 Good evening or good morning should I say I'm today. I'm interviewing David Woodall of the new company ASM and what city are you in David? I'm in Perth, Jack. So it's 8 p.m. Where I am what time is it where you are? 8 a.m. and a beautiful sunny winter's day 21 degrees perfect. For God it's winter down there. All right. Anyway Can you I know that ASM? has been spun off from the original alkane And it interests me because in 2013 I gave a Some lectures in australia and Ian Chalmers attended one and I remember him telling me He'd been at alkane at that point for about 16 years so ASM may be Uh a spin-off today, but it's certain the company it's coming from certainly has been around a long time Uh, what was I understand completely Why you're doing this? Um What is your plan? When are you when are you actually going to be listed separately on the on the australian exchange? Okay, so last week we had the EGM with alkane where shareholders voted Uh 99.95 percent approval to Demerge And the rationale is is is very simple the market likes to have pure planes so alkane Which initially started uh from a gas oil and gas went into rare earth then into gold It's going to be a it's going to be a purely goal-focused company And ASM will be purely a strategic minerals company And that should come we listed as of the end of next week And which strategic minerals will will you be producing? We're we're fortunate with with double it's a polymetallic. So you've got zirconia It's got rare earths both heavy and light. So you're near dimming to praise the dimmings dispersions and terbiums Now novium and also hafnium Now I've been I was reading Some of your material and I noticed that you're working with a new korean company called xiron Which is I believe going to be able to produce The individual metals and perhaps alloys of of your strategic materials and typically zirconium for example metals are high temperature very high temperature metallurgy And that's normally very expensive and and and to produce and and a There aren't that many companies that can do it. So Xirona is new and Are your uh, do you have a joint venture with them? What what is your your connection with this high tech metallization company? so Alcane and now ism has has developed a over a decade a relationship within child within korea So our focus has been how do we get that relation stronger? We came across a group that was looking for investment On a on a new metallization process which entails A reduction furnace and electro refining So in all of our products we have done on a laboratory scale. We've produced Titanium we've produced zirconium metal. We've also produced neodymium Metals and we are progressing through a pilot patent process Which will ultimately our goal is to produce metals for all of our products Okay, so you plan to vertically integrate into metals production from your Yeah, that's that seems the logical way to go in this business Um Many many companies produce either a a carbonate or or or a metal oxide That has to go further treatment and generally that has to go into china 85 percent as you know Of metal production in the rare rare zirconium space goes through china So we see an opportunity Um to provide it be an alternate Supplier of of these critical minerals. So that's that's part of our strategy I think that's a really good idea Uh because it's one of the missing parts Of the non chinese supply chain, which is making the metals The interesting thing there is that the one of the reasons That metal production has not commenced in the west outside besides the uh Let's say false pricing coming out of china metals The chinese typically will tell you that the price of a rare earth metal is only 10 above the price of the oxide This really covers the energy cost in a in a real business But in in any case the real problem is that the chinese electrolyze molten eutectics of fluorides of the rare earths And this is a horribly dirty process, which is basically Uh Prohibited from a cost of health and safety in the west and I know in the united states No one wants to do this because they don't want to go through getting um Approved to produce hydrogen fluoride and fluorine gas As a waste so I I've heard of zirconium before and I've paid a little attention It looks to me like uh, it's a much safer process Which is very important And that that's the difference the The the excellent work with our south korean partners is is is really it's a game changer So recently we we released that we produced titanium metal And we produced a titanium metal oxide. We did that with 45 less energy The process that has been developed and we've now got global licensing To to manage with our joint venture partners in in zero and tech um Is a clean metal production? So as we progress that further we will we will start talking a little bit more about it But as you can understand this is this is game changing stuff not only in terms of producing metal But in terms of the environmental impacts of that production In in in the united states of north america We have Not too many but some very highly specialized companies making zirconium metal hopium metal and products We have some making titanium But and we have none making we're earth metals We certainly don't have a single company in all of these strategic materials So I I think that you're going to Shake up the the u.s. Market because I believe that you're going to be able to do this and quite frankly I believe that You may be the first into this market with where earth metals not made in in asia Yeah, look, I think that's part of the strategy When you look at how a business operates generally you want multiple suppliers to feed your supply chain and To to china's credit they've vertically integrated. So when they sell their kilo of near demian instead of for 40 Dollars a kilo they're selling it somewhere from 400 to 4 000 dollars a kilo But as a part of an electric vehicle or some sort of renewable energy so to me um, the trade tensions the covet impact on supply chains has said Let's look at a modification of the global supply chain and I think asm is really well Located to be able to go into that supply chain and work work Cooperative really with with various companies well I I really don't have any more questions at this point And I think you're going to be successful And I wish you the best of luck and please keep in touch and particularly let me know When you're able to produce those metals in any Well, thank you jack watch his space because there's going to be information coming Sooner than you think Thank you. I I look forward to it and thank you for the for the time Thank you very much