 Today I'm speaking with Penny Althouse, the Chief Executive of USA Rare Earth, to get an update on the company's quite impressive progress towards production. Can you bring us up to date briefly, Penny, on when and how much material you'll be producing this year and next year? Yes, so this year our objective is to produce materials, separated materials, out of our demonstration plant at site at Round Top in West Texas for customers to specification. So we've actually already started to break ground on the demonstration plant and again we anticipate having those materials available for customers by the end of the year. So that'll obviously be smaller quantities, it's not for the purpose of revenue, it's for the purpose of being able to provide feedstock to customers and also as a stepping stone if you will to pull scale commercial production in 2023. Can you please name for us what those materials will be? Yes, so we've got obviously a significant amount or a diverse amount of materials at Round Top, we're not going to be processing and producing all of them, we're going to be focused of course on the magnet materials, so DYTB and DPR, we'll also be producing Haffnium, Gallium, Zyconium, Lithium, we'll also look at a couple of the other tech metals and rare earths, I think Yttrium, Ytturbium. So we'll look at sort of those key materials, we've got 30 or so materials at Round Top, we're not planning to produce or market 30 materials, we'll probably start up with about eight or nine materials. And it's my understanding that you are now open to and doing sourcing from other producers of the mineral concentrates for processing in your plant. You had announced some time ago that you were looking at what I call toll processing. I assume that besides toll processing you're looking to buy in materials from other producers for final processing. Yeah, I mean we're working with Australian companies, Canadian companies, a group out of Europe, Latin American companies, and I mean the objective for us is two-fold. One, the demand for the materials in the United States is obviously always increasing and we have customers that require these materials as big as Round Top is and as much as we'll be producing it'll be a fraction of what's required for the US supply chain. So when you hear companies make claims about being able to provide all the materials required for the US supply chain, it's absolute nonsense. We're privy to understanding what some of those numbers are from consumers and it'll take many projects and many decades to be able to provide the materials across the supply chain but we've been testing third-party feedstock from Australia and elsewhere which is one of the key parts of the processing method that we're using which is iron exchange which allows us to treat third-party materials. So we're already in advanced discussion with a number of companies around the world, pre-producers, eventual producers, companies with existing feedstock to bring their concentrates here into the US. We'll treat it over here and then provide that into the US supply chain. So right now the only ones that are doing that are China and these companies either for whatever reasons don't want to send the materials to China would prefer it go into the supply chain here and of course we have the magnet plant so you know we'll be a small producer, a relatively small producer of NDPR. We've obviously got an abundance of DYTB so for the magnet plant we're looking for additional non-Chinese feedstock materials that we'll treat and then it'll go through the magnet plant when that's recommissioned next year. You saw I'm sure the response to the President of the United States executive order on supply chains and it mentioned that sourcing could be done from trusted allies. So the fact is that the trusted allies that have always supplied the United States with raw materials have been Australia and Canada. So you're already in those markets looking for feedstock for your centralized plant, correct? That's correct. I mean you know I think the Biden administration is on the right path. The issue we have is when the US government talks about you know bringing in materials and relying on countries like Australia and Canada I mean there are a couple of things to note firstly you know we can't rely solely on companies in Australia and Canada because they are free to sell their materials into any markets including China. That's different for US mining companies where you know regulations would require us to keep certain materials in the US supply chain and I mean the US government's not going out and acquiring materials on behalf of the EB sector, on behalf of the medical sector, consumer electronics companies so there's no apparatus within the US government to say that we're going to acquire materials from Australia and Canada and then somehow pass them along to a forward GM or whoever it is. I mean that just doesn't exist. My work with the US defense department they've always emphasized that the issue for them is is the final production of the critical field must be done in a domestic facility. So they in fact even as recently as two years ago they if somebody were bringing in material from China they didn't care providing it was processed in the United States but I think that what you're doing is much more in line with what the US federal government is looking for. They really don't aren't they weren't concerned about where it came from although today now with the new response from the government they're looking for mature and trusted allies but what I most appreciate about what you're saying is that it's rare for a person in your position to admit that it's nonsense for one company to supply an entire market. In fact this nonsense discontinues. The fact is I think that the markets for your product let's say lithium and the rare earths for example are open-ended. We're really entering a bull market for these materials and there just aren't enough in the world to satisfy the demand so I think you're in for a very good run. Yeah I mean Jack there's no competition in this space. I mean we can have five rare earth projects like roundcloth and then we'll start being in business if you will as a country and as a supply chain so unfortunately you know companies that are either buying for government funding or you're trying to promote you know get their stock price up and running make certain claims and I think these claims are dangerous. I think when they talk about being able to produce materials or provide materials into a supply chain that either are not even contained within their resources or they don't have the downstream capabilities. I think it lulls us into a false sense of security that we can rely on a couple of companies that are making these claims. No one company, no one project is going to provide the materials for the US supply chain. We're going to have to have 10, 15, 20 projects up and running. That's not going to happen for decades. So the question is is if we can have you know 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent in the next 10 years that we can supply ourselves that would be an achievement. But let's see if we can even get to that kind of number and sort of win ourselves off this what today the current dependence on China for everything. Well I wish you were on an internal platform in the Pentagon giving that talk and you had four or five stars on your shoulders so they had to do it. But anyway I'm not sure how good that would be for the country. But I'm not commenting on that. But Penny thank you very much for the update and I look very much look forward to your debate or discussion with Australia's vital minerals on the future of both your projects. Thank you. Well I've met Jeff and I think it'll be more of a discussion than a debate because he's a very level-headed person and also in going doing things in the right direction. As the moderator I'm going to make sure it's a little bit of a debate. We'll find something to disagree on I'm sure. Well thank you Jack appreciate it and appreciate the work that you're doing to promote sort of what's a very important issue of our time. Thank you.