 Today I have the distinct pleasure of speaking with Ian Chalmers about your most recent, well one of your most recent pieces of news, your investment in clean metal processing technology news release that was put out in June. How are you today? Hi, Tracy. Good to talk to you again, actually. I have to tell you, this is one of those news releases that I am so delighted that one of our writers drew my attention to it again because this could be one of the most disruptive pieces of technology in the technology metals sector that I have seen all year. So congratulations. Yeah, absolutely. No, thank you. We view it the same way and have been trying very hard to get the message out about it. Well, I think maybe the message is too big. So anyone out there listening to this interview right now, you're going to be very excited by this news release. So let's just start with the basics. You started with a news with South Korea's or Cognum Technology or you call it Xerontech. Is that correct? That's correct. Xerontech's the name. Xerontech. And I think that the big, hard-hitting message in this deal is that you're going to be able to reduce metalization costs in excess of 50% for not only alkane but just all technology metals pretty much in the future. Is that correct? Absolutely. That's what we believe and the test work today has demonstrated that. So the next step now is the pilot plant to prove that once and for all. Yeah, it's a big breakthrough. I mean, all of us get a bit nervous about using the words disruptive technology, but that in reality, that's what it is. Trust me, Ian. I see the term overutilized so many times. So it is a pleasure to be actually doing an interview on what I personally deemed to be disruptive. So if you don't mind, could you just back us up on how this deal was made? Because this is obviously a long-term relationship where you've made this announcement. Yes, it is. It does go back a long way, probably 10 years. We've been in and out of Korea for 10 years and basically got to work and talk with a number of very, very smart people there. And about 2014, I think it was, one of the guys introduced us to Prof Lee at Cheung Nam National University. And I guess the first meeting we had there, I mean, I got blown away. I thought, wow, these guys are dealing on a new level, well truly above what we're used to. And it just went from that. So a lot of discussion, a lot of test work, I guess the key thing for us that helped the relationship midway through that process, we were able to demonstrate we could produce high-purity zirconia and high-purity hafnia from a separate stream. And that's a big innovative step that we've done ourselves. But then being able to feed that material to Prof Lee's test work was a big bonus. And it really developed very quickly from that. And of course, this Cheung Nam University was basically providing a new process that competed with, and this is where you're going to be correcting it, the crawl process. Is that correct? And can you tell me now about the actual process? OK, yes, you're right about the crawl process. It's been around for 70 years. It was developed probably pre the Second World War, and it's a major industrial process. The detail of the process, the CNU process, is basically subject to patents and subject to intellectual property. So I can give you a broad overview, but what it is, it's an electrolysis process. So it uses standard electrolysis, but through a solid oxide membrane rather than a carbon electrolyte, electrode rather. And that's a big step because it takes that carbon out of the equation. And the really exciting thing from us was initially was that the solid oxide membrane that they use is a yttria stabilizer conure. So here's two products that we'll produce from Dubbo, and we can actually produce yttria stabilizer conures in their process. So there was an added bonus to us. So this process, which is an electrolysis process using the solid oxide membrane. And the big thing about it is that it just generates oxygen. Oxygen is the only waste material that comes off and it produces high purity metals from from that process. So it's a it's a big step forward. I'm sure everybody out there listening to this interview right now is going, OK, we have a lot of questions. So just to just start with what one of the things that's very exciting about this news release, I read it several times was the timeline to actually being able to do this. You'll be able to do this as early as 2020. Yes, yeah, basically you've got to understand this five years with us and probably a lot longer than that for profit profit. Basically, the next 12 months are a demonstration pilot plan, a pilot plant stage operation, and we're very confident that's going to work given the amount of work we've seen that properly is done in the laboratory over the last several years. So yeah, by this time next year, we would hope that we've got a commercial process and then we go from there. It'll go very, very rapidly from there. And of course, I'd like to draw everybody's attention to page three of this news release. This is one of the most compact, intense news releases I've ever had the pleasure of chewing through in. Thank you. You have a suitability of Xerontech electrolysis process table. And I think this is very exciting. I don't know if anybody can see. I think we're going to drop this slide in for this interview. But, you know, basically you have five that are suitable and experimentally verified. And those will be the five you're going after initially. But I'd love for you just to talk about how large this is in per scope. And I also like you touch on the fact that magnetic materials are part of that initial five. Yes, sure. Yes, look, the driver, the driver for Chongnam National University was to produce nuclear grade zirconium metal and nuclear grade hafnium metal for the for the Korean nuclear industry. But it became apparent to them very quickly that that can that process can be used. And the initial target after zirconium and hafnium was titanium. There's a big industry in titanium metal. And then back into the rare earths themselves, so it can actually produce on all rare earths. And then very quickly became, well, yes, we can produce neodymium, prasodymium, terbium and dysprosium metals from it as well. So with all of those, and then you look at the other things that double can produce like niobium. It can also produce niobium metal. It can produce magnesium metal. And there's a vast range of other metals that it can be used to produce. So it's a it's a game and innovative and very new process that will have a big impact in the metallization world. The key driver apart from the zirconium happening for us was the ability to produce those magnet rare earth metals, particularly neodymium and prasodymium, because one of the big things we found in the last five years of all of our marketing exercises that we were always one or two steps back from where the end customer wanted. The end customer wants magnets. Effectively wants permanent magnets. So we can provide high purity oxide metals, but we couldn't provide the metal and we couldn't provide the magnet. This is it takes one of those steps out and gets us much closer to the end users. So we can now give you the metal. If you can provide the magnet manufacturing facility, then we've got a very good combined effort to go forward with. And that's been a big driver and a big positive for us. Well, it also must be a huge positive for you for when you're, you know, speaking with your shareholders about the capitalization of revenue that you can project now coming off of the Dubbo project. Absolutely. And we've always felt, you know, in the last again, the last four or five years, given the complexities of the market and the rare earth market and the difficulty of getting off take agreements because of the competitive nature of the Chinese, that we can see how we can go to the end users. So well, we now can look at value rather than volume. So rather than just producing volume of our products, we can actually take you a fair way down the value chain and go to the end users and say, here we have a high value material. That obviously helps our economic, our financial model when we when we put that together. And the good thing about this metallization step, it doesn't add very much in capital and operating cost to our existing project that we plan. Well, if you don't mind, we would love to do another interview with you here very shortly, where if you wouldn't mind whiteboarding this for us, I think there's a lot of us out there that would like to know a great deal. And because this is going to impact a number of industries in addition to the rare earth that you touched on, everything from the nuclear industry on anything using, utilizing basically critical materials. Correct. And I think the titanium industry is the one really big one. Obviously, we're not involved in titanium, but it's certainly a big industry. And this metallization process could have a big impact in the titanium industry. Definitely. I'm not sure if you're ready to answer this question yet. But, you know, when will you be able to take the commercialization of this extraction technique to the market? Certainly before the end of next year, we believe it'll be in a form where we can go out to the market. And one of the things we've been discussing internally is could we put up, could we establish a stand-alone business inside the Dubbo Zirconia Dubbo project as to can we take that further without developing the main Dubbo project in the short term? Obviously, still very much want to get the Dubbo project up and running. But there's a possibility of a second stand-alone business in there which takes this process and uses it commercially. Well, Ann, I have to say congratulations. And we look forward to getting an update on this sooner than later. Thank you. OK, thanks, Tracey. Nice to talk to you.