Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us. I'd like to welcome you to the Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. Investor and Analyst Webinar. I'm Georg Venturatos, Managing Director at Gateway Group, and I'd like to introduce you to Mr. David Wilcox, who will be presenting today. Mr. Wilcox is the founder and visionary behind Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. Mr. Wilcox is also EM&T's largest shareholder and EM&T's Executive Chairman. Following Mr. Wilcox's presentation, we will have a question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to submit a question, please do so through the question field on the webinar registration portal. A recording of today's webinar will be available on the EM&T website following the event. The EM&T management presentation has been filed with the SEC, is available on the EM&T website, and is also posted on the webinar portal. Please go through at your leisure.
Before we begin, please note that statements made during this presentation that state the company's or management's intentions, beliefs, expectations, plans, goals, opinions, or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, and actual results could differ in a material manner. Additional information about factors that could cause results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in our filings with the SEC. These filings include, but are not limited to, risk factors contained in our definitive proxy statement and prospectus filed with the SEC on August 11th, 2025, and subsequent SEC filings. A copy of the presentation materials can be found under the Presentation and Events subsection of the Investor Relations section at evolution-metals.com. With that out of the way, David, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Georg, and thank you all for joining the webinar today. I'd like to start with who is Evolution. Evolution is a midstream materials and downstream magnet producer today, and in the future will be a precursor cathode active materials producer. We have operations in the Republic of Korea. We are scaling and expanding into the U.S. into a single industrial campus. We listed formally on January 6th on to Nasdaq, and we have been trading ever since then. With our management presentation, what Georg said, it is listed on our website under the Investor Relations tab. It's also filed with the SEC, and I'm going to walk through some highlights of that today. What I want to start with is what the current market situation or global situation is in the midstream.
Feedstock and mining are not the issue, but processing of these materials in a hydrometallurgy facility and a pyrometallurgy facility are the issues. Why are they the issues? If you look at the rare earth business, most of rare earth today comes from monazite rock. Monazite is radioactive. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, under the Atomic Energy Act, and others, we are not able to process and concentrate that material because it contains thorium. Thorium is radioactive. Although in the 1960s there was an attempt to make a thorium bomb, it has never been successful to our knowledge. Who processes all this material today that are non-signers? China, predominantly over 90%. How will we get that material back into key industrial companies, key companies around the world in the Western hemisphere? Our flow sheet starts at high-grade concentrates and at recycled materials.
We're building the largest urban mining company that the world has ever seen, and we're doing it right here in the U.S. with proven technologies, proven commercial operations, proven operators, not academic keyboard warriors. With that said, I want to go to how do we fix it. In the immediate, we start treating critical and strategic metals the same as we do with base and precious metals. The secondary metals business exists today for those materials. 98% of the world's copper that has ever been mined is still in circulation today. When you have an end-of-life electronic, when you have an end-of-life battery or a battery itself, the cell depletes, but you don't lose the manganese, you don't lose the graphene, you don't lose the graphite, you don't lose the lithium, the cobalt, the nickel, et cetera.
The same goes for a laptop, a cell phone, a server rack, et cetera. Our flow sheet grinds, crushes, pulverizes, separates into a non-ferrous and a ferrous polymer powder, polymer material, and then further beneficiates that material into oxides, further downstream into metals, salts for batteries, and into downstream magnet making. In the very near future, we'll be expanding within the U.S., and we'll have a phase 1 capacity of 55,000 tons of downstream magnet-making capability of magnet materials, and 78,000 tons of salts and precursor materials. We're actively in negotiations or discussions with where that location will be here in the U.S. We'll use our operators and our operating capability on today to quickly scale and replicate in a modular way the capabilities that are contained in the Republic of Korea today. Our execution risk, we feel is minimal because of the operations that we have today.
Historically, to get your hands on these materials, you're buying from China in a form of a high-grade concentrate, an oxide, a metal, an alloy, a powder, or a flake, and then you're converting it into your downstream product. Just as recent as October 2025, to make a high-performance magnet has been ultimately almost entirely restricted by China. In October of 2025, terbium and dysprosium, or materials that contain terbium and dysprosium greater than 0.1%, have been banned for export from China. What does that mean? You can make a low-temperature magnet, you can make a magnet that works in an elevator shaft, or a magnet that works in your sunroof or your car seat, et cetera, but you can't make a high-performance traction motor magnet. How do we solve that? We solve that through recycling, as I mentioned before.
Anything from a Seagate hard drive, from an electronic, an EV that is spent and is going for recycling, we keep that material here, we keep it above ground, we keep it through our flow sheet in a secondary closed metals business. We're not a mining company, and we expect that as the mining industry in rare earths and critical materials has a maturity through policy, that we will be there, ready and able to take that material and put it through our hydrometallurgy and our pyrometallurgy facility, ultimately producing our salts and our magnet materials, and magnet production. How do we compete with China? China has the processing capability today. China's well over 90% of most of these materials and processing the control with artificial price, with policy procedures, export bans, export controls. How do we compete?
We are not subjected to the 13% VAT, keeping this material within the U.S., keeping it within our allied nations. If you buy oxide today, if they allow you to buy oxide, so not terbium or dysprosium, but neodymium or praseodymium that are contained within a magnet, you're subjected to a 13% VAT tax. Out the gates, you have a disadvantage to everyone within China. The President of the U.S. has been addressing this with executive orders, with Congress, et cetera, on how to compete with China. Because we're in a singular industrial campus contained within the U.S., we've put a list of the 45 years that China has monopolized this specific industry in one of the slides in the management presentation. I want to say from a policy perspective, which a lot of people ask, is this going to work? I believe it is.
I believe our policymakers, bipartisan, both sides of the aisle, are actively addressing the geopolitical tensions between China and the U.S. In the interim, the short-term and near-term solution is building the midstream in the U.S. where new feed material as China brings it on, whether that be in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and other places in the world that could or could not be sanctioned, have a tremendous amount of policy and procedural changes that will need to happen as that upstream market matures and is able to replicate the China control model to decouple ourselves from China. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Frank Moon in the Republic of Korea, who is our CEO. He is an operator.
He leads a team of 42 engineers, including 11 PhDs, and he leads our operations in Korea today and will lead the development and build-out in the U.S. with his team of non-keyboard warriors. These are real operators in the world that produce material, produce magnets, produce midstream material today. With that, I'm going to turn it over to you, Frank.
Thank you, David. Thank you, David. Yeah, as been mentioned by Mr. Wilcox, I would like to give you a rundown of our design concept and the actual plan forward in terms of having the plant established over in the U.S. Jumping to a conceptualization of what we're trying to do, obviously, we are starting off with a feed material, which is going to be predominantly E-scrap generated or the actual E-waste or the actual spent magnet-generated feedstocks. Now, conventionally speaking, when you talk about E-scrap recycling, then probably people will be thinking, "Oh, yeah. It's going to be based on printed circuit board and then going forward from there." Then again, our concept really start from the bulk original material downward. Obviously, the actual design is actually divided largely into four different sections.
We have the physical separation portion in the beginning, you'll have the hydro and pyro process to follow behind that. At the end of the day, the purification process which will actually have the product either into a P-CAM or either into an end product as being a magnet, right? To start with the actual physical process, obviously we're going to be having a size reduction process, having to reduce the actual sizes. Each stage by stage, there'll be a lot of robotics and pneumatics, also gravity-based, and then visual recognition, separation technology involved in actually reducing the sizes. During reducing stages, you will be separating predominantly the actual ferrous line and non-ferrous lines with the PCBs.
From there on the ferrous side of it, you will be actually concentrating the actual magnet proportion, which will be leached out into an oxide that can be recycled back into a fresh new magnet going forward, right? Along with that, the actual non-ferrous line and the actual PCB lines and plastic line will actually follow through a further size reduction that will end up becoming a large proportion of the base material, base metals such as copper, aluminum, gold and silver and so forth. The other portion of the actual product will be separated into a plastics kind of product.
In doing that, you'll obviously end up having a high amount of the actual copper-bearing product, which will be sent off to further refining stages, either as a mixture, or we can actually go further downstream in order to make it purified into each individual product. Again, our process for the e-scrap will be ending in such a manner that we will be focusing on capturing those magnet proportion, re-converting that into an oxide. Once it's an oxide, it will either be purely NdPr-based, or it could actually contain NdPr and the heavies, the actual terbium and dysprosium. In such a case that you'll have to go through a further processing of the hydrometallurgy, the solvent extraction, having about 50-100 mixed extract depending upon the situation to actually separate out the heavies and the lights.
That will be the line of the actual process for the magnet side of the deal. Whatever has actually been recouped at the end of the day through this size reduction process, you will have the actual high copper-containing material that will be distributed out to a refining process going forward. That will be one part of the deal. At the same time, because you will be receiving devices such as cell phones and also the laptops and things like that, which will also contain small lithium-ion batteries.
Those batteries then will actually go through its own unique process to be processed into a black mass, along with our activity to actually introduce further black mass purchase from outside, that will then be actually going into a hydrometallurgy process to actually separate out the actual battery chemical material, ultimately, by turning into a carbonate and then into a sulfate and forth which will have a staged approach such that we'll first target to actually produce the chemical grade at the 3 nines, and then we'll go into a further cleaning process to go into a 6 nine containing the pCAM grade which then will be actually crystallized. Will be actually made available to the actual customer. Those are pretty much the concept in terms of actual battery material.
In terms of the battery materials, it will then have an option to actually go as a pCAM or the chemical grade product, but also the actual option to actually turn it into a high purity actual metallic product, being a nickel cobalt-containing alloy or individual high purity metal as itself, depending upon the actual type of the actual feedstocks that we have in terms of the battery material. At the same time, the magnet material that is actually obtained, so the actual oxide that we obtain out of the process, will then go through the actual conversion process into a power process to make it into the actual NdPr metals or the actual heavy metals which then will be then going into a alloy-making process.
Eventually, then it will be actually fed into the actual system where it can be actually made into a sintered or the bonded magnet going forward. Overall process is actually well proven. In terms of the making the bonded and sintered magnet, we've got the actual companies in Korea, including the actual gentleman over here, who've been actually doing that for a number of years and over the decades, in terms of making alloys and so forth. In terms of the actual hydrometallurgy side of it, we've been working very closely with a institution in Korea called KIGAM, who's been crucial in terms of establishing the actual battery-related hydrometallurgy as well as the actual rare earths required, the hydrometallurgy side of it. We've been working with a very different organization for the actual pyrometallurgy side of it as well.
The people over here has been actually quite experienced for the last six or seven years in terms of making the metals and alloys and so forth. The process is a proven process. We're not actually looking at the new science or new technology. We are actually more focused on actually doing the actual process, utilizing the actual known and the stable process that we have. Obviously the actual plan forward is highly automating the process such that we could actually have a less of an impact in terms of the human input to it. Obviously, from the actual training and then getting the actual plant ready to go in the United States base concept base.
We have the operation in Korea, we plan to actually bring the people over here to Korea while we actually prepare the plant over in the United States to have the people readily trained and then be ready to be actually incorporated when the actual plant is up and running over in the United States. Having said that, I just want to emphasize the fact that the overall process is very large input of bulky product. Again, of that bulky product, you say of the end product we are generating, we are not actually just generating the actual magnet material or the battery material, we are actually producing a large and wide and broad spectrum of product. That also contains a lot of base material generation, like copper and like the actual aluminum and so forth.
If you look at our revenue projections, there is a large portion of the actual business is generated out of that copper and aluminum and other base material generation process as such. Therefore, we are actually aiming to be broad and wide in the spectrum, but at the same time very flexible, such that we could actually produce a product that is actually attuned to the market rather than actually depending upon one single source of a material and one single type of product to be produced with. We'll have a lot of flexibility going forward. In terms of the actual plant readiness in the United States, the actual physical part is going to be available much quicker than the actual hydromet or the pyromet process.
In other words, we would be actually having the actual physical separation part ready and operatable a lot sooner than the actual hydrometallurgical part, albeit that we are starting at the same starting point. Again, that means that we are actually generating revenue-generating items earlier with the actual base metals and the other precious metal that can be generated out of the actual recycling process, meaning that we can actually look at actual business activity being more productive from an earlier stage than waiting for the whole thing to be completely commissioned and then optimized. I think that will actually give us a much better flexibility in terms of reacting to the actual market situation as such. That's pretty much the actual introduction of the concept of the actual plant that we're actually planning over in the State. Thank you.
I would like to actually hand over the mic over to Georg. Thank you.
Georg, could I make a few more comments before we take questions that came to mind? I think there's going to be a question, if there's not already, look at our peers in the market, plans of 2,000 tons or 10,000 tons of magnet production, et cetera, plans to build within the U.S. Why build so big? Why build 55,000 tons of magnet material or magnet production? Why build 78,000 tons of precursor salts? There's a reason why. If you look at two products, you look at the Tesla Model 3 in 2024, and you look at the Apple iPhone in 2024. Those two products, two products within two companies, not across the spectrum of Apple or Tesla. You're looking at nearly 10,000 tons of high-performance magnets. If you can only produce 10,000 tons, that would just be two products. What would happen?
The Chinese would say, "Well, I'm just not going to sell you the rest of what you need." It would be detrimental to those companies, right? That is exactly what Congress, POTUS, the executive branch, the national security advisor, everyone is looking at with a microscope on, is that you need to be able to produce enough to compete with China. You look at the market of magnets around 2024, the known market was around 300,000 tons. At 55,000 tons, we're a significant player within the U.S. today. The execution risk is key. We're about 700 tons of magnets today. We produce those magnets and we sell them to real OEMs. We can replicate and not scale in terms of building huge, massive runs, but building modular runs, flexible runs, as Frank is mentioning, because this is the metals business.
You have issues when you're separating, you're refining, you're turning into powder alloy and flake. It's not always the best thing to do to build the biggest building ever, but build continuous known replicatable process and flow, right, and scale in that manner. Out of the gates will be about 125,000 tons of throughput in a hydrometallurgy facility in the U.S., and that is what is key. That is the missing piece. That is the piece that's needed to process new ore, albeit it would need to be a high-grade concentrate because we are a closed loop.
We are a secondary metals business, so it would have to be a 90%-plus concentrate coming through end-of-life materials, batteries, whether those are spent batteries or not even at the end of their life quite yet, but maybe the vehicle is, or the battery that's captured in that phone or that laptop. I just want to make that very clear to the analysts, the market, that there is a reason and rationale why you need to build this scale and this size, and you need to build it within the U.S. You need to have low-cost energy. You need to have low-cost labor, lots of automation that we've been doing with our partners in Korea, who have been automating what we've been doing so far as much as possible, because that increases efficiency and turns the economics better with less human interaction.
The slide I was mentioning was slide 23 that we laid out in the management deck, China's 45-year monopoly. The last thing that I want to say is how do we ultimately compete as a business with China from a new ore material perspective? When this supply chain starts to open up within the U.S., there are many things that are going to have to be addressed. If you're taking Congolese cobalt hydroxide and bringing that into the U.S., you're going to have tails. Where do you put those tails? If you're in Montana, they might not want Colorado dirt, vice versa. There's upstream issues around sanctioned countries this material comes from and the supply chain that ultimately beneficiates into China.
That near-term solution for recycling, using all of the materials that you recycle, as Mr. Moon mentioned, you can't just focus on a spent magnet within a hard drive. You've got to get the aluminum, the casting, the polymer. You've got to make money on all of it, because there is a market for this end-of-life material. Historically, you look at a battery and you're only producing a black mass. Well, if you're only producing a black mass, there's only one buyer of that material, and it's the Chinese. It might go through different traders, et cetera, but ultimately you've got to re-beneficiate that into a hydrometallurgy facility. That is the missing piece. You've got to do it at scale. You've got to do it with real-world operators, commercially proven and commercially viable technologies. Not someone with an idea that's never done it before.
There's a big room of just a few of our operators in Korea. As Frank mentioned, Mr. Moon mentioned, those individuals are key to running, building, designing, and operating a scaled and sized facility like this in the U.S. Georg, I'll pass it back over to you for questions.
Great. Thank you, David. Well, that concludes our prepared remarks. As David mentioned, we'll move into a Q&A session now with the team. I will pause just a moment to compile, but we do have some questions in. First one, dovetailing off of David's comments, do you expect the Chinese to retaliate, and if so, how?
I'll handle that. I'm John Arrastia. I'm the Chief Legal Officer. Even if we were to take, as a company, 15% of the market in rare earths, there's a possibility, and some people might think that the People's Republic of China, the PRC, will conclude a fight is unnecessary with Evolution because PRC would still control 75%-80% of the market. We view that as an unlikely scenario. In my personal experience, the more aligned the PRC's geopolitical goals are with a commercial marketplace, the more dogged they become. For the PRC, control of the rare earth element marketplace is an essential tool in advancing its long-term geopolitical goals. While I might not consider it retaliation, we have considered a range of basically five reactions that we would anticipate from the PRC.
The first is they could cut off the feedstock and other materials necessary to make a magnet. It's already happened. There's been severe restrictions by the PRC on the export of technology. The feedstock with more than a trace of heavy rare earth elements can't be exported, and persons knowledgeable in the manufacture of rare earth magnets aren't permitted to travel outside of the PRC. For us, that's not a real concern. Our model untethers us from reliance on the PRC as a supplier of feedstock through the urban mining of end-of-life materials. The second is the PRC could undercut pricing in a purely commercial marketplace. Again, we've already seen it. First of all, this isn't sustainable over the long term and would drain the PRC's limited resources from other geopolitical projects. More importantly, the marketplace is speaking.
Given the growth in demand, we believe that the PRC cannot satisfy the entire marketplace without expanding its production capability. That leaves room for other players, notably Evolution. Most importantly, we've contemplated this and we've addressed it, even on the short and intermediate term. Our model has various revenue streams other than just making magnets. We could recycle end-of-life components and sell the component elements like gold.
We could manufacture and sell precursor elements, materials to other people, or we could use it internally in our own production on a cost basis, which would make us even more competitive. The third thing that we've considered is they could, and Mr. Wilcox spoke to this, coerce customers by saying, "Sure, you could purchase from Evolution, but then we won't sell you the rest." That is the reason, as Mr. Wilcox explained in detail, that we have to have a certain scale. We need to be able to take out entire product take-out, satisfy entire product lines and entire commercial needs in order to address that issue. That's why it's such an intrinsic part of our plan. The fourth is government influence.
In my experience, I've seen the PRC influence governments, on one spectrum through legitimate government affairs and lobbying, and in other instances in foreign countries, just through outright bribery. That's been my experience. That's one of the reasons that we are U.S.-centric, because we believe in the transparency, the strength of the United States government and doing business here. That is the simplest way for us to address that issue. We have every confidence in our government vis-a-vis much of the rest of the world and the way they operate. The fifth is the question of, well, the Belt and Road Initiative, which has been so successful for the PRC. Is there a possibility that the PRC would piggyback the rare earth element aspect on the Belt and Road Initiative?
By that, I mean perhaps building other facilities in other countries, inserting them in there, and having that country become even more reliant on the PRC. Instead of building trains, roads, ports in strategic locations, why wouldn't they just build an industrial campus? At first blush, that seems practical, and yes, it's possible, but we've concluded that that's just not probable. It's not probable because it would be inconsistent with the tight export controls that the PRC has on material, technology, and personnel related to the rare earth elements space. This would be radically different. Creating a hydromet, a pyromet, or any sort of industrial campus that has this tightly controlled technology and personnel in another country, that would be radically different from operating the Port of Darwin, the Panama Canal, or building rail stations in Kenya.
It would be radically different because the technology transfer in the Belt and Road Initiative aspects is limited. This would be basically exposing some of the crown jewels of the PRC's geopolitical strategy to other foreign countries and other commercial marketplaces. Those are the five major aspects. Of course, this is like fitting two pounds of sausage in a one-pound casing. It's not very easy, and it's not exhaustive, but this is a brief overview of our considerations and our thought process as we've developed this model. Thank you.
Great. Appreciate that. Next question was, "It was mentioned that you plan to primarily source classified E-scrap from US DOE. Have you secured these types of contracts before? If so, please provide some context as to how it is done, and what is the expected timing to do so?
I'll take that one. I'm Andrew Knaggs. I'm the president of the company. As a starting point, we need to understand that in order for this company to be able to even compete for secured contracts, we need to have a secured facility. That requires a facility's security clearance. We've already started that process. We've already started leaning forward in terms of considering what will be required for us to secure that processing facility just from an initial design standpoint. Oftentimes, what you see with companies is that they establish their operations and then there's a classified contract that becomes available, and then they sort of backtrack and have to retrofit their facility or their operations in order to meet those requirements.
We're designing our plan, our processing facility from the ground up to be able to satisfy the stringent requirements that are going to be necessary to manage classified material at scale. Given that, our first step is, again, at the design level, and that runs along at its own cadence. Identifying those contracts is something that is already a problem set that we are aware of. The federal government already recognizes the processing of its classified E-scraps as a significant pain point. Right now, the Department of Defense is relying on a number of two to three incinerators that have extremely limited throughput. What we intend to do is bring to market a fully baked solution that is available for the federal government that ends up becoming an easy yes.
What that opens the door to is not only making us competitive for openly competed contracts, but also sole source opportunities as well. That is really what the key is here, because in order for us to secure our facilities clearance, we have to have a government sponsor or prime contracting sponsor who already has one of these contracts. Since we are going directly to engage directly with the federal government, it would be the Department of Defense who would be directly sponsoring us. Going through that process, that could be anywhere from a 45- to 90-day process in terms of securing the FCL, the facilities clearance. In terms of crafting and competing for those contracts, that could be anywhere from a 30-day to 90-day process once we get that started.
The good thing, though, is that once we have the facilities clearance in hand, we're able to roll that into future opportunities as well. From, in terms of context, these opportunities can go in a number of different directions. I've not only secured similar contracts in the past, but I've also managed the awarding and the oversight of federal contracts as a federal civilian inside the government, both as a GS civilian and as a presidential appointee. There's some nuance that we certainly can't get into detail on here on this call, but we have identified what those pain points are, what the need is, and what that solution looks like. Presenting that to the federal government and to DOD in particular, that opens the door to access to this existing trove of E-scraps that should have the prime opportunity to process and move into our system.
That is the best way to look at that opportunity.
Great. Appreciate that detail, Andrew. The following question was submitted by Tim Moore, research analyst from Clear Street. Question is, "Can you elaborate on your engineering and procurement plan for sourcing the custom equipment for the U.S. operations, and how quickly you can place orders after receiving some of the financing?
Let me handle that question. Jumping to the conclusion, yeah, we can actually place the order today. In other words, we are ready to actually place the orders. We identified the actual long lead items, and also the standard items, and also the modularization process that is required. When I mentioned the modularization, what we are actually trying to do is to make the actual modules, and those module to be dispatched over to United States, and then to be intertwined into the actual overall process. For example, if you are going to go ultimately a 50,000-ton processing plant, then you are looking at a 10,000-ton module for each. You will have the duplication of 10,000 multiplied by 5 times.
Obviously, in actually having those modules available, there are certain long lead items that need to be handled before anything else, because some of the items can actually take up to a year before it can be actually delivered. Some of the items can be few months, and some may be 10 months. We have to identify those, and that process has already been identified and defined in terms of the action plan, and we have been in touch with the actual suppliers from Japan, also from Korea, and from Europe and so forth. We are all ready to go once we actually finance to actually do that. In terms of the actual engineering side of it, obviously we have been working with the actual recognizable Korean EPC provider who has a track record of actually providing those hydrometallurgical process.
In terms of the actual track record, they're quite elaboratable in terms of the things that they've done in the past. We are at a stage where the actual conceptual front-end engineering is already done. We still need to elaborate it once we actually have the location finalized such that it can actually go into the final phase of the actual design process. That also has been in dialogue and in discussion, technical dialogue, for the last practically about 10 months to a year. We are ready to actually move on to that. There is no an item that will actually need to be freshly revised into in terms of actual readiness of going forward. Those are pretty much ready from the Korean side of the deal. If that answers the question. Thank you, Georg. All right.
Thank you, Frank. Moving on to the next question, was submitted by James Zimbardi from Zynergy. "How should investors think about gross margins at scale?
Okay. Maybe also, I would need to actually answer that question, Georg. The gross margin at scale, obviously I just want to give you an analogy in terms of operation, say, for example, in Korea. We talk about a producer having to produce 400 ton or 600 ton. Usually the actual production equipment would be able to handle much better, much more throughput than that individual machine. In that case, why are we only producing less of a quantity? That's because there's a bottleneck in terms of identifiable feed material, and there is a bottleneck of how small you can actually go in terms of the equipment. From the economy of scale basis, you would need to actually maximize your output, meaning that you need to have enough material to actually maximize the actual utilization of the equipment, right?
From that perspective, if we have enough of the material to put it into existing machine, that will actually provide us with better return, that's for sure. At the same time, if you can actually increase that specific target items that you're actually aiming for, but at the same time being able to generate much higher volume of a byproduct, let's call it that way, that can be actually marketed separately, then obviously it's going to actually add to your bottom line much better than just targeting on a single item. For us, the actual scale factor is not just based on being able to utilize a magnet production machine to its fullest extent, by going to a high volume, then it means that we are also generating higher volume of marketable, readily revenue generatable product that comes as a byproduct.
Therefore, that actually adds to your bottom line, meaning scale is very important going forward in our margin generation. Thank you.
Thank you, Frank. Next question we have. Please provide clarity on your sintered magnet capability. Which grades do you produce? Which grades have cleared your customers' QC programs, which have not yet? How do you plan to replicate your sintered magnet production equipment in the U.S.?
Hi, I'm Andy Chun. I'm the CEO at KMM. We do manufacture sintered magnet, also we do produce injection molded bonded magnet as well. I'm going to talk about the bonded magnet. We've been producing this material, this product, for over 10 years, and we are supplying this material to major automotive manufacturers in Korea and also other various customers. We do manufacture 4 different grades for the bonded magnet, and the most important grade is NS760. We've been selling this product for over, just like I told you earlier, more than 10 years, and we have a lot of opportunity to grow and expand our grades in Korean market and also in the overseas market as well. Now, I'm going to talk about the sintered magnet.
We currently produce 9 different sintered magnet grades, ranging from N42 to N48SH, which are primarily used in automotive and industrial applications. At present, most of our sintered magnets grade have already complied with the quality control requirements of our potential customers. We are currently completing the final approval process for the grade N48SH with several customers. We plan to commence sales starting in April. In addition, we have already initiated procurement arrangements for sintered magnetic equipment with several prospective suppliers. Our company possesses technical expertise and operational experience and skilled specialists required to manufacture a wide range of sintered magnetic grades. Therefore, we have the capability to replicate and install sintered magnetic production equipment in our U.S. location. Thank you.
Thank you, Andy. Next question. What are the key bottlenecks to scaling production?
Okay. Let me answer that. In terms of the bottleneck, I think we can identify, generally speaking, about three different bottleneck that we can identify. One is obviously the feed material, second one is the actual equipment provider, third is obviously the actual level of the skill that's available to operate the plant. We knew this from very different angle, from the onset of our business in Korea and from our past experiences. We actually treat this as very important aspect of the business from the very early stage of the business conceptualization. In terms of the actual feed material, as Mr. Wilcox already actually emphasized, that's why we look at actually sourcing these materials independent of the conventional or incumbent sources from China, right?
Our source material is very important, we actually are identifying the source material to be coming from a certain stable source such that we can actually eliminate that bottleneck. In terms of the actual equipment risk side of it, as already mentioned, there's a lot of restriction, the future restriction, potential restrictions that will be coming for any kind of the equipment that would be available from PRC. That would actually become harder to actually obtain as we go further downstream. Therefore, the risk side of the bottleneck is how can we get this equipment, can we get them to expand our business? Therefore, it has been very important for our business venture to actually identify where and how, alternatives of the equipment availability away from the PRC.
We've been working very diligently on that side of it, we can be very proud that we have found solutions in terms of where we could actually find the alternative or a replacement equipment suppliers that could actually cater for our needs when the actual pressure comes along. In terms of the actual risk in bottleneck of the actual people, that's why we are actually very active in terms of the actual AI robotics and also having a remote-based control of the actual system and so forth. We've been working very hard on that concept for the last three years, we've successfully implemented certain robotics into the actual manufacturing of the magnets. We're going to be expanding that into the actual batteries and other things.
At the same time, we have a plan to actually bring the technicians and engineers from the U.S. over to Korea while we are building the actual plant over in the U.S. We'll be actually giving the on-hand training for those people in Korea, where we have the actual production and the actual facilities available, such that they'll be ready when the actual plant is up and running in the U.S., rather than having to wait for the plant to be established and then having to identify the actual people to operate it. I guess, I'm just giving you my view of the bottleneck as well as the actual remedies that we actually are planning to go forward to eliminate that. Thank you, Georg.
Thank you, Frank. Next question: Are you actively pursuing any G to G Korean Government/U.S. Government coordinated funding path?
I'll take that question. I think that's been a common theme that's come up over, well, months and years, that the government or the taxpayer really needs to subsidize or fund these projects to be able to compete with China. I think most recently, Project VOLT was announced, which seems interesting. We don't have any reliance upon taxpayer dollars or funding requirements, albeit we have had discussions with the executive branch, numerous agencies, about potential funding or collaboration with the government in regards to incentives, subsidies, grants, loans, equity, et cetera. If we were to have an agreement and the U.S. Government wished to have an agreement with us, we would be dramatically different than some of the others that have executed government funding in the most recent months. That's how I'll comment there.
Frank, would you like to make a comment on the Korean side, please?
Yeah, sure. I'll let Jeff Park to actually give us a comment on it. Again, we've been working pretty actively in talk with the Korean government, local and regional and also central. I'll just give a brief statement from Mr. Park. Yeah.
Okay.
My name is Jeff Park. We've been closely working with the regional government, saying that we have roughly about $10 million support for the prospective plant sites. Also, we are building up a relationship with the central government as well to coordinate with the U.S. government as well. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll move on to the next question. Another one from Tim Moore, research analyst from Clear Street: Can you provide commentary about cross-selling your current automaker customers from South Korean magnet operations from your U.S. magnet operations later on?
Yes, thanks, Georg. Dean Evans, Chief Marketing Officer. I would first of all probably refer to cross-selling as actually cross-supplying. What I mean by this is today our Korean operations, like Andy Chun has said, is already doing business directly with us. We also have Korean-based auto manufacturers also buying directly from us today. These tier 1 suppliers are actively producing and have customers in the U.S., also the Korean brands are also actively producing more and more manufacturing in the U.S. today as we speak. Finally, as a result of our announcements of more production capacity, we have had significant inbound requests for our product, thus the term cross-supplying, not really much cross-selling needed in our business.
Understood. Next question comes from James Zimbardi from Zynergy.
I'll take that. It's a good question. I believe that policy shifts in the United States could really amplify the amount of feed material that we're actually able to process as that upstream. It matures more, specifically supply chains and availability of material. That has not been considered by us at this time. Although, as I mentioned before, a 90% concentrate plus we would be able to immediately process, and the size of the facility that we're building, et cetera. That would equal more dollars, more revenue, and potentially more margin. That would be the expectation. I believe that would be the biggest upside surprise. Thank you.
Thank you, David Wilcox. Another one from Tim Moore, Research Analyst from Clear Street. Can you comment on the negotiations for selection, which states you narrowed down to for U.S. operation campus buildup?
Yes. I'll take that one as well, too. There are numerous conversations going on across the federal government and the state governments working together selecting the right site. Those are very developed conversations. We would expect to be making a decision here in the near term. The things that we had to consider the most, the availability of land, the proximity to labor. Obviously, the cost of energy and the availability of energy. You can't run a recycling business hydrometallurgy facility in Rochester, New York. I think that didn't work for someone. The energy's too high, the regulatory red tape, the permits, et cetera. The energy availability and cost is very important to us. Obviously, the local community support. You've got permitting and regulatory regulations itself.
Albeit we're closed loop, we're not dropping stuff into a tailings lake, but at the same time, we're still very considerate of that. The local support is very important to us. I believe the market or our shareholders and the public will know that answer very soon. Thank you, Georg.
Great. Thank you, David. Another one from James Zimbardi from Zynergy Investments. What milestones should we watch between now and the next funding round?
I'll take that one as well. I think the biggest milestone will be the selection of the industrial campus. That site location. That is the next big milestone for the business because then that'll be a determining factor as all of the points that I just mentioned. Permitting timelines, albeit there's an executive order with the federal government, you're spending over $1 billion. Permits from the federal side are accelerated. Hopefully, those will be aligned with the state that we are selecting or will select. The energy costs will then be known. The energy availability will then be known. Many determining factors that have the final determination on margin, cost, revenue, gross throughput, et cetera, will be known. Those are the major things to watch for. Thank you.
Perfect. Thank you, David. I think we have time for one last question. What is the planned capital stack in relation to equity debt, strategic capital, and what dilution scenarios should investors realistically expect?
I'll take that one. I'm Chris Clower, Chief Financial Officer and COO at the Listco level. That's really three aspects to that question, Georg. I think the first one is we will be focusing primarily on equity as a funding source for the funding for our phase one build-out. We'll be focusing on equity investors with a long-term hold horizon to support our timelines of development and growth. I think that's our primary focus as a funding source. We are open to debt capital. I think as David had mentioned earlier, that's something we're looking at. Obviously, the debt capital is going to have to be at the right cost of capital and with the appropriate structure to support the build-out in our phase one. I think it's fair to say, Tim Moore, I think we've got a few questions from Tim.
Tim Moore, research analyst from Clear Street, recently released an initiating coverage report a couple of days ago. He outlined in that report some base assumptions on the raise and the funding structure. I think those assumptions are fair. Back to you, Georg.
Wonderful. Thank you, Chris. Well, that concludes our presentation today. Thank you all again for joining us. As a reminder, the replay will be available on the investor relation website. Thank you. Have a good day