 Today I'm at PDAC Toronto, 2024, and I'm going to be speaking with Pat Ryan, the President of UCOR. So, over to you, Pat. Tell us, what is UCOR doing right now with regard to its rare earth permanent magnet total supply chain? Because I know that you're developing various aspects of the chain, and you've had some successes in various parts of telescope. Yeah, a great question. I think as people know, we're focused on that mid-market where separation is key. And we're using our RapidSX technology, which is a column-based technology that deploys the solvent extraction as used in mixer settlers. It deploys it that much more effectively. So you get through three ports that are three to ten times better than we're measuring. But our commercial demo plant in Kingston, about two hours from here, we've been running different materials through. We've been testing and tweaking the commercial demonstration system. As we engineer the full-scale system, and as you know, permanent magnets, they work with your NDPR and your Disprosium and your Turbium. The one critical thing that we're really focused on, Jack, is that heavy rare earth element. There are a lot of players evolving in the West that are making NDPR, getting close to making NDPR. It needs to feed downstream into the supply chain. That's obvious. But the heavy rare earth is still missing. We had a news release this morning where Disprosium is at 99% plus using our Rapid SX technology, and we are producing kilograms of it. Within the next three, four weeks, we'll have a lot more Disprosium to actually then distribute to customers that are looking to use it to make those permanent magnets. And as you know, the permanent magnets, they really only work because the heavy rare earth allows it to operate at a very high temperature, such as an electric vehicle. Where are you getting the feedstock for these heavy rare earths? Well, the feedstock is coming from the Asian market, not China. And we've run some Xenotime. We've run some Bacnazite, and this happens to be an eye on a clay, and it does come from the Far East, but not from China. So you can kind of guess where that might be, but I'm not going to come right out of my comfort zone. And how much Disprosium oxide have you produced, or whatever compound of Disprosium? Tell me. So we just started separating today. You'll see in the news release that we're running our raffinate through, we're running our strip liquors through, putting them in 5,000-gallon tanks. So there's many gallons of this material containing Disprosium. And by the time we're done processing it out, we'll have kilograms of Disprosium to be used for our customers. To be honest with you, the first time I bought Disprosium was 1962. And it was in grams, and it was made by the biggest iron exchange columns I ever saw in my life, with feedstock from Africa. So since then, I don't know that anybody's really been producing it in North America. I suspect if you're talking kilograms, that's commercial. And I think you'll be the first commercial producer of Disprosium materials in the United States at that level ever. Well, this is a commercial demo. And as you know, the engineering is being done for a full-scale. And our full-scale plant will run heavies in a much bigger quantity. In fact, we're targeting some of the order of 900 tons out of that first Louisiana plant, so 900 tons of heavy rare earth. And yeah, feedstock is always an issue. You've got to find it. You've got to strike up your deal. We're not in a buy-suller range with a feedstock company. We're looking to joint venture appropriately. I think that's what the West needs to do. If you try to take each note of that supply chain and get your economics to work very soundly, it can be a challenge. Now, our rapid SX technology is really robust. The Cap-X is barren on. The Op-X is really great. It's where we need it to be. But we're not going to be a standalone tollinghouse. So therefore, we're reaching upstream to the feedstock companies and say, let's work together and have a value proposition together to move forward. So yeah, significant quantities of heavier earth that we can then supply to makers. When do you hope to have your Louisiana plant in operation? In 2025. The engineering is going on right now. We have Orbital Engineering who are out of Pittsburgh. They have an office in Baton Rouge. They're working on the engineering and the scale up of our rapid SX tech into a building that we have in Alexandria and Metchem out of New England. They build chemical plants around the world and Metchem is involved with us, as well as Kingston Process Metallurgy, who are a very valuable partner that we have currently in Kingston. And they're all of these people are working together to take a copy and paste. What we're doing in Kingston, we've got what we call a rapid SX machine. We're going to build seven of those in Louisiana to get to 2,000 tonne per annum, X-serium, X-itrum. Then we'll build another seven and then we'll build another seven. So eventually we'll have 7,500 tons total. What's interesting to me is that while everybody else is talking about it, you're actually doing it. That's a big difference. And what's intriguing to me is that certain entities of the US government have thrown money, excuse me, invested in various internationally known, large, non-Chinese rare earth producers who aren't even, haven't even broken ground on a plant to process heavy rare earths. And in fact, they won't tell us where they would plan to get them. So the only plant I see producing heavy rare earths in the United States any time soon would be Eupor. Yeah, I know the other entities you're speaking of, of course. And when you're building out a plant, you've really got to be robust on your commercial workup. You've got to be really robust on your engineering that you're not putting a couple of Bunsen burners and some shake flasks on a table and trying to make something happen. The plant we have in Kingston is the size of about two tennis courts. We've invested an excess of $10 million in the last couple of years to get that thing fine-tuned. And when you think about it, it's really, it's like machine learning and that on the front end we have your process that happened, you load it up, you do your separating. But in that separating, there are 600 sensors, there are pumps, there are PLCs, pH controls and whatnot. And on the back end, you have people taking it out. So that whole machine in the middle, which is a column-based tech, doesn't have people in there with mixer-settler tanks and watching every part of the system. It's all really controlled, so when I say machine learning, it means that as the Rapid SX technology, as the machine continues to process, it's gathering lots of data over and over and over and over and fine-tuning and fine-tuning and fine-tuning, such that we can put multiple feedstocks into the plant. This really tells you more about you than anything else. Kat, how long have you been a manufacturing executive? I've been a manufacturing executive in the automotive industry for, dare say, 30 years. I was a very young mechanical engineer when I started at Tier 1 Automotive Company and I do understand the intricacies of building manufacturing plants and building product to spec. I'm always a little surprised, if you will, by people that talk about, we're going to make this concentrate and the automotive company's going to buy it and it's like, that's actually not what's going to happen. And even if you think they're going to buy it, they're not going to buy it like that. And you know things like PPAP and all the requirements to get something in a supply chain that actually then meets the different tiers of supply so that they know what a magnet gets made that goes into an electric motor that that magnet is in fact on spec where it needs to be all the time, every time. You know, you couldn't be more right. I always tell people, it doesn't really matter if you're supplying salami or motor parts. There are specifications, there are procedures, there are rules and the most important things you have to deliver on time to spec, the agreed price and the quantity, okay? And this is the issue. So I think that your particular background gives you a real leg up on this because you're credible to the automotive industry because they know you. You've been a supplier for what, decades of large amounts of material. Yeah, you know, one other theme that I heard you speak about recently, Jack, which I think is really true to the automotive industry. It happened when the, remember when the door blew off that the Alaskan jetliner plane? And I thought, oh wow, is Boeing ever in trouble? And the CEO stood in front of a group of reporters and he spoke about what they were going to do to fix that issue. And the one thing that hit me was that he said, we're going to fix this really quick because we own our entire supply chain. And I went, oh my God, that's what the automotive companies used to do. They used to own their entire supply chain. And now we've got these little fragmented pieces starting to come together, but it will have to go back to owning your supply chain. I think that's right. I saw an announcement about a week and a half ago that Ford and GM were going to do something together on EV components. Okay, no, that's talk, but it's a start. And as you remember all the car companies made all of their parts 30 years ago. Then they decided just in time was better and they could also hit the suppliers for lower prices, get rid of UAW, all these good things. And they sold off Delco, they sold off Mopar, they sold off from Oco, okay. And now the wheel is turned and they're getting bitten, you know where. Absolutely. Okay, and the only thing difference now is that the components are more complicated than they used to be. And you don't just take a blueprint and build a factory. You're gonna have to have people, you're gonna have to have a time where you learn how to do these things. Correct. And we're talking years and billions of dollars and I don't know how they're gonna do that. So. Well it is what has to be done. Yes, absolutely. It is what has to be done. So my guess would be that someday you'll probably sell you for a lot of money to Ford, GM, or Saletas. Possibly, you know, we're trying to build that vertical integration, not just be one node. And I really believe it's ultra important to joint venture with your partner in the supply chain because you've got to have that shared profitability. And I think make the Australians call it the pain gain model. And so, you know, you win together, you lose together but you work together because you're trying to maximize your throughput. And your value proposition together is that much more effective as well. And, you know, you look at BYD, you know all about BYD, they own their supply chain. Just like Boeing owns their supply chain and the North American manufacturers need to catch up. You know, the key thing in the Boeing announcement was that they're buying back the fuselage maker that made that unit, okay? They sold it off for just in time and all that. And now they're taking it back. And I think you're right, in the long term, they'll go back to model A instead of B, okay? And listen, thank you. This is way too much here. The viewers are going to have to think about this because Pat actually knows what he's talking about which is very rare in this business. Thank you, Pat. Thank you, Jack.