desk, but we are on the government's desk for a final decision. We're not on the government's desk because we're an appeal case. When I saw the language that the government used regarding Boliden's Nautanen project a week last Friday, as I said, you could literally change the name of the project, change the name of the critical raw material, you could talk about Norra Kärr in the same strategic terms. I see no obstacle for the government granting the exploitation concession in the very near term. That's my belief. As you touched on, permitting processes in Sweden are less than transparent. We have to be patient. There's really no obstacle. We're on the government's desk for a technicality, no more than that.
For an investor who hasn't invested in these kind of companies before, the next step, what is that? If the government says, "Go ahead," you still need to get some environmental permits or what's the next crucial step besides finance, of course?
Just taking a step back, the inflection point that I talked about really is the fact that once we get the mining lease, the project is de-risked. You get security of tenure over the deposit, really the de-risking event that that represents to the mining company then drives the value case re-rate. Looking ahead, as I touched on, the next piece of work is a pre-feasibility study. We already have a pre-feasibility study. We have a preliminary economic assessment for an expanded economic case, that's what we're planning on completing this year. We have significant knowledge already in the company about this project, therefore I'm making sure that we don't repeat work and that we leverage all that historical work. That's the major one.
As I touched on, the whole point of being in Frankfurt and meeting with other players in the rare earth industry space is that once you get your mining lease, you become real. Conversations become meaningful and you start to enter into agreements. The opportunities that will become available to us to sign off takes or memorandums of understanding or form strategic partnerships, these will all start to fall into place. That's my belief.
Yeah. A question, I think when it comes to listed major commodity companies, they're not going into rare earth. Do you think they will or why don't Rio Tinto or Boliden and other big listed companies, why don't they do any acquisitions in this area? Is it complex to take care of the ore or do you think they're just late into the game?
Well, I worked for Rio Tinto and I've listened to the new Chief Executive Officer of Rio Tinto and I can't pretend to know everything about Rio Tinto's strategy. Rio Tinto has placed its bets very firmly on copper, aluminum, and iron ore. That is the foundation of their business. They move into maximizing production and then maximizing operational efficiency and maximizing value creation for shareholders. That's their model. I think with rare earths, well, with the mining industry as a whole, you have an ecosystem of development and you may identify, say, Rio Tinto and BHP as being the largest players or Anglo American. They've been in the industry a long time. We didn't need rare earths from anywhere else but China until recent times. That's what's drived the entrepreneurs to create the business opportunities in the rare earth space.
If you look in the U.S. now and in South America, there are some major industrial champions. MP Materials could be a good one to look at. USA Rare Earth. Both of those companies have received investment from the U.S. administration that has driven support from capital markets. Their stock prices have shot through the roof. USA Rare Earth has now invested in Europe. They bought Less Common Metals, the metallization business in the northwest of the U.K. They've also invested in Carester in France. You've got both the emergence of new champions in the rare earth space. Lynas Rare Earths has been around for a long time, the Australian company.
You also have the realization that capital markets are getting comfortable because it took a little while for people to understand that we actually have the skills and capabilities to develop our own industries in the West and create this resilience which we're all looking for. Again, touching on the timeline for the government decision, the discussions around critical raw materials, around resilience in Europe and self-reliance and this government and the minister Ebba Busch talks about security defense, rare earths as being an asset to Sweden and to Europe. Again, these are the things that give me confidence and again the decision with Boliden's Nautanen and the language used in that case.
Okay. Time flies. We don't have any more questions. Thank you very much, Kurt. Very interesting. Have a great day in Frankfurt.
Thank you very much, Carl-Henrik.
Yeah. Thank you.