S2 E70: Transforming Metal Oxides into Metals: Insights from Nitesh Shah of Metalysis

Dustin Olsen (00:40)
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. I'm your host Dustin, joined by Daniel. And today our special guest is Nitesh Shah from Metalysis a UK based company out of Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Nitesh, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Daniel O'Connor (00:48)
Okay. Okay.

Nitesh Shah (00:58)
Thank you. I'm very well, thank you. How are you guys doing?

Dustin Olsen (01:02)
We're doing great and we're excited

to have you on the show. So, Nitesh, just a little bit about your background, right? So you're the CEO of Metalysis but you have a background as a former mergers and acquisitions and capital.

markets professional. You've had previous roles at Doyan Capital and Alaska Metals. ⁓ And with Metalysis you guys have received some funding from the European Space Agency. Is that correct?

Nitesh Shah (01:23)
you

We have, we have, yes. Our technology, it is exciting. We do a lot of work with the European Space Agency and the UK Space Agency. And so this came about through our other projects that we've done, primarily with regolith from the moon, Martian regolith as well. So I think the sector we're in is really exciting and effectively it's, let's call it tomorrow's world today, I think is how we quite often describe it.

Dustin Olsen (01:32)
Yeah, that's very exciting.

Daniel O'Connor (01:52)
you

Dustin Olsen (01:57)
But yeah, that is a great way to describe it. So let's talk really quick just about the business to kind of give people a high level overview. So you guys sit squarely in the midstream process of getting oxides into metals and alloys, correct? But Rotherham South Yorkshire isn't the first place you'd probably think of seeing a facility like this.

Nitesh Shah (02:08)
Correct.

Yes, yes.

Daniel O'Connor (02:14)
Okay.

Dustin Olsen (02:17)
So can you give us just an overview of the business and kind of how it got started?

Nitesh Shah (02:21)
Chut.

Yeah, sure. So, Metalysis has a patented technology called FFC technology that was developed by three professors at Cambridge University here in the UK. It's about 20 something years old. My group got involved in 2019 when we bought Metalysis and since then we've been, obviously we had to contend with the COVID era. So, obviously the first couple of years were a bit of a write-off to some extent, but we have then focused on

Daniel O'Connor (02:28)
Okay. Okay.

Nitesh Shah (02:47)
Effectively, powder generation, metal powder generation. And our technology is, on paper, relatively simple. We take a solid metal oxide, we put it in a bath of molten salt at a certain temperature, sort of 900, 1,000 degrees. We pass a current through it. That liberates the oxygen, and you're left with a metal powder. If we mix metal oxides, then we get an alloy coming out of it. So this is all in a very one-step sort of shop.

The only emissions we have are either carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, or if we use a different anode, then actually we don't even have those gases coming out. So it's an extremely clean process, extremely energy efficient. If you think about the oxides and metals elements, a lot of them melt at 2,000, 3,000 degrees. We don't care about the melting temperature of the oxides and the elements themselves, because all we melt is the electrolyte, which is a sodium chloride salt.

sodium chloride, calcium chloride. So it operates, as I said, at just below a thousand degrees, so it doesn't matter about the melting and boiling temperatures of the oxides at all. So it's a nice, clean step. We can process about 49, 50 elements of the periodic table, so a really wide application of industries that we can service. We are now at about just over 50 employees here in Rodhram, and as you said, why are we here?

Daniel O'Connor (04:03)
Okay.

Nitesh Shah (04:09)
because this area is actually traditionally a very mining and steel industry area and therefore you have a lot of relevant professionals here, have a lot of universities that churn out relevant students with metallurgists and geologists and so on and therefore actually it makes perfect sense for a company like ours to be based in this area. So we don't have any issues with hiring staff.

Daniel O'Connor (04:29)
Uh-uh.

Nitesh Shah (04:30)
you at all.

Daniel O'Connor (04:31)
I believe that this part of Great Britain was the industrial heartland in the 50s 60s. Is that correct?

Nitesh Shah (04:38)
It was correct, yes. Obviously they're trying to revive it and you hear about the balancing between the South and the North, so this area would be one that is a prime target for those government initiatives.

Daniel O'Connor (04:42)
Yeah.

That's right. you know, if we look at, let's take a step back and look at the big picture. So you fit into what we call the midstream, whether it's, you know, ⁓ rare earth elements or critical minerals, you know, there's the mining, which a lot of the media focuses on. But the real hard part is the separation and refining piece, right? And then there's the metalization piece that you're involved with.

That's difficult. mean, today, if you look at the broad outputs of the market, I would say a majority of this process today is in China. Would you agree with that?

Nitesh Shah (05:25)
⁓ totally. So the midstream is generally very dirty as well as expensive, very energy intensive. And therefore, a lot of this is done in China and China dominates 90 % of this midstream sector. And that's been one of the challenges. And so Metalysis fits in very nicely. It's an alternative to China. It's clean. It's very energy efficient. Because we operate with oxides, we're not constrained by having to buy from China.

We can get our oxide feedstocks from many parts of the world like Canada, Africa of course, Australia, Philippines. There are many areas we can go to so we're not constrained by one geographical location or one supplier. And I think that that's what gives us a supply resilience that everybody's looking for and security.

Daniel O'Connor (06:06)
So as this market, nascent market is starting to come back to the West at what we call ex-China, for you all, what are the lowest hanging fruit in terms of market demand drivers that are leading your company to respond to?

Nitesh Shah (06:23)
To be honest, one of the things that we have to be very careful about as a company and as me as a CEO is not trying to do too many things at the same time. So my group has a lot of experience, for example, with Tantalum. We used to own a Tantalum refinery in Europe. We had some mining interests in Rwanda as well. Now we divested those when we bought Metalysis because we then realized the potential of Metalysis and its technology.

Daniel O'Connor (06:32)
Understood.

Nitesh Shah (06:50)
And as I mentioned before, the fact that it's applicable to so many different industries that, to be honest, it was almost impossible for a small company like ours to focus on the mining, the beneficiation, and then the midstream refining. So we've decided that actually Metalysis, baking powders and alloys is where we need to focus. And that's really where the real need in the world is, if I'm honest. There are many mining companies, many beneficiation industries, but nothing like what we have.

Daniel O'Connor (07:14)
So.

So I mean today, if you look at the products on your website, there's aluminum, scandium, high entropy alloys, titanium, and then R &D works. So it sounds, at least from your website, those are sort of the focus areas of the business, And tantalum, of course, tantalum, yes, yes. And so from those, I guess to try to, for even a more of a lay audience,

Nitesh Shah (07:32)
as well as tantalum. ⁓

Daniel O'Connor (07:42)
⁓ Take tantalum, like what industries, who are the buyers of those, that refined metal, right? Who are the buyer? What are some examples of some industry that need this?

Nitesh Shah (07:52)
Okay, so that's quite easy because there are or three different sectors that tantalum can be used for. Medical devices, which we're not in currently. Med grade tantalum, which we're not in either. And then there's the really high-end capacitor grade tantalum, which is the sector that we operate in. So our high-grade capacitor powders would be used to make capacitors. Capacitors go in your phones, your cars, your computers. All things electronics have capacitors.

And that sector is growing massively. So again, because of our past experience, because of some of the work that Metalysis has done, before we bought it, that was a natural product for us to lead with as well. So one of our partners that we work with a lot is actually an American company that was recently bought out by a Far Eastern company, not China. But effectively, we're working with Americans. So we have many touch points with America already. And Tantalum is one of those.

Daniel O'Connor (08:31)
right

So just to follow through on this, so Tantalum would go into these capacitors. So that would be companies that are part of the supply chain for electronics or what have you that are.

Nitesh Shah (08:55)
Yeah, for example, our

customer that buys our powder would sell his capacitors to Apple, for example. I've got an Apple phone, I've got an Apple computer, so Apple would be a buyer of, our powders in a capacitor.

Daniel O'Connor (09:02)
Right. Yes, totally.

That's right. And that's our premise. We're trying to help people understand that supply chain aspect to all of this. So it's much bigger than just mining or metalization or magnets or whatever other outputs. It's part of a whole reindustrialization that's happening around the world.

Nitesh Shah (09:16)
Guess.

Absolutely and it's important to understand that all of these things are not you know a very niche sector that people are playing around with it's an everyday product It's in your TVs. It's as I say this your car. I mean the car has so many capacitors. It's crazy It's a computer. I have a Tesla so you imagine how many capacitors it has

Daniel O'Connor (09:39)
Well, let's…

Totally, totally. But let's talk about the midstream metalization because again, it's a new area for a lot of people. So if we look at the process of metalization, would there be subcategories within that ecosystem of focus area or are most companies… I mean, we see several that have emerged.

Are they sort of all doing the same thing? Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Just educate people about how to maybe investors that are tracking privately held companies that may one day go public. How should they think about this?

Nitesh Shah (10:19)
I think the focus, a lot of the focus has been on mining of late and America certainly has invested a lot in mining capabilities. But then you find, again I don't know if I'm allowed to mention companies, there's one famous company now in this field where America has invested heavily into it, but effectively they were still having to send their oxides to China for processing. So you can make the mining resilient, but what's the point when you still have to send it to China? So they can still control it if they want to.

And so what we are providing is that break from China, if you like. Or at least an alternative if you don't want to deal with that. Or you want to diversify your supply lines, then you would come to somebody like us. And I think the midstream hasn't really had the same level of attention and investment. And that's been the frustrating thing because our job has been now to really push our kind of technologies. And the beauty about Metalysis is

Unlike other midstream players who focus on one type of product, our platform is one that, as I said, 50 elements of the periodic table. You can do a lot with that. We have sort of continuous batch processing, which means we can today do one product, tomorrow we can do another product, and therefore we're not constrained by anything at all. know, once you build a plant, everybody else will have to only just make that one product. We can swap depending on the customer's requirements and…

Daniel O'Connor (11:24)
Yeah.

Nitesh Shah (11:41)
scale up as the customer needs as

Daniel O'Connor (11:43)
Well, let me raise a challenge and it's very perplexing. I agree that, you know, the true bottleneck in all of this re-building of supply chains is the midstream. Whether it's separation of oxides, know, mineral concentrate to oxides or oxides to metal. That's the hardest part. And yet it's the least known, it's the least invested, which is perplexing, which I don't think we can solve that problem here, but

But there is a challenge I want to raise, and that is in China, we watch these companies very carefully. They're state backed. They're very sophisticated. ⁓ They've spent 30 years building deeply integrated platforms. How are we going to compete against that?

Nitesh Shah (12:25)
In a sense, it's wrong to say how are we going to compete. I think you have to understand the supply risks. If you accept, and the evidence shows that at any point in time, could use critical minerals as a weapon effectively, and at any point in time they could switch off, well, imagine the impact on car industry, for example. As you've seen, many car industries stop working. It's that risk that you have to manage. And therefore, you don't…

try and compete with China on an economic basis, you compete on what would happen if the taps were turned off. And I think that's an important way of looking at this thing.

Daniel O'Connor (12:57)
And we write about that, Nitesh. I mean, we agree with you. We're on the same page. You're preaching to the proverbial choir. Now, I will tell you though, Nitesh, I will tell you, when you get into the OEM world, when you get into the sectors downstream, their supply chain ethos is still cost. They're saying procurement people.

Dustin Olsen (13:04)
Thanks.

Nitesh Shah (13:05)
You

Daniel O'Connor (13:18)
It hasn't fully resonated. You know how I know we just did a survey, Dustin organized a brilliant survey where we could identify the sense of imminence downstream as to supply chain security concerns. They're not there yet, Nitesh. still, people think, it's around the corner. You know, we've got lots of investment in mines in the US and, you know,

President Trump said, we'll have more magnets than we know what to do with soon. You understand that logic of, hey, we're going to have a security premium.

I'm not totally sold on that. Believe me, we write about it and we want it to be that way. But let's talk a little bit more about that, about that becoming grounded in economics of the future.

Nitesh Shah (14:01)
I think I can say two things to that. One is the US government very cleverly in a sense set a floor price price to some of these commodities recently. And that helps because that's that's saying to to mining companies you know what it's fine for you to go and mine because we'll give you a long term long term off take contract and then you know that you're going to be able to survive. I think that's one important thing. But the other thing I would say is actually

Daniel O'Connor (14:11)
Yeah.

Nitesh Shah (14:25)
Of late, we have noticed many companies coming to us and accepting that our price is going to be higher than China's and are still willing to work with us. For example, a couple of weeks ago, we had some representatives of a listed American company came to see us from an Aluminum Scandium perspective. And I heard from them this morning that the prices that I've indicated to them are more than acceptable to them. And they want to work with us to scale up our Aluminum Scandium production because they see that that's a need. There is a need.

real need for that and their customers are demanding now supply lines that don't include China to make sure that they can always get their products. So actually despite what you've said we've seen a change in people's attitudes and acceptance that it's not going to be Chinese prices that they have to accept. But that's not to say that that's forever. What they want you to do is to work towards a lower cost model going forward and are saying how can we help you? Can we supply you the feedstocks for example?

to reduce your costs because we have larger buying power. And therefore, the whole conversation is more collaborative now, which I think is the right way of going about it.

Daniel O'Connor (15:32)
I agree. agree. And wouldn't technology and process innovation also help you to deal in this new world? You might be able to produce more economically in a more productive manner, right?

Nitesh Shah (15:46)
Absolutely,

absolutely. So this morning's conversation was about scaling up, but also saying, well, at some point, let's have a conversation about how we can help you to automate. And that surely will reduce our costs. But then the other thing that we are doing in Metalysis is using AI simulation models. So as we develop new products, well, to what extent can we put all the conditions into a computer and let it tell us what the initial starting conditions should be?

make particular products. Of course we can't get away from developing the products themselves physically, but that will save a lot of time and effort and money and therefore the cost of getting to a qualified product, a time perspective and a cost perspective, come down massively. So all of that will help the whole process and therefore our cost will come down and everybody benefits.

Daniel O'Connor (16:33)
which is great. Can we talk a little bit about the economic impact of this change in the supply chain logic? for, is it central or northern England? I think they refer to it as northern England, but I think it's actually central England.

Nitesh Shah (16:47)
Both are correct. Roughly we are about 200 miles from London.

Daniel O'Connor (16:49)
haha

Okay, so my grandmother lived in Bournemouth. we were on the way south of it. ⁓ So what's the economic forecast? Let's say you're within 70 % of your forecast over the next five years. What does Metalysis look like in five years in terms of number of employees and revenue? What does that look like at a high level?

Nitesh Shah (16:53)
So.

yes, yes, yes, you're at the bottom.

goodness.

Yeah, I think in five years time, currently we have one what we call a Gen 4 machine which is capable of producing up to about 20 tonnes. Within five years we will have either new sites with tens of these machines or more likely our customers are saying, hey, if we wanted you to one of your or a bank of your units next to our mining facilities, would you do that? And we say yes. So the way I see it within five years time is that we will have

some units based in the UK of course, but also we will have maybe smaller units to suit our customers' wherever they are operating. And I think from that perspective, I think we will be a very global company as opposed to simply having a footprint in central northern England. And effectively, I see Metalysis as being a unicorn. So whilst we're just starting off from a revenue perspective now, I think…

Daniel O'Connor (17:51)
Interesting.

Nitesh Shah (18:07)
you could easily place a valuation of a billion dollars, billion pounds perhaps even, within five years. That is the spread of the different sectors that we can operate in. You've got defence, you've got aerospace, you've got space itself as I mentioned in terms of our ability to process regolith on the moon. So again, you can see all the NASA's plans of putting people on the moon. Well, we can help with that. Not only can we produce oxygen from regolith, moon soil,

but we could also make a metal compound which can be used for roads, for infrastructure. So there are so many different applications of our technology. Yeah, I could easily see a billion dollar valuation on Metalysis.

Daniel O'Connor (18:43)
And ⁓ that machine that you could be distributed and you could license to in a decentralized way, which is intriguing, what's the physical specifications? Like how big is this machine? just so we can get a better understanding.

Nitesh Shah (19:00)
So the machine itself is actually in our setup, it's in three parts if you like. We have a preheat station where we put our cathode and elements of the… So because we operate the cathode and anode, cathode being the oxide on a tray effectively, it goes into a preheat up to about 300 degrees, it then goes into a reaction chamber where actual fun things happen and then there's a cool down chamber.

So you're talking about probably 40 meters by 30 meters sort of space. So it's not big. But if you wanted to add a second reactor, you don't need the preheat and the cool down. So you can have two more reactors all serviced by those one unit. So the increase to three reactors, for example, would add maybe 20 % of that space again. So it's fairly self-contained, as I say, very energy efficient.

Daniel O'Connor (19:30)
Okay. Right.

Nitesh Shah (19:48)
We are making it even more energy efficient because currently we operate in the inert atmosphere, so we use argon in all of our processing. Because we're the oxygen out, the last thing we want is air to ingress and reoxidize again. So we use lots of argon. We are installing an argon recycling system at the moment in our production site, and that will recover 95 % of our argon. So the next project after that is going to be solar panels with solar batteries. That removes 20%, 25 % of our cost as well.

Daniel O'Connor (20:07)
Wow.

Nitesh Shah (20:14)
So again, those are the steps, you know, we talked about economics earlier. That's what we can do for the planet Earth, for the economics, and generally to compete with other nations around the world.

Dustin Olsen (20:25)
Yeah, so I, I want to kind of shift gears just a little bit and talk about the geopolitical dimension, which you have written about publicly quite a bit from Venezuela, Trump's transactionalism to the shifting tectonic plates of critical mineral politics. So as a CEO trying to build this business in the middle of all that, how

Daniel O'Connor (20:26)
at the few.

Dustin Olsen (20:47)
How do you separate genuine strategic tailwinds against all the noise?

Nitesh Shah (20:52)
It's not easy, first and foremost. But I think it's important for us to…

focus on our core strengths and accept that a lot of the geopolitical stuff going on kind of is defense related in a sense. We have many applications for everyday stuff like capacitors I talked about. We're not going to get away from computers and TVs and so on. if you focus on the things that matter, take advantage where you can. So again, aerospace, hypersonics, I see one of three products is a neobium half neom alloy.

which goes into your hypersonic travel and so on. So again, if we focus on those things, then you can't go wrong. But don't try and chase the market, I think is a dangerous thing to do. Focus on what you're good at, scale up as quickly as possible, understand the needs of your customers and listen to what they're saying. And the way we operate, before we launch a new product, we try and identify customers for it. And therefore, as throughout the development process,

We are working with the customers and designing a product that suits them. And I think therefore, it's not a flash in the pan. It's not going to go away tomorrow. They are working on the long term, and therefore our business is for the long term as well. And I think that's very important. However, it's also important to engage with government officials around the world to understand what they're trying to do and to see how we fit into this complex game that we find ourselves in.

Dustin Olsen (22:12)
Great answer. I also kind of want to talk, speaking of government entities and things like that, I do want to circle back just to the investment that you took from the space, the European Space Agency. What sort of signal do you think that sends about their understanding of supply chain vulnerability? Are they taking it seriously or do they just need what you have?

Daniel O'Connor (22:17)
you you

Nitesh Shah (22:27)
Yes.

Dustin Olsen (22:41)
sort of thing.

Nitesh Shah (22:41)
No, they're absolutely taking it seriously. And you would normally associate ESA, European Space Agency, with space, going to the moon and so on. But they understand that actually titanium alloys traditionally come from Russia, China. And so again, if you want to be self-sufficient, you need to invest in things that are needed on the Earth as well. And of course, they would go into rockets and nozzles and so on. But they are

They fully understand the supply lines as well and criticality of critical minerals and are saying, okay, we'll invest in, we'll help Metalysis with their projects. they've, because our technology is batch, continuous batch processing, they've given us a million euros to say, can you make it into a continuous processing? Because we are specializing in very niche sectors at the moment, whereas things like titanium, we're talking about thousands of tons of output a year, which we need to get to.

So they are recognizing that our technology works because we've been working with ESA now for many years and are saying, OK, look, we'll give you money. We'll form a consortium to get your product, your technology to continue this production. Because you know what? Europe needs it. So they fully understand, again, the complex world we live in and are preparing for the times when they can't get material. And actually, again, because of the Russia-Ukraine issue as well.

can't get titanium properly. So they're helping us to do that, which of course then that technology would be applicable to all the other products that we'll be making as well, besides the titanium. So it's very exciting for us.

Daniel O'Connor (24:11)
So a question, ⁓

definitely exciting. The question on Europe, there's a lot of talk that the European Union is over-regulated and sort of stagnant. It's stifling the growth. I don't know if that's American stereotype, but we've interviewed a lot of folks in Europe

We're globally focused and it seems to be there start we start at least from a rare earth element perspective We start to see some momentum there But we have we've also seen the United States move much faster and more aggressively under President Trump and we've given We don't agree with everything President Trump has done but we agree on on that that he deserves a lot of credit his administration deserves a lot of credit for really

internalizing the imminence of this situation. Do you see changes in Europe? First of all, is that stereotype correct about Europe A, that American stereotype that they've kind of become stagnant, slower? And I understand you're in the United Kingdom, which is a little bit separate and different. But generally in Europe, mean, what's your take on how it's unfolding there? And from an investor's investment standpoint, is it becoming more conducive to, let's say,

Nitesh Shah (25:00)
Yes.

Daniel O'Connor (25:24)
softening regulations and what have you.

Nitesh Shah (25:25)
The problem with Europe is it doesn't have one central federal government. Every decision has to be passed down to 27 odd entities, countries, and everybody's buy-in has to be bought in. And that's a very slow process, unfortunately. So yes, I think they're beginning to get it, but sadly it's very slow. They haven't devoted enough effort and money into this sector.

Again, we are seeing more and more money and I can see the projects that they are looking to finance and Metalysis is part of those, a lot around the recycling aspect of things. So they've got Horizon projects which are giving a lot of money to these things. no, you're right. It is very slow. It's not like America who makes decisions just like that and that's one of the beauties of America in a sense. When they decide something, they act very quickly and they throw money at it because they understand

the need for it as to how efficient that money is being spent, that's a different matter. But at least they're it, yeah, but they're making an effort very quickly. Europe is not as fast and I think I would urge Europeans to get the act together, I think. UK is a different story altogether, unfortunately, we have our own mess here. But I think Europe is getting it and they're waking up, but it's a very slow process.

Daniel O'Connor (26:34)
Yeah.

Now in the U.S., Nitesh, and you'll appreciate this, you you're a financial professional, you've been in &A, and we've been observing that that profession, if run wild and not enough engineering to tether it to very specific focuses, and I really like what you said, as a leader of this company, you're doing totally the right things, you're focusing.

you almost present like an engineer, although you're an &A person. ⁓ But do you understand what I'm saying? We have been writing that we believe there may be some misallocation of capital in the United States because possibly they're more finance-driven projects than engineering and market-driven projects. I think it's very important to focus.

Nitesh Shah (27:08)
Thank you.

Daniel O'Connor (27:25)
I think that this next wave of investment that we're observing in the United States is going to be more focused. Now, from an investor vantage on Metalysis, what does your market look like? Market size and competition, like how many companies are competing for that same growing. Right now, it's a small market because it's only about 10 % of metallization happens outside of China. So it's small still, relatively.

But it's growing. The point is it's growing rapidly. So the question is, what does that growing market look like? What's total available market?

Nitesh Shah (28:00)
it's in the billions. It's not a problem. it's unlike some of our, so HGAs are a new class of alloys. Again, I can explain what HGAs are if you want, but it's a whole new class. And therefore that market has to be grown from nothing basically. But what you're describing is the market already exists. China is supplying into that. So all we're talking about is bringing some of that into the West and doing it, let's say ourselves, right?

Daniel O'Connor (28:23)
Right.

Right.

Nitesh Shah (28:25)
from

friendly countries. that's a much easier task than actually growing a new market with a new product and so on. So I think that works. But in terms of the market size, it's literally hundreds of billions because of the fact that we can make so many different products and across so many industries.

Daniel O'Connor (28:31)
Understood. Understood.

So that spend, if you look at that spend at 100%, maybe it's a couple hundred billion, something like that. Like look and take the rare earth market. The rare earth element market is small. It's 6 billion thereabouts. Okay, it's very small because it's, but it's a choke point, right? If you don't have it, then your $30 billion magnet sector is done.

And then your $30 billion magnet sector leads to a multi-trillion dollar automobile defense. So this is some of the economic challenges when it comes to things like rare earth element oxide. But that's not where you're at. You're in that middle stream, which is bigger. It's a bigger band. So as an investor, we're looking at, who are the companies? Who are the leaders? Who has new technology?

And this is where your company gets interesting. I think we started tracking you all some time ago. I forget if we reached out to you or you reached out to us. briefly, obviously retail investors don't have access to Metalysis today. What's the trajectory? Are you venture capital backed or do you have other?

Nitesh Shah (29:50)
No, we have a Canadian gentleman that owns the Georgia of Matalces. ⁓ Again, I can mention names if that's appropriate here, but he's been financing all our activities to date. And so I'm at a point now where I'm trying to raise external financing to increase my production capability and really try and take advantage of the current market situation that we're in.

Daniel O'Connor (29:56)
Okay.

Amazing.

Nitesh Shah (30:13)
If any of your investors have real money and want to reach out to me, please do so. We're at that point.

Daniel O'Connor (30:19)
Yeah,

I mean, I think it sounds like that the Canadian investor has, it sounds like an ideal situation. He or she has essentially invested early on and helped de-risk this new, this business. And now you pretty much know what to do, how to do it. Now you just need the capital to expand and then grow.

Nitesh Shah (30:41)
Yes, and that's the really nice inflection point that we found ourselves in today actually. So again, we have customers ready and willing to buy our products. I need now scale to be able to supply into those sectors. It's a lovely place to

Daniel O'Connor (30:56)
Yes, understood.

Nitesh Shah (30:57)
But unfortunately, it's helping people understand it's a new, from their perspective, it's a new technology. Even though it's been around 20 odd years or so, it's a new technology. Well, how can you do so many different things? How can you be so good? How can you make products which are so many times better than incumbents? It's almost too good to be true. And that's one of the challenges that we are constantly having to break the barriers down.

Dustin Olsen (30:57)
Absolutely.

Daniel O'Connor (31:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nitesh Shah (31:21)
that we are real. Come and see us. Come and see the scale. We're a lab working in a little lab somewhere making grams of material. We can make tens of tons of this stuff. So we have the technology to make the products. We have the technology or the process knowledge to make the products as well. We have everything now. And that's why I need additional financing to really scale up.

Daniel O'Connor (31:21)
Yes.

Makes total sense.

Nitesh Shah (31:41)
We

had an excellent road show, what, six weeks, two months ago in Japan. Really well received. They got what we're trying to do and where we are. And so we've got a few conversations, live conversations going on with some large Japanese trading houses, as they call themselves, about Metalysis and how we can, let's say, work together a bit more. We'll see where that leads to.

Daniel O'Connor (32:01)
Yeah, yeah,

yeah. Dustin, one last question on that. I totally get, Nitesh, what you're saying. We see it, you know, since we've launched rare earth exchanges, it's blown our mind how inaccurate much of the media is about a lot of these things. There just is a lack of understanding generally. And especially when we get into the retail investor ⁓ community, you know, there's a lot of…

hyperbole out there. it's, I think it just takes a lot of good old fashioned education, but to the right groups, the customers, which I think you're doing the right thing. So.

Nitesh Shah (32:35)
Yes,

yes. And again, because we have a new way of making even the products that you can buy today, like some of the tantalum, example, or C103, it's about going out and working with the technical people within these large companies. Mostly all of our customers are going to be listed companies or government agencies. But dealing with the technical people and making them understand that actually how do we do it, why do we do it, why is it better?

or as good as. And then that feeds into the senior management. So when we start talking to senior management, there's somebody in the back office already saying, hey guys, actually, I know about Metalysis. I know about the FFC technology. It's worth having a look at. And that's how we're approaching it.

Daniel O'Connor (33:16)
That's right. And on your patents, how many patents do you have for this technology and when do they expire?

Nitesh Shah (33:22)
We have about 300 patents and each one expires at different times. But one of the things that Metalysis has done, the core FFC patent is expired already. But there's lots of patents around it which protects it as well. So that's going forward another 15 years or so. And we are continuously adding to that portfolio of patents.

Daniel O'Connor (33:37)
Okay, so you…

We call that a patent thicket. A patent thicket, you know, a thicket like a rosebush with ⁓ thorns.

Nitesh Shah (33:43)
Okay, thicket.

Okay. Yeah, okay. Yes, yes. That's effectively what we try and do

Dustin Olsen (33:49)
You

Nitesh Shah (33:53)
actually. Because that protects it. But also, I mean, there's two things from our security of our technology. You've got the patents themselves, but then there's a lot of know-how. And that's not out in the public domain in any way at all. So we have some professionals here who've been working with this technology for about 15, 20 years in some cases. So they're all very excited by it.

Daniel O'Connor (33:54)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Nitesh Shah (34:14)
They really believe in it, but it helps us to secure what we have.

Daniel O'Connor (34:18)
Yeah, understood, That's

Dustin Olsen (34:22)
Nitesh, you said something just a moment ago that I think would be worth calling out for people who are interested in this space is what you guys are doing isn't at lab scale. You're not in theory processing things at grams, right? You've developed it, you've scaled it, you've grown it to process it at tons, which is proof in the pudding, as they say, and is something that

people should look at because I think as Daniel was saying, there's a lot of hype that can go on. It can sound really great and amazing, but it's only at lab scale. It's all just in theory of what can be done, but you guys have taken theory into action and you're doing some really great things with it. So just wanted to call that out, just give it a little more attention because I think it is a really big deal with where you guys are positioned.

Nitesh Shah (35:00)
Yes.

Yes.

Yes, and thank you.

And once we've done the ESA project ⁓ in terms of designing a continuous production capability, that will change the economics, the dynamics. It will bring in titanium. It will bring in rare earths into our sector as well. It just opens up everything. And that's real strength then to compete with China in any of these different products.

Dustin Olsen (35:33)
Absolutely.

Absolutely. So, Natesh, for those who are interested in being a part of what Metalysis is doing, where can they find you?

Daniel O'Connor (35:37)
Okay.

Nitesh Shah (35:44)
⁓ We've got our website www.dometalysis.com There's an information contact us section as well reach out. My name is Nitish Shah. I'm the CEO address it to me personally if they want to But certainly we've got our marketing and communications guy David

Dustin Olsen (35:58)
Perfect, there you go. Well, Nitesh, thank you so much for being on the show, sharing about your company and your time in this industry. I think it was very insightful.

Nitesh Shah (36:06)
Thank you very much for having me and actually some really good questions there.

Daniel O'Connor (36:10)
Thank you.

Dustin Olsen (36:10)
Perfect, thank you.

Nitesh Shah (36:12)
Thank you gentlemen.