S1 E35 – Ionic Rare Earths: Recycling is ratcheting up the pecking order.

Dustin Olsen (00:40)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. We're so excited to have everyone here. Today we have a special guest, Tim Harrison, who is the managing director of Ionic Rare Earths. And he's going to tell us all the exciting things that are going on, not only in his business, but within the industry. So Tim, thank you so much for joining the show. To kind of start us off, you want to share a little bit about your background and what your role is at Ionic Rare Earths.

Daniel O'Connor (01:06)
Thanks.

Tim Harrison (01:07)
Yeah, hi Dustin, Daniel, great to be a part of this. Yeah, so Tim Harrison, I'm the managing director of Ionic Rare Earths. We are an Australian listed company. We've been working in the rare earth space now for over five years, looking at magnet and heavy rare earths. We've got a large ionic adsorption clay deposit in Uganda.

That's a development-ready asset, member of the Mineral Security Partnership. So, you know, the type of asset that in the, you know, if you're looking for immediate supply of heavy rare earths, then Mekudu is of incredible strategic advantage. And for the past three and a half years, we've been looking at the downstream supply chain. So…

dominantly rare earth separation but recycling. Recycling end of life magnets, recycling the waste materials and the production of permanent magnets and being able to turn that into brand new recycled separated rare earth oxides for new magnet capacity. I'm here in Belfast at the moment where we've been progressing a demonstration plant.

and commercialization of the technology with a view to replicating that in other markets, including the US, where we've got a few things sort of bubbling away. And in addition to that, we've got a joint venture in Brazil called Viridian, where we're looking at not only building recycling, but also rare earth separation in a joint venture partnership with another Australian listed company.

viridis mining and minerals. And that's incredibly exciting as well. you know, it's there's a lot going on within the business. And I think we've we've positioned ourselves extremely well to have a lot of really exciting opportunities in the very near term.

Daniel O'Connor (02:55)
Definitely. I think it's been impressive. It's definitely a mind to magnet play as we see it. You know, how you all have partnered. I know you have some technology from Queen's University of Belfast, I believe, and that was licensed and we've profiled when we started Rare Earth Exchanges, we profiled your Brazilian partnerships. I want to talk a little bit about Heavy Rare Earths. You know, you're ranked

We're the first group that we know of publicly to rank the whole rare earth elements supply chain from upstream, midstream, downstream. Right now, your company is ranked number seventh in the world on our ranking system for heavy rare earth elements as an ex-China targeted ⁓ asset. That's a big deal for us. mean, there's a lot of players.

you know, in this list and you're number seven, you're high up. Let's talk about this land, the geology there, and why it's such a rich, heavy rare earth geology for starters, just so people can understand what we're talking about. And let's talk a little bit about the importance of heavy rare earth.

Dustin Olsen (03:54)
Thank

Tim Harrison (04:01)
Yeah, so look, Daniel, mean, Makutu, yeah, it's a very interesting asset when it comes to heavy rare earths. What we see, because it's an ionic adsorption clay, we're able to recover the rare earths through simple mining and processing, where effectively we wash. We wash the mineralization with a salt solution that extracts the rare earths out of the clay.

in a chemical form and because the minerals that exist or the rare earths that exist in the clay are actually weathered, they've been broken down by Mother Nature and what we actually see is a preferential extraction of heavy rare earths over the light rare earths. So we end up with a ⁓ basket of rare earths, a product basket that's about 45 % heavy rare earths, magnet plus heavy rare earths.

It's incredibly rich. Sorry, I'll just correct myself. It's about 45 % heavy rare earths, but if we include the magnet rare earths, it's about 71%. So when we're looking at projects that have the blend of elements that are required to support a bifurcation of supply chain, new supply chains, like what we're seeing right now in the US and to some degree Europe, but…

you know what's really accelerating right now in the US is avenues to find new supply of magnet and heavy rare earths. And so hence why, you know, we've done a few trips to the US earlier this year, given the strategic importance of Makutu, you know, development ready asset, we've got mining permits, we've got environmental permits and you know,

we have the ability to rapidly bring Makutu into an ex-China supply chain. So it is, I think, the part of the supply chain that really is a blind spot for the West. And I think with what we're doing on certainly Makutu, our focus on the ionic adsorption clay products potentially coming out of Brazil through our joint venture with Viridis. So that Viridian joint venture.

And then targeting magnet recycling, right? Which is targeting the value elements of the rare earth supply chain. mean, neodymium, prosodymium, dysprosium and terbium, you know, those four magnet rare earth elements make up about 80 to 90 % of the value of the rare earth supply chain. And when we're looking at investment that's happening right now and the focus from the customer base, you know, it's that heavy rare earth magnet component.

⁓ dysprosium and terbium, which is now getting huge amount of, focus. And, ⁓ I mean, we're, we're routinely having requests for the products we're producing here in Belfast. we've shipped samples off to the U S, you know, where we're selling material into Europe. you know, this is moving with a lot of pace and, it's incredibly exciting because we're at the cusp of certainly commercialization here in Belfast, but

but rapid replication in other target markets, know, the US, Brazil, and a few other places, which we'll talk about soon.

Daniel O'Connor (07:04)
So on that note, basically, how much heavy rare earth element projections are we talking about here? How much feasibly can you pull out and support, let's just say, the Department of Defense? Because we know they're looking for heavy rare earth, quality heavy rare earth opportunities.

Tim Harrison (07:23)
Yeah, look, you know, we've sort of looked at different scenarios and, know, between our recycling strategies and various phases of development at Makutu, you know, we have the capacity to sustain, you know, in excess of sort of 70 % of US demand on heavy rare earths. So an appreciable amount over a period of time. And hence, this is a lot of, you know, discussion that we've

we have going on with stakeholders in that market and other potential customers. But it's not just the US that's in need of this material. Obviously, there's a demand for this material in Europe as well. I feel with the ionic adsorption clays and the focus on heavy rare earths, the heavy rare earths need to be brought to market to complement the substantial amount of light rare earth that can be rapidly brought to market.

I think that the light rare earths can become quite quickly commoditized. But the blind spot, as I mentioned before, is the heavies. That is a real issue for, I think, the Western supply chain, especially when you look at some of those applications in military and defense. And as we saw with the export restrictions that were implemented on the 4th of April this year, when the tap has turned off,

There ain't many options.

Daniel O'Connor (08:46)
Yeah, there's actually no options for heavies. It's not politically correct to say, but Dustin, I

Dustin Olsen (08:48)
That's.

Tim Harrison (08:51)
That's right.

Daniel O'Connor (08:55)
have a few more questions, but why don't you jump in and we'll mix it up a little bit.

Dustin Olsen (09:00)
⁓ no, I don't have any questions. I was just going to say like, yeah, there's not many options, if any. yeah, that's.

Daniel O'Connor (09:07)
So

Tim, for investors that are watching, our traffic for the rare earth exchange platform is just exploding. It's a good timing, I guess. And we're trying to bring a holistic, comprehensive view to all of this. We're trying to be critical. We're trying to be objective to help investors. But we're also, we have a bias. Our bias is X, we want to accelerate the X China market.

That means helping you. That means connecting you with investors, connecting you with customers, et cetera. Do you have, for your heavy rare earth element supply, do you have commercial relationships in place now where you're off take? Or is it still sort of gearing up for that? I wasn't sure about that, so. ⁓

Tim Harrison (09:52)
Yeah,

so where we stand right now, we are sending samples and selling small volumes of material to some of our more strategic partners. ⁓ As we start to ramp up capacity and publicly, you know, we made some statements a couple of weeks ago talking about our efforts now to ramp up dysprosium and terbium production because the potential customers that we're looking at

Daniel O'Connor (10:01)
Okay.

Tim Harrison (10:18)
they're crying out for that material now, they can't get it. And also in order to help facilitate the commercialization of technology, of commercialization of new supply chains, rapidly deploying new capacity on metals, alloys and magnets, we're looking at how we can get material into the hands of that new supply chain as well. So…

You know, what we're doing now is focusing on accelerating, making more product, helping the supply chain, the customer base grow, but also trying to move towards commercial deals, you know, frameworks that support not only what we plan to do here in Belfast, but also rapidly deploying the technology in target markets, especially the US where we've got a few things sort of, you know, we're making progress.

And I'd love to be able to have a flag in the sand there very, shortly.

Daniel O'Connor (11:10)
Yeah, we're hoping that we can report on that. So I think it's important for folks to understand you're really involved. you take the company, they've got this rich mine in Africa. You also have a tech operation recycling technology in Belfast, correct? And this is a technology that was developed by Queen's University of Belfast.

Tim Harrison (11:27)
That's correct.

Daniel O'Connor (11:33)
And then we'll get into Brazil. Can you talk to the extent you can talk about the technology itself and how validated it has been out in the world? you talk a little bit, whatever you can talk about, what is the technology, high level, how does it work, and how much commercial validation has it been through so far?

Tim Harrison (11:54)
Okay, so I think that the really interesting thing that we're doing right now is the recycling. And I think Western governments are understanding that the recycling part is the part that's probably going to move fastest, especially on capacity for those heavy rarest dysprosium and terbium. We've seen that with certain meetings held by government officials over the past few weeks. Recycling is ratcheting up the pecking order of where

they're looking to deploy money in the next wave. So, what the technology effectively is, is we take that end of life material, we crush it, we mill it, we digest the alloy, which enables us to separate the rare earths away from the iron, the boron and other base metals that exist in the magnets. The technology differentiates itself because we can deal with oxidized magnets, coated magnets,

So we have a lot of flexibility in what we can take as feed, which the alternative technologies typically don't. And we end up with, once we've rejected the iron, the boron, the base metals, we end up with a rare earth rich feed for a solvent extraction circuit that uses different extractants. And we can then separate the four rare earth elements that typically make up the composition of the magnet.

and we can separate them into the individual elements. And again, that's a differentiation. And what that means for our customers, our supply chain partners and why they're working with us is because we can now deliver them with the separated oxides that enables them to make a vast array of different magnet specifications. And those magnets all have different alloy compositions. And I think that that's probably what

that the wider market needs to understand is that the magnets themselves, whilst they specify particular magnetic properties, every OEM, every magnet manufacturer has a different recipe in order to achieve that. And that means that they need separated oxides. And so that's the differentiation. That's why we're inundated. We're working with a number of groups. We've got groups coming through Belfast on a weekly basis. And it's incredibly exciting.

Daniel O'Connor (13:46)
Yeah, that's right.

Tim Harrison (14:02)
because the technology has been validated. It's been validated through the partnerships that we've announced publicly. We've got a collaboration with Les Commer Metals, which is a UK-based metal maker that's now deploying its technology in Europe and I think to the US soon. And I think given where we're at, we've got a very strong relationship on that front.

⁓ We've got a public collaboration with Ford and you know, we'll see our magnets in EVs later this year. We've got a partnership we just announced again very recently with again Ford and Bentley and Wright bus and those of you not familiar with Wright bus, they make the big London buses. ⁓ so again, made in Northern Ireland, just up the road here.

Daniel O'Connor (14:49)
⁓ okay. Ha ha ha.

Tim Harrison (14:55)
And so we're really embedding ourselves in that UK supply chain, European supply chain. And I think it's a model, it's a template. And we're building the supply chain. We've got strong relationships with magnet manufacturers in Germany. We're building those relationships in the US. This is a model that we'll see replicated because this is about piecing together the supply chain for the customers to have faith that it can be done. And it can be done.

Daniel O'Connor (15:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, saw also, yeah, Vacuum Smelts, you all are partnered with them and they're a pretty prominent magnet maker, right? Yeah, so, now that's very interesting. know, what you're talking about, Tim, that all of these magnets, everything's custom. A lot of people don't understand this. Everything is custom. And, you know, so that's the opportunity for you all.

Tim Harrison (15:28)
That's right.

very much so.

Daniel O'Connor (15:44)
If you lock in these contracts and you start fulfilling more more customers, mean, you're going to have a locked in customer base. now let's talk about Brazil. this helps. we understand now, because it's complicated. You guys have multiple facets going on.

Northern Ireland, we understand what you're doing now. It's really ⁓ a recycling hub for various specific rare earth elements

Dustin Olsen (16:07)
So.

Daniel O'Connor (16:12)
for magnets. Now Brazil, and we did a feature, we worked with the state of Minas Gerais to discuss that collaboration down there. Now there you all sort of fit into an ecosystem. There's some mines.

Tim Harrison (16:21)
Yeah.

Daniel O'Connor (16:26)
I think you're bringing the recycling technology down there. Tell me if that's correct.

Tim Harrison (16:31)
Yeah, that's right. So look, Brazil has been very, very keen on what we're within ionic technologies and ionic rare earths. Last year, we actually hosted two delegations from governments in Brazil, including our friends at Inves Minas. And so, you know, we've been cultivating relationships. We've been, you know, sourcing magnets and recycling magnets out of Brazil. And we've delivered those separated

oxides back into the Brazilian supply chain. So it is a very exciting opportunity down there because it's got scale, right? It's got scale to be able to provide a vast amount of the right amount of rare earths, know, the magnet rare earths, a small amount of heavies, but you know, it does have the capacity to fill demand for both North America and Europe eventually. And, you know, I think

for IONIQ and our joint venture through Viridian, we're bringing our intellectual property on magnet recycling to start to seed new capacity there. So we'll be recycling magnets in Brazil. You know, we're working through and we've been selected. We were firstly shortlisted, then selected to receive funding under a Brazilian critical mineral strategy and funding opportunity. So…

We're working through the finer details of that now, but you know having been selected You know we and and now granted land will develop and replicate what we've been doing in Belfast in Brazil Recycling magnets and delivering those separated oxides to supply chain there with CIT Ceni so again ⁓ in Belo Horizonte and Minister I will be you know developing and cultivating the supply chain

And this is about building the human capital because what we're doing, you know, this is a skill set that's been cultivated in China and that skill set needs to be replicated, needs to be built and replicated in those other markets. Building the biggest mine in the world isn't going to make it any easier. mean, in fact, it creates too much volume flow and a lot of risk. And so by starting with recycling, we'll put those separated oxides in the hands of

of metal alloy and magnet capacity and will grow together. And then as that capacity evolves and the capability to produce the magnets at the target specifications required, then we bring online a refinery that will take the offtake from the Colossus project and potentially some other projects in Brazil and deliver separated oxides into further value addition in Brazil or potentially export.

Daniel O'Connor (19:04)
Yeah, yeah, very, very fascinating. mean, it's a assertive effort you all are involved with. It's fascinating. Now you have, as far as financial situation, you all did do a capital raise at one point. I think it was around 30 million. Kenocor, Genuity, Sprott Capital, I believe. Where are you all at now?

with capital and with what you need to execute against this plan. Then we're going to ask you some business questions. If they're too proprietary, don't answer them. we'll at least, we want to give people a sense of where you're at. in terms of capital to execute, mean, in essentially what? Three continents, I mean, we're looking at here, right? So that's a substantial amount of activity.

and you're starting to get contracts in, is there going to be, you're publicly traded, do you have the capital you need now? What's the situation?

Tim Harrison (20:03)
Yeah, look, Daniel, the raise you mentioned was all the way back in 2022. that's, you know, it's, that's right. And, and since then, you know, we've, we've prioritized the, you know, the development of the assets, whether it be the upstream at Makutu, but probably over the last two to three years, we've really focused on the downstream because

Daniel O'Connor (20:08)
Right. A ways to go.

Tim Harrison (20:26)
You know, looking at the amount of capital and the risk profile that the customer base is looking, you know, they don't want exposure just yet to mining assets. The appetite is greater on the recycling. And that's because the risk profile is a fraction of it. You know, I mentioned before, we're separating four elements. If you're looking at rare earth separation from a primary asset, you're dealing with 15.

And the complexity associated with that is significant. And so, you know, the visitors that have come through Belfast have seen our ability to separate and produce high purity oxides with a substantially smaller footprint than what you would see with a primary refinery. Look, yes, we're across four continents. And, you know, we're really focusing on the recycling at this stage. I mean, we've slowed down activity at Mekutu.

And whilst we continue to have discussions about the asset and the product, you know, the bulk of our focus and spend is on the recycling because we believe that that's going to be the fastest to market and fastest to first revenue. And the best opportunity, I think, with the recycling is our ability to put it in the backyard of Western governments. So it immediately addresses sovereign capability.

I mean, here talking with stakeholders in the UK, you know, we're progressing a substantial government grant to help cornerstone a commercialization here. Governments are willing to rare earth capacity and rare earth processing in their backyard. I think that the appetite for non-recourse finance and funding instruments like what we see here in the UK, what we're seeing in Brazil,

And certainly the way in which capital is being deployed in the US, I think is a bit of a lead indicator of the type of opportunities that are available for us as we look to commercialize and rapidly deliver sovereign capability for some of these more sensitive applications like military and defense.

Daniel O'Connor (22:22)
Yeah, I think that makes sense. so you're being very focused and you're prioritizing based on the most valuable, most imminent value in the portfolio of all your assets. And so it makes a lot of sense, this sovereign capability. What we saw a couple months ago, the defense groups, couldn't really talk about it, but we heard the chatter, Tim.

and it wasn't good. can you tell us, are you close to doing any recycling deals in the United States anytime soon? Are you in discussions?

Tim Harrison (22:56)
Look, great question, Daniel. I have to be careful with this one. I mean, we're talking with a lot of groups. We're looking at a lot of things. And I think, you know, we've put ourselves in the right conversations. So let's see what happens and how long it takes. But I think we are, you know, if you're looking for separated heavy rare earths quickly.

Dustin Olsen (22:59)
you

Tim Harrison (23:17)
then yeah, we can help.

Daniel O'Connor (23:19)
And that's important. That's very, very important.

Tim Harrison (23:22)
And I think, Daniel,

just to, you know, this is about speed in tons. You know, there's a problem right now. So how quickly can that technology be deployed and how quickly can the material be put in the hands of the supply chain?

Daniel O'Connor (23:33)
You know, and we want to see, Tim, we want to see governments, we want to see skin in the game. You know, we don't want to see what we've seen. You we've studied this space extensively now. I mean, we're still learning, but what we've seen is, ⁓ and I'm going to just go out on limb here, but we've seen sort of politicians and corporate leadership over the decades sort of just ignore this.

And we saw reports in Congress in 2012 that, we have a real problem here. Well, that's over. There's no excuses now. They have to do deals. They have to get things going. And that's one reason why we exist, is to make sure we're holding everybody accountable. And we're kind of exposing all of this. We're making it transparent, because this has been a very opaque space where people operate in the shadows, so to speak.

So we will help encourage, you know, if there are deals out there, they need to get it done. They need to do pilots. need to, you know, give us some products so that we can start to, you know, mitigate risk, right? That's absolutely key. Dustin, you have any good questions for Tim?

Dustin Olsen (24:42)
Yeah, I've been thinking of a couple here. looking into the future. So right now we've seen that recycled rare earths comprise about one to 2 % of all supply. What do you predict say in the next five years? How is that number, how's that percentage going to change with the efforts that you guys are doing?

Tim Harrison (24:59)
Yeah, look, so I think it's going to increase. mean, reality is that it's going to increase. And you can look at the total supply chain that looks at the world. But increasingly, there's going to be a big market that can't buy from one particular source.

And so that market and all those markets, you know, you are looking for customer bases now in the US and Europe. And you've seen the European Critical Role Material Act, which has set the target of having 25 % of strategic raw materials, which includes those magnet rare earths coming from recycling by the end of this decade. So, you know, I think we will see the recycling content increase dramatically.

Um, I think certainly within the U S you'll see the recycling content, um, you know, rapidly increase because there is a whole segment of the supply chain there in military and defense that won't be able to have magnets that source materials from China from the start of 2027. Now, where are they going to get their, certainly their heavy rare earths, where are they going to get their dysprosium and terbium from?

and certainly applaud what's happening in the US and the investment to secure capability capacity out of MMP materials. But that's an asset that's focused on light rare earths. So that's neodymium and prisedymium. But if you want to make a magnet to go into those high end applications, you need to have dysprosium and terbium. So I think the next phase is really about helping

or the US government, the stakeholders that use those type of applications now looking at how they're going to source dysprosium and terbium in an environment where it's not going to be freely available. And you've seen that with price. I mean, we've seen prices go threefold since before the 4th of April to last month.

Daniel O'Connor (26:50)
You

Security is a key factor in pricing now, right? We can't go back to where it was. Those days are over.

Tim Harrison (27:07)
No, that's right.

That's right, Daniel. And, you know, I think any student of history will go back and have a look at what happened in 2012. You know, history has a way of repeating itself. And so what's happening now shouldn't be a surprise to the supply chain or investors or the market. If we go back to that period, we saw dysprosium go up 26 fold.

Daniel O'Connor (27:30)
Yeah, yeah. Now, MP recently, I think we just reported on this, just secured another 150 million for, I believe it's a loan for heavy rare earths, or it's a grant or a loan. I have to look back at our notes, but it is for heavies. But I have to think that even an MP could potentially partner with

Ionic because you have a different, it's interesting. Do you see, we speak with some companies that are explicitly targeting Tim, the small to mid-size market. Okay, because if we look at OEM, from auto to defense, there's all range of companies, The big tier ones, the biggest names, I won't name names, but we know who they are.

Dustin Olsen (28:17)
you

Daniel O'Connor (28:17)
They tend to be more conservative buyers.

That's an assumption. I mean, are you all, with your sales and marketing, are you targeting a certain sweet spot in the market? Or are you sort of being more opportunistic? Like, can you talk a little bit about your go-to-market strategy and who you're targeting? Not names, but the class.

Tim Harrison (28:38)
Yeah.

Look, I suppose targeting is an interesting one. Right now, I think everybody's targeting us because, well, that's right. I mean, that's the advantage of being able to produce dysprosium and terbium. Right. And this is material that's not available. mean, frankly put, you can't get it. So if you're looking now at trying to move forward with

Dustin Olsen (28:47)
So.

Daniel O'Connor (28:47)
What a nice problem to have.

Tim Harrison (29:05)
you know, sintered magnets, looking at, you know, you've already been looking at thrifting grain boundary diffusion and trying to reduce the amount of heavy rare earths that you're putting into your magnets. You still need it. But you are, you're trying to work out where am I going to get my dysprosium? Where am I going to get my terbium? And, you know, we have had a significant interest, appetites to take all of our material. You know, we've put proposals to organizations.

We'll see where that goes. We've put opportunities to replicate what we're doing in Belfast in other locations. We are looking now at how we can quickly deploy, replicate what we've done here in Belfast, commercialize Belfast, but then quickly scale out, hyper scale our technology into other markets, other locations in partnership with much larger organizations.

⁓ that need this material in order to maintain their production targets.

Daniel O'Connor (29:58)
Right, right, right. So, I mean, what I hear you saying is that, you know, you're being, and this is a good thing, more reactionary because of the demand, because of the position that you have, and now it's, you know, ⁓ qualifying, figuring out of that pipeline of interest, what are the best win-win scenarios for all parties?

Tim Harrison (30:21)
Yeah, look,

like with everything, mean, Rare Earths is one of those extremely opaque things that's really sort of stalled at times with the customer base, like reluctance to participate in any sort of ex-China supply chain for fear of having your supply chain turned off by China. Effectively, ⁓ looking to initiate back an alternative runs the risk of having your existing supply turned off.

Daniel O'Connor (30:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Harrison (30:48)
And so there's been reluctance from a lot of customers that we've been dealing with. You know, needs maturity, there's been a lot of focus on price, but that focus on price is now being replaced by a focus on security, of supply security. And that supply security is now one of the biggest risks for these organizations. You know, we've seen auto OEMs

Daniel O'Connor (31:03)
Yep.

Tim Harrison (31:14)
slowing capacity or stalling capacity or, you know, billions and billions of dollars of shareholder capital idle because they haven't secured the raw materials. They need to keep their production going. And so here we are now with a recycling opportunity that lets them take the power back. You know, it lets those organizations secure.

Dustin Olsen (31:33)
Okay.

Tim Harrison (31:39)
their own capacity and requirement domestically, internally, it's going to cost. There's a cost associated with it. mean, there's capital required to build new

capability. And when we look at what we're doing, we're just recycling. So we're producing oxides. There's still a requirement for metal alloy and magnet capacity.

And this is where the relationships that we've been able to build and demonstrate through our programs here out of Belfast position us perfectly because we can walk into any room and say, yeah, well, you know, we work with them on metals, alloys, we work with them on magnets. You know, we can demonstrate that we were able to work together and build supply chain resilience.

Daniel O'Connor (32:09)
Right, right.

And this is helpful because as we start to track the company, Tim, we have a much clearer sense of strategy. I mean, you can kind of pull some of these points out of written materials, but it's really helpful to speak with you, listen carefully. How many employees, contractors are under the umbrella of Ionic now in all locations worldwide?

Tim Harrison (32:46)
⁓

Worldwide, probably about 30 odd, to be honest. about 30. I mean, the bulk of our capability sits here in Belfast. This is really where the technology and the capability and what we're doing is speaking volumes. We will be building our capability in Brazil.

Daniel O'Connor (32:51)
Okay, about 30, okay. ⁓

Tim Harrison (33:08)
We're in the process of putting some resources into the US to support all the things that are going on there. And we continue to have a team in Uganda. So, you know, it's a very exciting phase for the business. You know, there's not too many, you know, there's a lot of early starts and late evenings because of where we are in time zones.

Daniel O'Connor (33:15)
Mm-hmm.

Dustin Olsen (33:17)
Okay.

Tim Harrison (33:36)
There's a lot of appetite to talk and explore opportunities now to commercialise what we're doing in Belfast and other parts of world.

Daniel O'Connor (33:46)
Well, I think it's a brilliant strategy. If I may ask, who's sort of the visionary behind the company that saw the opportunity to license the technology and kind of architected all these deals? I mean, is that yourself? mean, who's been driving the ship there, steering the ship?

Tim Harrison (34:03)
Yeah, so look,

yeah, so I suppose I've got a bit of, I've got a background in hydrometallurgy and I think when we looked at the opportunity around Makutu and, you know, trying to understand how you can monetize a product that's rich in heavy rare earths, well, where can it go?

You know, we spoke with the Chinese SOEs back in 2000 and 2021. We understood what the landscape looked like. We knew where all that capacity was. But we also saw that there was a market that was emerging that wanted to decouple. And to decouple, it's one thing to have the molecules. It's another thing to have the technology to be able to do it. And yeah, we saw the opportunity with what was Seren Technologies.

We moved on that in late 2021, finalized the acquisition in April 2022 and for the past three and a half years we've invested heavily in the technology and recycling. We've spent about 12 million sterling so far here in Belfast. We've had great support from the UK government, we've had tremendous interest from

supply chain from customers. We're having regular visits to Belfast from the US and from Europe. We have a very strong relationship with certainly the UK government, but constant dialogue with US and other stakeholders. It is a very exciting phase for the business.

I think we're about to capitalise on that investment and not so much a pivot, but seeing the opportunity in going downstream probably before others.

Daniel O'Connor (35:40)
Well, I can say this again, and we don't, you we're not a stock recommender. We try to stay objective and we try to be critical. But again, we have a bias towards accelerating the ex-China market. And so I look at your market cap today, I believe is around 96 million today, right?

Tim Harrison (36:00)
Yep, that's it, about right.

Daniel O'Connor (36:02)
And again, assuming even 30 % of this stuff takes off, that's going to get a whole lot bigger.

Tim Harrison (36:09)
Yeah, look, Daniel, think, I think, you know, I am biased. There's no doubt about it. I think we're tremendously undervalued. I think we're undervalued for our differentiation, our technology. And, you know, we've been investing in this space for, for, you know, six years. You know, it's go back six years since we took our initial interest in the MacCuddy project. So

You know, we've invested over 40 million in the business, in the assets. And, you know, with the support that we're seeing now, the

Dustin Olsen (36:37)
Okay.

Daniel O'Connor (36:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Harrison (36:45)
relationships we've cultivated with government, relationships we've cultivated with the supply chain, the customer base, I think we're really well positioned now. And, you know, we've also seen our share price can move on, you know, on little news. And it's because…

I think there's a lot of investors that watching us closely. I think there's a lot of investors that do see us as being terribly undervalued. we're only one piece of news away from a substantial rerate. And with so many things that we've got going on right now, it's incredibly exciting what comes first.

Dustin Olsen (37:25)
Thanks.

Daniel O'Connor (37:25)
Yeah, it's a technology

play, Tim. So, you know, I mean, of course it's more. You have mines, you have, you a lot, but the technology, I think the market, the market wants to see the technology go to work, you know, in the market. And I think that when that happens, and again, you know, if I could predict the future, well, you know.

Dustin Olsen (37:34)
Okay.

Tim Harrison (37:51)
I'm with you Daniel, mean if we all had a crystal ball, it would be fantastic. I think the opportunity that we see on recycling, and the feasibility study we announced in November of last year sort of provides a little bit of…

Dustin Olsen (38:06)
But Daniel, if you're talking, we can't hear you.

Daniel O'Connor (38:09)
Did you guys hear me? Okay. Yeah, there's an incoming phone. Sorry about that. ⁓ You know, one of the things we're doing is we're launching a ⁓ talent recruitment on our platform to help because, you know, there's shortages of certain expertise in the US. So from your standpoint, do you see that? you pretty much based on, you know, your organization, you pretty much are locked into the talent and the labor that you have that you need?

Tim Harrison (38:09)
No, sorry Daniel, we lost you.

Look, think Daniel, as we look to the opportunities in the US, we're going to need a lot of chemists. We're going to need a lot of chemical engineers and metallurgists. We're going to need all sorts of different skill sets, know, control system engineers. And it's because we're going to have so many plants. And I think, you know, I sort of

started talking about it before, but the feasibility study we completed and announced in November last year is purely and simply one plant in Belfast. If you consider multiple plants in the US, for example, where we would anticipate a substantially lower operating cost driven by locations that typically have lower power costs, lower reagent costs, it fundamentally, it's a multiplier.

It is a massive multiplier on the potential upside of the business because we're not looking at one asset. We're not constrained by where the mine is.

Daniel O'Connor (39:31)
Yes, I get that. Totally get that.

It's a very powerful story,

Tim Harrison (39:36)
And yeah,

Dustin Olsen (39:38)
Next.

Tim Harrison (39:38)
I think that that's the big opportunity. And I think the other thing is the advantage of recycling is that we're not depleting a resource. Our resource is increasing year on year because the inventory of magnets available for recycling coupled by the waste materials that are generated in the production of more magnets year on year on year is leading to substantial inventories of forecast.

opportunity for recycling over years to come. And it just means that recycling has a more prominent role in the rare earth supply chain next China much faster.

Daniel O'Connor (40:11)
Yeah,

that's going to be interesting. know, it's as Dustin mentioned, it's one to 2 % maybe now. We've seen conservative estimates of by 2030, which is, you know, four and a half years away, 5%. It could go faster to your point for the reasons we're talking about. So Dustin, I know we're getting close to the end of the hour. Any other thoughts that you have?

Dustin Olsen (40:13)
you

Thanks.

Nope. think if I were to summarize everything that's been discussed here today is massive potential. We've talked with other recyclers in this space too, and they're just as equally optimistic about the potential that's here and the immediate growth that I think everyone's going to see. So it's, encouraging, it's exciting. And where Ionic Rarers is sitting right now, I think you guys are just perfectly poised for.

tremendous growth, explosive growth, and we can't wait to watch it. Tim, thank you so much for joining the show and being willing to share so much information and insight into what you guys are doing.

Tim Harrison (41:09)
Yeah, thanks Dustin, Daniel, and if you're not on board, get on board.

Daniel O'Connor (41:10)
Thank you,

Dustin Olsen (41:15)
don't worry about us. Thanks, Tim. We hope to have you on the show in the future to get an update on where you guys are out and the progress you guys are making. So don't be surprised when we reach out again.

Tim Harrison (41:24)
No worries, we'll do. Thank you.