Mont Royal Resources Limited (ZG1.F) Earnings Call Transcript

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks very much indeed for joining us on behalf of Mont Royal Resources. Thanks for joining us for this first investor and shareholder webinar following the company's highly successful relisting on the ASX yesterday. I'm Nicholas Read from Read Corporate, and it's my great pleasure to introduce Mont Royal's new Managing Director, Nick Holthouse, who joins us from Malaysia. He's at a Rare Earths conference over there, and he's on route to Montreal, Canada. Mont's Head of Corporate Development, Peter Ruse, was going to join us as well from London, but he's had to head to hospital for the birth of his second child. So I think he's got a pretty good excuse. Well, it's been a transformational period for Mont Royal, culminating in its successful merger with Commerce Resources, a transaction that brings one of North America's largest rare earth deposits, the Ashram project in Quebec onto the ASX. With more than $50 million of historical investment, Ashram is without doubt a Tier 1 asset, and it's poised to play a key role in building new Western supply chains for the critical minerals that are driving the global energy transition. Mont Royal's relisting comes against the backdrop of some significant tailwinds for critical minerals and rare earths in particular. And that's why we're really pleased to have Nick with us today. He's a real expert in the rare earth space, and he's going to step us through the company's new investor presentation outlining Mont Royal's strategy, upcoming milestones and how the team plans to unlock the full value of this exceptional Canadian asset. Before we get into it, a quick reminder that this is intended to be an interactive session. [Operator Instructions] Nick, it's great to see you. Thanks very much for joining us. Congratulations on the listing. And please take us through the Mont Royal story.

Thanks very much for that very warm welcome, Nicholas, and welcome, everyone, that's jumped on. I can't see how many attendees we have, but let's walk through this very exciting story, which we've just managed to kick off in the last day or so. The obligatory disclaimer, I'll get -- I'll take that as read. Investment overview. Look, I'm sure a lot of you have heard this story before, but we are absolutely sitting on one of North America's most unique assets, I think, in the rare earth space. I've been in the rare earth game for about 8 years now, first 4 years with Hastings Technology Metals, so a very similar flow sheet to what we're going to see with the Ashram project. Then 3 years as CEO of Meteoric Resources, very different flow sheet. But again, a clay project in Brazil really took that project from -- I think I was employee #2 in that instance and took it up to a team of about 60 or 70 that it is now and then stepping out and into this opportunity, which was offered to me by Jeremy Robinson about 5 months ago. I have to admit I was a bit taken back when Jeremy first spoke to me about the Ashram project. I thought I'd seen them all. Very keen interest in rare earths. It's been an absolute game -- I guess, it's reinvigorated my interest in the resources sector. There's nothing more fascinating than the rare earth space in the mineral resources sector. And I've been a mining engineer since -- and been in the mining industry since the late '80s, really strong focus on operations, but more recently in projects and then more recently again into management roles. But stepping into the rare earth space has been fascinating. It's really engaged me. And as being a strong devotee, I thought I'd seen all the projects on the planet until Ashram was introduced to me, and it's been around for quite some time. But not only the scale of this project is of interest, but it's the most important thing for me and the thing that really sunk the hook was the fact that the metallurgy works. There's a lot of great headline stories out there in the rare earth space. People talk about really exciting headline TREO grades. They talk about really exciting baskets but that doesn't really translate to an economic story. And this certainly is -- we've got a great headline grade, but it translates in that all-important first flow sheet step, a flotation step into a really good quality monazite concentrate. We sort of -- we get around that 37% con. That's really exciting. That's almost a salable product in its own right. In fact, it could be. And that gives us options. So this is what really drew me into this project. The fact that it's also in Quebec. Quebec is shaping up for me to be a really interesting place to do business. I've never worked in Canada before, but the support that we're seeing in that government space, in particular, is enormous. And I think with the current geopolitical tailwinds that we have at the moment, there's never been a better time to try and work in this space, certainly not my last 8 years. So with that geopolitical support and a good quality project, I think it's a great time to try and launch a project like this and getting that government assistance, not only from the provincial level, but also at the federal level in Canada is absolutely real. We've also got the U.S. down to the south. We do have connections through to the U.S. government for support as well. But I think the way things are shaping up, I think any support coming out of other governments, whether it be Europe, the U.S. or even Australia, I think the Canadian support is really going to eclipse that, and that's something we need to take advantage of. So really excited to be working in Quebec, really exciting to be building those relationships with the Quebec government and also at the federal level in Canada as we go forward. We've got a new leadership team. We've got a new Board. The Board has been -- the old Board has gone. The old exploration look and feel for the story is going. As I said, this has been around for 10 or 15 years. There's been an awful lot of drilling done, hence, such a large resource that we have with us now. So that exploration approach is drifting off. We're changing the metrics of the team, and it's much more of a development field going forward. So new Board, very much development focused, new management team, again, very much development focused, and we'll talk a bit more about that going forward. And I guess at the back end of all this, and this is -- I guess this is why we're all here today. We've just completed a very successful merger transaction. It has gone -- has taken some time. The Mont Royal merger with Commerce Resources is now complete. And as you all know, we recommenced trading yesterday on both exchanges. So that's a really exciting milestone to reach for the project. And there's some real benefits in bringing this story to the ASX, and we can talk a little bit more about those as we progress through the presentation. Okay. As I said before, a strategic asset. You can see where we're located in that northern part of Quebec. It does come with some issues. That northern part of Quebec is very much infrastructure poor. So we do have some challenges in that space, and that's possibly one of the reasons why this project has been milling around the gate for so long rather than progressing forward. But as I said before, the tailwinds that we're seeing, the pressure on the sale that we're getting, not only from the provincial government in Quebec, but also at the federal level in Canada and that real sense of nationalism that Canadians are feeling at the moment is all translating into real and tangible support for a project like ours to go forward and what this project really needs in the first instance is infrastructure. So we need an access road. There's a few options that we've been looking at. We've just finished the road access analysis piece, which we are now sharing with government, local indigenous groups and the industry. And there's a couple of routes, but the route that is really starting to shape up nicely at the moment, I think, is the route down south to Schefferville. It's certainly on the radar with the government of Quebec. They really want to see that route opened up, not only for us, but for other players in that area, other exploration players as well. And it's also garnering a lot of support from the local indigenous groups as well. They really want to see that area opened up for their own purposes. They like to hunt and fish and an access road in that area would certainly help them in that space and allow them to connect to the wider world as well. The dual listing, and I spoke about that before, we're really seeing -- and we've seen that translate in a really successful and rapid IPO process that we've just been through. We're very much oversubscribed in that very short space. We had the IPO open for to raise that $10 million. We could have taken a lot more. I kind of wish we had. But anyway, we've raised a good look of capital, $10 million. And again, that access to the Australian market, I think we're getting a really good response from the Australian market. The Australian investee market very much understands assets like this. They understand the scale of these sorts of assets and understand the -- I guess, the opportunities that come with them with connecting into government and also a wider industry in this part of the world. So we're getting a lot -- a really good response with that dual listing. And it's one of the key reasons why we've gone through this whole merger transaction and elected to join these 2 companies together. Okay. A little bit on the capital structure. I won't spend too much time on this. But essentially, I guess the key takeaways are we've launched with an EV value of around $27 million with the raise. On top of that, we've got a market cap of around $38 million. And there's around -- in warrants and performance rights, we're looking at around $110 million or so out there in the market -- $110 million out there in the market or so. So we're off to a good start. We certainly have enough cash in hand to go forward and focus on what we need to do to take this story forward. And that is, again, very much a development story going forward. So PEA. Moving into a PEA space, moving into permitting and the heart and soul of these projects is always metallurgy. We've got a really good metallurgical story at this stage. We know we can go all the way through to a mixed rare earth carbonate and produce a very much a salable product. But there's always ways you can optimize that. So we need to spend some time on an additional time and money on making sure that we get that flow sheet as best as we possibly can when we get this project to the execution stage. So of course, there's a strong focus on metallurgy going forward as well. But long and short, we are cashed up. We've also got -- just to add to that, we've got around $3 million in tax returns coming towards the end of the year as well. So this is -- these rebates from the flow-through program, the exploration work that's been done by both companies over the past 12 months or so. So that's going to be a nice little top-up to the coffers as well. A bit more about the project, 100% owned. We're about 130 kilometers south of Kuujjuaq, which is the regional center in the Nunavik. It's an Inuit town, the administrative center, as I mentioned before. we've got a JORC resource estimate. It's also -- it's actually an NI-43-1 estimate, but it's also JORC compliant. We've been through that process. And with that, we see around 204 million tonnes at around 1.9% TREO. Now coming with that is a really nice grade of fluorite. Fluoride is a really interesting metal or interesting mineral. I have not had much experience with Fluorspar, sorry. But going forward, there's some real opportunities in that North American space with regards to producing a fluorspar product and meeting the market. Mainly the U.S. and Canada are net importers of fluorspar at the moment. It's a really important additive in the steelmaking, aluminum making industries and also in finishing uranium products as well. So certainly a strong demand for that met grade fluorspar product. within Canada. I think there's been some really good work done in the metallurgical space around that. I think it's going to be a really quality -- a high-quality and important additive to the cash flow story in that Stage 1 execution piece for this particular project. So as I said before, we produced a good fluorspar byproduct, and we really want to try and incorporate that into the flow sheet going forward. So a little bit more work to do in that space. The basket itself a really nice component of NdPr in there. That's really important. This is a magnet story, this particular deposit. So it folds in really well, whether those magnets are going into consumer electronics, power generation into EVs or even the military, it doesn't really matter. But we do have a really strong basket. We have that really strong mass pool that we see with those recoveries at the concentrate stage. Every tonne of ore we put through this particular project at the crusher, we pull about 12.5 kilos of TREO. I mean it's an enormous pool. And that's a really good story that adds to the economics. So we've got a really nice basket. The mineralogy, we've talked about that already. We know we can float this stuff really well. We produce a really good quality float concentrate, around 65% recovery to produce that 35% to 37% TREO. And as I said before, that gives us options. That TREO con is potentially salable in its own right or we go further downstream to produce that mixture earth carbonate through a sulfation process. On to the Board. As I said before, a new Board in place led by Cam Henry. Cam Henry is a well-known mining executive in the Western Australian space, but operating extensively through Canada, as is Adam Ritchie, both engineers, along with myself. So we've got a really strong sort of focus on development. As I said before, we've got 3 builders. And behind us, we have Ronnie Beevor and Jeremy Robinson in the financing space, Jeremy is a really interesting guy. He absolutely understands rare earth projects. He's got a really good nose for those sorts of projects. Really pleased to have him on the Board and Ronnie Beevor. Ronnie Beevor has been around for a long time, and he comes across from the Mont Royal acquisition to support us in that space. But as I said before, very much a forward-looking industry-focused Board, very pleased to be working with these guys going forward. The old management team is out aside from Darren Smith, Darren is a really interesting guy. I'll come to him in a second, but Pete Ruse comes across from Mont Royal, who will be the Head of Corporate Development. Really pleased to have Pete on board. He's been a real asset, particularly in this merger process. So looking forward to working with Pete and taking the story forward. Cindy Valence, she steps into the VP Government Affairs role. Cindy is a really quite a unique person. She has been instrumental in opening doors for us in Canada. She has that ability to pick up a phone and talk to pretty much anyone, either at the provincial or federal level. And she has a fantastic working relationship with the indigenous groups that are engaging with the Naskapi Indians and the Inuit. So really pleased to have Cindy on board. She's doing a great job. She's kicking down a lot of doors for us in that government space, which is absolutely what we need, particularly when we talk about -- one of the key drivers for this project going forward is that infrastructure commitment from government, and Cindy is absolutely the right person to lead that charge. Darren Smith. Darren has been with the project for 15 years. He's associated with other projects, high-profile projects such as Patriot Battery Metals. He's a geologist, but he's also got a really strong metallurgical bent as well. So he understands flow sheets exceptionally. He understands the rare earth market. So he'll be staying on as an adviser for the next while. And then behind him, we've got Gavin Beer. Gavin Beer is a guy that I brought in. I've worked with Gavin many times in the past in the rare earth space, metallurgist. He's worked on most rare earth projects around the world. He spent a lot of time in his early -- in his younger years working for Lynas. So certainly understands good projects. He's got a really good neck for looking at work that others have done. And that certainly is remit at the moment. He's looking at all the work that's been done in the past in the metallurgical space, both REEs and Fluorspar. He'll be having a close look at that and seeing what opportunities might be going forward with a new approach and some fresh set of eyes on that. So we've got some interesting test work coming up, which I'll talk a little bit more about further down the presentation. But great to have Gavin on board. The development strategy, as I mentioned before, the key drivers that we have for the moment are really what's in front of us. We really need an access road. We need to get in front of government and make sure we get an access road in place. So this is the immediate focus for us. We need to close out our PEA. So we're looking to bring that to market in quarter 1 next year. And we need to start thinking about how we stage the development of this particular project. So as I said before, the quality of the concentrate gives us -- does give us options. We need to really have a good think about that as we go through the PEA process and prior to the PFS process about how we consider the development -- the stage development, potential stage development of this project. The old thinking was that we would go straight to separated oxides. We paired that back. That's really is, in my opinion, a step too far in this instance. We really want to reduce the risk. We want to reduce the capital burden for that start-up project and the scale and the quality of this project allow us to do that. So we need to take advantage of those opportunities that this particular deposit and the support that we're getting out of the Canadian government offers us and staging this is a really smart way of going forward. So we're reducing the scale coming to market with around 3,000 tonnes of NdPr a year and about 100 to 150 tonnes of DyTb. So it's a really good start. This project is eminently scalable. We can scale this thing up over time to meet the market. Moving on from that. Secondary development focuses really are unlocking value from other commodities. So I mentioned Fluorspar already. We also have a really interesting Niobium story that's developing outside the -- and just adjacent to the rare earth story. So bringing that forward is really important. So as I said before, incorporating some sort of Fluorspar flow sheet into that Stage 1 development is something I'd love to try and deliver. We'll see how we go with that. But we've got a little bit of work to do just to make sure we optimize that flow sheet and bring it in. We don't want to create a rock for our backs with regards to creating an exceptionally large capital or technical burden for us to bring this project to market. So we're very mindful about how Fluorspar might play into that, but I'd love to try and incorporate that in that first instance. It's certainly going to be a nice little value add to the project going forward. And Niobium, we've had some really interesting hits in that niobium space. We see really good niobium hits from surface, nice wide intercepts and good grades. So there's an opportunity there, but I think niobium is probably something that we'll be looking to push along a little bit later on. We'll focus for the moment on Fluorspar and rare earths and then that Niobium story potentially becoming that third value-adding prong, I guess, to the Ashram story going forward. And in a wider sense, we want to diversify downstream. So we're very much looking at being a junior miner in the first instance, so stopping at that float con or potentially a mixed rare earth carbonate story. We don't want to go all the way through in the first instance down to a magnet as some others propose to do. That's just technically, it's a big chunk to bite. Capital-wise, an exceptionally large chunk to bite, and it really stretches juniors beyond their limits, I believe. So sort of pairing it back and sort of staying in our lane for the moment. But going further downstream is absolutely something we want to look at. For us, it's really, I think, collaborating and considering JVs with industry to go down further down into those value-adding steps beyond the mixed rare earth carbonate. So these are the steps of separation, metallization and then ultimately magnet making. There's lots of other groups out there which do it really well. They have the expertise. So working with those groups, collaborating with those groups, looking for JVs in that space with the industry is probably a smarter way for us to go forward in that sense. So that's something that we're keeping an eye on as we go forward. Those conversations on the far right-hand side are becoming -- are going to become very much easier once we have a few key things in place. And one of those is completing the PEA and getting that commitment from government on an infrastructure piece for access to this site. I think once we have those in place, people will really start to see the industry, in particular, will start to see how they can potentially access these molecules. These molecules have an access out to the wider world, and that's when those conversations will really start to build up, I think. That's our development strategy going forward. I'm just going to skip this slide. I know everyone understands where rare earth elements go, but these are all applications which would absolutely suit our basket profile. And we all understand the thematics going forward. We understand that the demand is growing and that there is going to be a supply gap going forward. So there will need to be new businesses that come into this market to not only at the mine gate, but we have a very immature supply chain in the West. So there's an awful lot of space and a lot of work that needs to be done in the separation space and the metallization space, excuse me, and in the magnet making space as well. So all those things need to grow in concert. And the mine gate is only one of those pieces. Okay. A bit more about demand. So we understand all these issues, I think, going forward. Okay. Just a quick peer comparison. And look, unfortunately, due to ASX restrictions, there's only so much information we can put into this, but I suggest you all go away and do your homework. If you look at the last 2 columns in particular, there's a really interesting ratio that develops there. If you look at those last 2 numbers and build your own ratios off those, you'll see that we are absolutely by far and away, the cheapest story in the market. We are very much undervalued when you look at our contained TREO. That's really all I can say about that at this stage for fear of being in trouble from my CFO. But please go away and do your own research on that. We are cheap, and there's a lot of room for us to move in the development space and in value. Okay. I touched on this a little bit before. As I said before, we get really strong support from the provincial government. Quebec is a great space to do business, and we've had -- already had some early support from these guys in the previous years. There's been -- I guess, the key takeaway for me and the most exciting thing I've seen in the rare earth space for a long time was the announcement that came from Carney, about 6 weeks ago, 2 months ago on Canada stepping up its commitment to NATO spending. They're moving up to 5% of GDP. It's an enormous amount of money. But the interesting thing was the takeaway from all that was that 1.5 of that 5 is being committed into critical mineral projects and associated infrastructure. And a project like ours with an advanced metallurgical story and enormous amount of tonnes, we know this thing works. We are an absolute key candidate for that sort of support. So that is something we're really going to be diving in on and trying to push as much as we possibly can. That commitment from government, I think, is going to be a real re-rate for the story and it's something that we're focusing very hard on. Of course, it was the most exciting thing I did for a long time, but then the ENP deal popped up on the floor price story, which was -- which probably eclipsed that. So it's been quite a remarkable 6 months or so for news flow in the rare earth space. I couldn't imagine some of these things will be popping up, but crazy times we live in. As I said before, Quebec, a great place to do business. They are absolutely focused on opening up that northern part of Quebec, there's a couple of industry groups, government groups that we are talking to in that place -- in that space, sorry. Plan Nord is one of them. Invest Quebec is the other. We have regular conversations with those guys, and they are keenly interested in supporting us with regards to gaining some money to go and sort these infrastructure pieces out. We don't want to own the road. We really want government to own the road or even the indigenous groups to own the road, and we'd be quite happy paying a toll to access these roads. But we certainly don't want to have that burden of trying to build an access road ourselves. It just doesn't work. And it isn't something that junior company should be doing in my opinion. I think these sorts of things are for the good -- for the betterment of Northern Quebec and Quebec in a greater sense. And these things being built by government for the benefit of many, I think, is a much better way to go forward. And behind that, we have really strong support from our local and indigenous groups. So the Inuit to the north, who are based in Kuujjuaq, great relationships with those guys, which is where our project is housed. And that potential access route to the south and Naskapi that I'm very keen to get in and support and lobby government on our behalf to see that access road open up. As I said before, it's something that they're very keen on having as well. So it's not just that they are trying to support us. They have their own reasons wanting that road to go in, and we just sort of fold into that story behind. I'll just skip through this. Again, a remarkable time that we live in at the moment, the geopolitical tensions that are being driven by the angst between China and the U.S. is enormous, and that's only benefiting us. So I hope it goes on for a little bit longer. It's certainly creating a very fertile space for us to operate in at the moment. It's been great. A little bit about the deposit itself. You can see a cross-section here. It is enormous 204 million tonnes, as I said before, great proportions of NdPr and a good look of DyTb that comes along with that as well. So it's an attractive basket that goes out that would be offered up to a separator through the -- whether it's a concentrate that we're shipping out or whether it's a mixture of carbonate. But it certainly has the right proportions. As I said before, it recovers. Really good recoveries. This metallurgy works, and that's really important, okay? Very low strip ratios. You can see in those early years, some starter pits would just be focused essentially potentially in that 100% ore zone only. So extremely low strip ratios, very low-risk upfront mining application, very low mining costs in that space. It's essentially only ore that we're mining. And you can see that this thing is open at depth. So that pit, I think, is looking at about 70 to 80 years of mine feed and the ability to grow that mine feed with some additional exploration is enormous. It just goes on and on and on. It's a fantastic project to have our hands on. Then about the value chain. As I said before, we really want to stay in our lane. Our current focus is on steps 1 and 2 and potentially steps 3. We are not looking to go any further down that value chain on our own. Those steps 4, 5, 6 and 7 would be through collaboration with others, I think, in this instance. But for us, again, we need that access road in place that's really going to allow this story to take off. But for us, very much a development story. We want to focus on those steps 1, 2 and 3. That's really where we belong. It's a lower risk story. And actually we recover about 80% of the value of the oxides in those first 2 steps anyway. So it's a sensible place for juniors to stay, and I think that's the way that we'll be taking this project forward. Again, a little bit more on the options. You can see here, again, the option 1 is just to produce a float concentrate either sold to a third party or potentially JV downstream in hydromet, or we go straight to a hydromet flowsheet ourselves. So again, we've got some thinking to do in that space. We can wear both of those options. It really comes down to a question of economics for us, and we'll work through those options over the next few months as we close out the PEA. Again, the basket. About 25% of our basket is magnetics, and that drives about 93% of the value. So it's not the best basket out there. It's certainly not the worst basket out there. It's a good quality, robust basket. But when you combine the composition of that basket with the excellent recoveries we get at that flotation stage, that very high mass pool that I was talking about, we get 12.5 kilos per tonne that comes through. That's quite remarkable. So we produce a lot of metal for a very low input tonnes. So we're in a good space in that area. Again, a bit more about fluorspar. As I said before, metallurgical grade fluorspar is really where we're going to be concentrating. It's the lower grade fluorspar concentrate that is made anywhere between 60% and say, 85%. And you can see the industries on the right-hand side that, that serves. We have made fluorspar products. We have made acid-grade fluorspar products with previous met test work, but we have more work to do in that space. We really want to optimize that. We know we can do it. Mother nature has been very kind to us in the sense that in that flotation stage, the rare earth elements float off to produce the rare earth element, the monazite concentrate. And the bulk of the fluorspar reports to the underflow. So the underflow typically is the portion of that process which goes out to a tailings dam. We can recover that underflow stream, we can recondition it and refloat it and capture that fluorspar. So there's a good segregation between REE elements and Fluorspar in that very first instance, in that flotation portion of the flowsheet. And we certainly need to take advantage of that and a little bit more work to do in that space. U.S. and Canada, net importers of fluorspar. There's a huge opportunity here to start servicing local markets with this particular commodity. And I mentioned Niobium before. You can see in the blue, this is the rare earth deposit. To the south and to the east of it, you can see where we've started some of the drilling, more recent drilling over the past couple of years for niobium. Niobium clusters and they occur in clusters around this REE core. Eventually, if you searched hard enough, you will probably find they surround the entire rare earth deposit. And we'll look at those over time. But at the moment, there's been some interesting work done in the south there. Grades we're seeing are around 0.6% niobium, and know the mineralogy is conducive to producing a good flow concentrate. This will be a separate and discrete flowsheet to what we have for rare earths and fluorspar. And just as a bit of information, us mining this at, say, a 0.6% average, we're about twice the grade of what Niobec are mining underground within Canada. I think they may be mining at 0.4% perhaps. So this is really good high-grade niobium in Canada at surface, really nice wide intercepts, more work to do. There is no resource on this, so we can't talk about any tonnes of grade. And again, the priorities. And I guess as I said before, very much a strong development focus going forward. We are looking to work closely with the Quebec and federal governments, and it's all about that road access. We've got to get road access. That really is going to be a re-rate for the story, not only for us, not only for you guys in the market, the shareholders, but also for industry as well. Once industry can see how these molecules can leave site, it's really going to pique their interest. Those conversations will really start to become real once they can understand how those molecules are going to get off site and what the time frames are. And we can start to dovetail into industry's plans going forward and start looking at some of those JVs and collaborations further down that value chain. We're going to close out the PEA. It's about 50% complete. And we're looking to bring that to market sometime in quarter 1 next year. At the completion of that, we'll have a framework essentially for a PEA -- from the PEA to start our environmental baseline work. So we'll start kicking off those work programs. That's probably towards the middle of next year. And same with starting a pre-feasibility study. I think we're looking to start that around the middle of next year at the completion of the PEA studies. And with that comes the build-out of the development team. So I really want to start bringing some of those key management pieces inside the tent. It's been very much an outsourced story in the past. We're going to bring those key positions into the tent. We're not going to have a large team. We're going to have a very focused team that owns those important study components. So we'll be looking at employing our own metallurgists. We're looking at bringing a study manager in to run the pre-feasibility study, and looking at an environmental permitting that should come in and start looking at those sorts of things. So bringing those key positions in. It's a small team, nimble team going forward. We continue to collaborate not only with the government, but also the indigenous stakeholders in the region. And as I said before, very shortly, I'm very confident that we're going to have some sort of commitment from government on an infrastructure access piece, and that's really going to allow us to really start having real and serious conversations with the industry with opportunities for downstream. Okay. Nicholas, I think back to you.

Thanks very much, Nick. That was a great run through. Really appreciate it, very interesting story. Just a reminder to everyone that's tuned in, please take advantage of Nick here to answer your questions. So fire them in on that Q&A tab, and we'll ask Nick to address them. Nick, I just wanted to start with one on news flow, because you and the team have obviously been very focused on completing the transaction in the last few months. But I guess for someone coming into the stock today, I mean, what can we look forward to broadly over the next weeks and months? You must have quite a bit of sort of pent-up activity that you can talk about in the coming period.

Look, absolutely. Look, I think what you'll be seeing, Nicholas, is a refresh on some of the more recent achievements, just to remind everyone about how well positioned we are, particularly in the metallurgical space. And you can't have a great metallurgical story unless you've got a great resource. So just reminding everybody about some of those metrics, I think, is really important in the first instance. But there's some really interesting test work programs that Gavin Beer is looking to take on at the moment. We've got a ton of sample coming across to Perth in Western Australia. We'll be just doing some twinning of the work that's been done in Canada. And as I said before, getting those fresh eyes onto some of those metallurgical pieces. So looking at producing around 30 kilos of flotation concentrate and trying to optimize that process with some new thinking. We'll be having a closer look at Fluorspar and how that works, how that might fit into the flowsheet story. And then some of that product then going off to ANSTO as well. We'll be having another look at the mixture of carbonate story, that sulfation bake story. We've got some really smart people at ANSTO. So just having, again, some fresh eyes there on those 3 prongs, those 3 commodity prongs, I guess. And then finally, there's some really interesting and innovative work that's happening in the met space, which may eventually see a substitution of the traditional flotation and sulfation bake access that we're looking at. So we've got some really -- and I can't talk about those guys at the moment. People can probably work out who they are, but there's some interesting and innovative groups out there which are looking to grab our concentrate and see what they can do with that. So certainly, some interesting news flow coming from the met space over the next 6 months. We'll be closing out the PEA, as I said, before Q1. So look out for that. And then those are all important collaboration pieces with government. We're working really hard on those commitment pieces and agreements with the local indigenous groups, too. They are very keen to take that infrastructure piece story for us to government. So watch out for those.

Excellent. Thanks, Nick. There's lots of questions coming in online, so we'll get straight into them. An investor says, there were lots of abbreviations in the presentation, lots of commodity references. Can you summarize the main commodities that are likely outputs of the projects, and I guess for the benefit of those that may not be as familiar with the rare earths project as you?

Yes, sure. So within our -- mixed rare earth carbonate, it's an intermediate product. It's the secondary concentrate that we produce on from the flotation concentrate. So the flotation concentrate process is really about crushing up the rocks, liberating the monazite minerals and floating those monazite minerals off. That's only half the story though, because the rare earth elements are contained within those monazite grains. So you need to break open those very robust grains. And that's what that sulfation bake process is, the second stage, and that produces -- that's the addition of a lot of acid, it's the addition of a lot of heat. It breaks open those monazite grains, releases all those rare earth elements. And that secondary concentrate that you produce is the mixed rare earth carbonate. Now that is a -- again, it's a high-grade concentrate. Those elements are then liberated. That carbonate can then be sold to what they call a separator. And the separator will put that back into solution and separate them out into those individual rare earth oxides. And most separators in the West are just targeting neodymium, dysprosium and terbium. There's a couple in the West that are starting to selectively pull in other elements. In China, they separate everything. So those opportunities are starting to open up in the West, but that's essentially the process. So you would change title of that mixed rare earth carbonate product for us.

Excellent. So most of the value is in those 4 key magnet rare earths you highlighted?

Yes, absolutely. Yes. So all 17 elements come along for the ride, whether you're talking about a flotation concentrate or a mixed rare earth carbonate, that secondary intermediate product. All 17 elements are in there. They all come together in varying proportions. And that is always something you need to look at with these particular projects, what does that assemblage look like, what does that basket look like? And we know that about 24%, 25% of our basket is made up of neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. So 4 key elements that the market is looking for, predominantly for magnets.

Excellent. Thanks, Nick. There's a question here about the project itself, and I appreciate you're relatively new to it. But the question is, is there any potential environmental issues in the project area? Has anything been identified historically that you're aware of?

No, we don't think so. There was a baseline work done about 10 years ago, which some of it we can actually reuse. We're just trying to ascertain what components of that study we can reuse before we kick off on our refreshed environmental permitting process next year. But that process didn't indicate any issues back then, and we're certainly not seeing any issues popping up with regard to environmental permits for that particular area. I think a lot of it is consultation with the local indigenous groups. And as I said before, we have great relationships with those guys. So as long as we're transparent with those guys and bring them along for the ride, which we intend to do, I don't foresee any problems in that space.

Fantastic. Next question here is, is there a CapEx estimate for the road that's needed to unlock this project?

Yes, absolutely, and very high level. Yes, we had some very high-level engineering input at the desktop level around which fed into this optimization -- sorry, this route selection study, which we've just completed. But it's anywhere between $1 million and $2 million a kilometer. Coming south, we probably need around 300 kilometers of road. So the CapEx could be anywhere from $300 million to $600 million to build that particular road. But as I said, that is something that we're willing to keep separate from our own capital cost buildup. We really see support from government coming in and taking that over. Well, that's certainly the objective. So that's what we're pushing for. But that would be the cost of going and building that road yourself.

Excellent. Fantastic. Thanks, Nick. There's a related question here about what the wider economic benefit of that road could be. And why do you think that government funding will be there this time that, I guess, previous management weren't able to unlock?

Yes. Look, absolutely, and it relates back to that comment I made about GDP spending. I mean that's a remarkable quantum for the Canadian government to commit to with regards to NATO spending. And the $1.5 billion, these are unprecedented times with regards to government support. Canada has a real willingness to go it alone in the critical mineral space. But the conversations that we're having on the access road, I mean, we talk this ourselves, of course, we did an access road. There's other mature mining projects in that area. Torngat are one of them that would benefit from a road to the south. Scandium Canada, which is, I think, in the PFS level now. They would certainly benefit from that road as well. So there's 3 plays which are certainly looking to move forward into development that would benefit from that. You have the local indigenous groups who want those roads. At the moment, they rely on scooter trails to get to a lot of their traditional hunting and fishing areas. And they're quite upfront. They just say we'd rather put our scooters in the back of the MUVs and drive to some of these areas. It's going to save us days, essentially. So they have their own reasons for wanting those roads to be put into place. And there are countless exploration plays, which would benefit from cheaper exploration costs and having an access road adjacent to some of their properties. But we're also having some fairly obscure conversations with groups. And I did mention groups like Plan Nord, which has a mandate to open up the north. It's a Quebec government group along with Invest Quebec, but also the Canadian military, they've made it quite clear that they want -- will require access to the north as well. They don't just want to be able to traverse by here. They want to be able to go by rail and road if possible as well.

Excellent. Thanks, Nick. Next question here is, would power for the mine development come from diesel?

In the first instance, very likely, yes, it would. But the indigenous groups in area, the Inuit and the Naskapi, they're very commercial folks, and they are both looking at their own power projects, which they'd like us to be offtakes of. So one is a wind project in the region of the mine. The other is a hydro project. So these are separate from any of our capital cost requirements. These are being progressed off their own bat, but they certainly look to us as being a major offtaker for those power -- for those electrons. So we are certainly interested in participating in those sorts of offtake stories. And I guess as confidence grows in our project, so would confidence in those particular power projects as well, as they will get supplied. So ultimately, we certainly do want to get away from diesel in the first instance. It's likely, I think that we'd be kicking off with diesel.

Okay. Thanks very much. Thanks, everyone, for these questions coming in. There's a question here about what are the levels of uranium and thorium in the deposit? And does that present any issues?