 Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Nick Erner from Alcane Resources. How are you today, Nick? I'm very well. Thanks, Tracy. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for joining us, because many of us, actually everybody at Investor Intel is well aware of Alcane's Dubbo project and being one of the leaders in critical materials in the world. So why don't we just start with an update on Dubbo, please? Yeah. Thank you, Tracy. Yeah, our project stands ready to execute. We continue to look for market off-take, strategic investment in Australia, government support as well, and we wait, and we wait, and we watch prices rise around for all of the commodities that we're in. And we think that it's approaching a trigger where some of the customers must have to act and secure their supply chains. And of course, in your critical material food chain, we've got what, zirconium, hafnium, rare earths, and niobium. Did I get the highlights or am I missing any? You did get the highlights. Thank you. Okay. And of course, we've all been watching the geopolitical tensions caused between the United States and China. And I was reading a little bit more about what's happening specifically with the niobium and the ferrovenium steel, and how this is actually affected by this. Can you talk to this a little bit more? Yeah, I can. Look, you know, with increased use in vanadium in particular, niobium is a key substitute for vanadium. And so we're seeing both high strength, low alloy steels rising in their use, but as well as that, we're seeing vanadium flow batteries starting to emerge. And so vanadium itself is taking off, and it's dragging niobium with it as a substitution. Is it, you know, the highest prices we've seen in quite some time. It's into the plus $40 range, which is really, really, really interesting. And so as well as that, we also have the fact that CBMM, based in Brazil, single largest producer, 85% of the market is out there. And so all of those things are combining. People are a little bit worried about that as a shortage. They're looking for alternate supply. They're looking for substitutes for vanadium. And there's a lot of price pressure with not many new supply options out there. OK, so in addition to that, of course, you know, we've had a couple of the rare earths leaders saying, OK, they're back. Rare earths are back. But, you know, I'm not seeing the rise or the lift in the share prices yet, but we are watching and we are noticing an increase in people going to the rare earth columns and reading about them and sending us emails. Can you talk to us about rare earths and their demand right now? Yeah, yeah. So fundamental demand continues to rise, you know, CGRs of 6% generally. A lot of it driven by renewable energy and the rise of electric vehicles. A lot of the forecast in the future are almost all driven by electric vehicles and the rise of renewables and higher efficiency domestic devices. But, you know, we're right to see that interest is rising. So people are saying, oh, hang on a minute, particularly like we talked before about the tensions between China and the US. There's been tariffs go two ways on rare earths and different variants of it, magnets, metals and the tariffs have come and gone. And but most importantly, people are saying, OK, well, if I want manufacturing jobs to be in the US and China was to stop sending me magnets, I just couldn't do any electric motor devices over here in the States or over there in the States. Sorry. And and that's that's of great concern. But as yet, we haven't yet. People start to put real cash down to secure those supply chains. So I think a lot of people are watching to wait and see as they are with many of things in the Trump administration, they're looking to wait and see and they're looking to see confirmed price trends upward. One of our writers wrote about the US Defense ban on rare earths directs attention on alkane resources. Specifically, he wrote, you're the most advanced polymetallic project of its kind outside of China. The double project stands to become a strategic and significant role producer of these critical materials. Can you confirm that his his analysis is correct? And can you tell us a little bit more about the timeline to production? Yeah, his analysis is correct. You know, we are one of the most advanced because we have the things that normally hold up mining projects, pilot plants. We've been running ours for over a decade. Securing in the land, we own all the land that we're on, and particularly government approvals. We have all of our government approvals, all the major ones in place. So we are the most developed with, you know, advanced engineering done by Hatch, which international name people recognize. So we are ready to execute. And talking on our construction timeline, our biggest hurdle is securing our financing. And that's both a debt and equity package. We look for customer offtakes to trigger that originally. And once we get that, our timeline is 27 months. And that's when we commission. And then we have a four year ramp up from there, you know, with 65% production the first year. So it's similar to any other rare earth project that you talk to. They divided into two camps. One camp has probably Chinese shareholding base and they're making it concentrate, which could be a carbonate or a mineral concentrate, and they're sending it to China. So it's not a solution to the, you know, John McCain Defense Act or anything like that. There's no solution there. Or there's people like us who have a higher capital cost and they do all the separation. They're looking for Western customers. Everybody has the same timeline as we do. So if someone said to me today, oh, Nick, wow, it's a crisis. I need rare earths. I'll say, yep, give me the money and I'll pump some to you in two and a half years. OK, so arguably we do have a crisis. I mean, I'm reading the news and it says here the United States has imposed tariffs. This is further to the tariff comment. A Chinese zirconium chemicals and powders. I don't think we talked about your zirconium. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and how much of a crisis? Where are we in the crisis level here, Nick, with zirconium, for instance? With zirconium are much more than people realize. So zirconium is just an industrial mineral. I mean, the average listener, if they walk into their bathroom and look at the tiles and run to why they're white and shiny, that's because there's a zirconium layer on top of zirconium. And so it's an industrial mineral, but it's seen a lot of advanced ceramics. It's in faked teeth. It's in, you know, the, you know, the catalyst of exhausts in a lot of catalysts that are used around the world. It's in the milling media for pharmaceuticals. So it's a very widely used industrial chemical. It's in deodorants. Yeah, so that everybody's heard about the pollution within China and Chinese government acting to reduce pollution. And one of the things that happens is China doesn't have its own sources of zirconium, so particular zircon from mineral sands or a hard rock alternative like we have. And so they, it buys mineral sands and converts it in China like so many other things are. But those mineral sands contain uranium and thorium and they need chemical heat chemical process, which contain water and water air and soil emissions. And the Chinese government said, well, hang on a minute, we don't want to be the world conversion of this. And if we do, it's going to follow these regulations and it's going to be in these areas. So lots of producers are being forced to relocate or being shut down. And as a result, yeah, we're seeing that effect on zirconium. And even worse than that in this area, mineral sands in general is running lower in supply. And you have the whole really interesting conundrum with Rio Tinto and Richards Bay in South Africa and do or don't they expand that? There's an incredible amount of tension in the zirconium market. It is fascinating. Well, it is fascinating. And I've got to be honest, Nick, we've been watching this since 2008 here at Investor Intel, the geopolitical issues, the Japan, China, US. And again, is it just me or we continue to see 90% of the world supply of rare earth controlled by China? Yeah, it is. Yeah, Linus produces just under 20% of the rare earth oxides and four magnets. And it's the major or virtually only Western supplier of those oxides. But then some of that material goes into China. So China produces between 85% and 90% of the world's magnets. So yes, it's Chinese dominated. Almost all zirconium conversion is Chinese. It occurs within China. Almost all niobium comes out of a single mine in Brazil. And hafnium is coupled to the nuclear industry produced by the primarily ATI in the States or Fremontomia used to be a river in France. That's it. It's an incredibly concentrated industry. Well, Nick, we have to have you on more regularly to monitor what's happening in the critical material market globally. So thank you so much for joining us this evening. Thank you, Trace. I appreciate your time.