IperionX Limited ($IPX)

I'm really excited to share with you what we've got going on in IperionX over this year and over the coming quarters. It's a transformational period in the time of our company, and we're super excited as to what we're doing down there in Virginia and across the organization. So this presentation is up right now on the ASX platform. It would also be up on the website. So please read through the disclaimers when you see it. It's a new presentation that we've got out there. So have a look through that when you get a chance. So I want to start with some highlights of our business. As a backdrop, here at IperionX, there's no better time to be building the business that we're building. The backdrop of immense amount of defense spending here in the United States where I'm located today, together with a focus on reshoring of national security supply chains and new industries being scaled up here and across the globe that will rely on titanium metal with the backdrop of increasing amount of titanium metal being in extreme supply chain shock makes up -- puts us in an outstanding position to be building the IperionX story. We are seeing record demand across industry when you look at all the major peers like the [indiscernible] of the world, you see that they are seeing record demand for titanium metal products and these titanium metal products come with significant lead times as well. But there is extreme supply chain risks. There is a critical need for IperionX to build out a U.S. titanium-based supply chain, and there is unparalleled government support to do this. As everyone probably knows that's joining this call, we have been the recipient of multiple government grants and government contracts to scale the titanium metal supply chain. There is more funding out there, especially with this administration and its focus on reshoring manufacturing, but also with the immense spending in defense to bring about more production of these critical minerals and metals, but especially with titanium metal, we see significant amount of more opportunities that are going to be very positive for the building of our business over the coming years. So it's the best time right now to be building the backdrop is now to build the titanium metal supply chain. And for us, we have got proven technology. This is the first technology since the Kroll process, which invented or commercialized the titanium metal supply chain in the 1940s in the United States. This is the first technology of its kind to come in and be able to supplant that. We have taken it out of the pilot scale, and we have brought it to industrial scale in Virginia, and we have just started scaling it and ramping up production now. We are -- we believe we make titanium metal superior performance titanium mill with a much more efficient supply chain. So -- and we've been doing it, and we are scaling it -- and over the coming quarters and over the coming years, we will continue to scale it, and we're extremely excited about the projects and the partners that we are working with to do this. We are seeing more and more interest in our titanium metal products across many verticals, across customers. This is natural. We are a fully domestic titanium metal supply chain. And whether it be incumbent industry participants through to new users of American-made titanium metals, we are seeing more and more interest in what we're doing. And as we scale up and as we move and increase our ability to manufacture not just our titanium metal powder, but take our powder and manufacture titanium metal parts, we expect and we want to be ready for that increased amount of growth that's going to come our way and that customer interest that's going to come our way. Now over the short term, the next year, 2 years, we are fully focused on scrap the titanium metal supply chain. But as many of you know on this call, the ultimate goal is an end-to-end uninterruptible titanium metal supply chain, taking titanium minerals out of the ground here in the United States and refining them and manufacturing final titanium metal products. And this is where our Titan project is critical to this. This is a fully permitted titanium dominant heavy mineral sand project that also has a significant amount of co-products of the heavy rare earths and the zirconium, which is also critical to national security needs today, and we'll go through that a bit. It's critical for our backward integration, and we are taking it through a definitive feasibility study with the Department of War funding today, and we expect that to be complete this quarter and with those results to be released to the market this quarter as well. Now with all that being said, even with just that, we can reshore a highly efficient low-cost titanium metal supply chain. But we introduced at the start of this year that we have been working on taking our titanium metal processes from batch processes through to continuous process. This is for the HAMR process, being able to refine titanium metals, titanium minerals or titanium metal scrap into our titanium metal powders. Our GenX platform is the future for our large-scale expansion. Today, the U.S. imports 44,000 metric tons of titanium metal sponge. It's fully import reliant. We believe that GenX is that key to unlocking the ability at low cost, both low capital intensity and low operating cost to reshore that entire titanium metal supply chain in the future. So we're very excited about that, and there's going to be many milestones this year that we can talk to about that. We are ramping this business now, but it hasn't come without many years, many, many years of us working through and proving out and scaling up the business. We started with securing the technologies around 2020, 2021. We started this business on the back of the last titanium metal sponge facility, taking the mineral and making it into the first iteration of titanium metal, primary titanium metal when it shut in the United States. We founded it, we secured the technology. We started industrializing our pilot facilities in Salt Lake City, Utah to showcase our ability that -- to showcase the fact that we could use this technology to reshore an efficient titanium metal supply chain. And during this time, we were able to secure the support of our customers and of the government. We also secured the R&D 100 award, which I don't think there's any other ASX-listed company which has an R&D 100 award for the HAMR process. This is a peer review. This is an award that not many technologies get out there. We then secured our government funding that allowed us to scale in Virginia. We started installation and went through commissioning of our Virginia facility through 2024 and into 2025. And towards the end of last year, we started -- we commissioned and started ramping up our operations. 2026 is our first year where we're ramping and starting to supply larger scale, commercial scale volumes of titanium metal products into the market. We have significant support from the Department of War to do this with our IDIQ Super Phase III, which is a $99 million ceiling. We've received our first task order on this. We expect further task orders to be coming, but we have a significant amount of ramp-up that we are aiming to achieve over the next few quarters. We're installing more equipment to be able to not just take powder, but not just produce powder, but to take that powder and produce final titanium metal components. 2026 is the pivotal year where we've gone commercial scale. And as we move into 2027 and beyond, we expect to continue that scale up with our titanium metal technologies and start really showcasing how big we can go as a titanium metal producer. It's the right time. The backdrop with all the defense spending, with all the reshoring thematic here in the United States, with the immense focus on some of these new technologies coming through that it's from consumer electronics through to robotics. We see a huge amount of additional demand for titanium metal. We see a huge amount of support, both from customers and government for what we're doing. And we're right on the edge of starting to really deliver significant commercial scale amount of titanium metal products into the market. So we are at the right time, and we are really excited about the next few quarters and what's coming our way. So I talked about it already and probably many of you on this call know, but the amount of defense spending that is going on right now, I mean, you just need to watch the news unless you're living under a rock, you'll see what's going on right now in the world. This has led to a record amount of defense spending. And this is across all branches of the military, Army, Navy, Air Force. There's a significant amount of titanium metal used across all the platforms that the military is looking at increasing production, whether it's the new M1 Abrams through to the missile systems that are being used in the interceptor missiles that are being shot every day now across the world. The amount of titanium metal that is going to be needed for a lot of these platforms is significant. And we are right there in discussions for a range of different products, some of which we've already announced in the first last quarter and some of the contracts that we talked about with Carver Pump for the shipping industry through to projects that we are working on that we hope to be able to announce the market as we work through prototyping and engagement across the industry. But this is an opportunity which has not been seen in the defense industry for many, many years. It's unfortunate with what's going on in the world, but it does benefit the building of our business because titanium is so critical to national security and these defense programs. On the back of this and even before the geopolitical tensions, there was a move towards reshoring of critical national security supply chains. We saw it in the past administration. We're seeing it improve or accelerate with the current Trump administration as well. There's a big focus on reshoring the manufacturing supply chain in the United States, and we're a beneficiary of that. And we've already seen that with the grants we have won to supply -- to scale up our business in Virginia. So this, again, is a significant amount of government support even without the defense budget, there was a focus on this reshoring thematic. But when you put them together, there's an immense focus on reshoring these national security supply chains to the United States. And on the backdrop of that focus for reshoring and national security, you have industries that are in the works that are going to be using immense amounts of more titanium metal. We've talked previously about consumer electronics where titanium metal performs extremely well and is used across many different products today, and we see that increasing. But one area where I think people and the market has yet to appreciate is the immense need for titanium metal and other critical metals as well, like the heavy rare earths, which we have in our Titan project, which are going to be needed for robotics. Robotics, I believe robotics is going to be a huge industry. And there's many others out there as well they believe the same. The robotic market could be a huge market opportunity for titanium metal components from bearings through spaces through to actuator housings. This is a huge industry, huge volumes that are going to need immense amounts of titanium metal, and they're going to need efficient sources of titanium metal production. And so this is a massive demand driver that we see over the longer term, and we want to be positioned well to be capturing that growth. And that growth is coming over the next 5, 10 years, and it could come sooner. But with all that, with the demand growth, with the need for a national -- secure national supply chain, we still have a growing amount of Chinese titanium metal growth. The supply chain is controlled right now, 80% by China and Russia, China being the major growth in the titanium metal market today. The United States imports the majority of its titanium metal sponge, and we'll go through that in the following slide from Japan. But with the Chinese growth in the supply chain, it poses significant supply chain risks into the future, whether it be a conflict in the South China Sea that cuts off Japanese titanium metal sponge supplies into the United States or whether it be Chinese increased supply pushing Japanese titanium metal out of the market in the near future economically or whether it be Chinese titanium metal products that are being produced through -- that are coming through those forced labor camps, 20% of Chinese titanium metal sponge production is in the Xinjiang region, which is the forced labor regions that are coming into products that are produced either in China or through Chinese titanium metal products that are being machined in America. There is a need to move away and develop an independent source, a resort source of titanium metal supply in the United States. And that's why we built this business. This map is the reason that we started the IperionX company, right, why we started this company, why I founded it with our Founders because we need to reshore an efficient supply chain of titanium metal, and it's only gotten worse since we started it in 2020. The supply chain is inefficient as well. So the technologies that we're developing addresses this. We didn't want to when we started IperionX, reshore the existing inefficient supply chain because it would always need subsidies. It would always need price floors or price support. We wanted to look at a way to reshore a more efficient, lower cost supply chain that would be able to not just survive but compete against the Chinese titanium metal supply chains to be resilient, to be long term, to be here for decades, and that's what we wanted to do. Today, the supply chain is highly inefficient. We're showcasing here how the supply chain works for titanium metal fastener for 0.5-inch hex head bolt. It's a very similar product to one of the products we make for the military today under the task orders and the programs that we've already announced. The supply chain is very complex. If we go through it, the 100% import reliant component, making titanium metal sponge, that primarily is sourced from Japan today. That's where China controls most of the supply chain globally today. You take that titanium metal sponge, it's imported into the United States. It's melted through multiple vacuum arc remelts into a titanium metal ingot, typically 36-inch round ingot. That ingot has to then be forged into a titanium metal billet to get it ready for rolling. Then from that 16-inch billet, it's rolled, it's heated, rolled and ground multiple times to get from 16 inches down to, say, a 0.5-inch bar. Well, it's actually like a 0.6-inch bar that's then cold drawn into a 5-inch bar and ground. That's a very inefficient, very energy-intensive process, results in a lot of scrap. You typically have between 60% to 80% -- you typically have between 20% to 40% scrap, so 60% to 80% yield from the ingot down to the final titanium metal bar. But once you have that 0.5-inch bar, you then have to go through CNC machining to make it into what's called a titanium metal -- titanium bolt blank. And then that blank goes through thread rolling to make a simple hex head nut. Very inefficient, leads to very high cost of -- this is why titanium metal products are very, very high cost. So this is how we change the game. Our titanium metal technologies, our HAMR technology allows us to not only reshore this titanium metal supply chain, but forgo the need to go through vacuum arc remelting. So our titanium metal powders made through our HAMR process is essentially an ingot in the form of a powder. It's that high-quality titanium metal product, but in the form of a powder. You don't need to go through the multiple vacuum arc remelt processes to get to that final high-quality refined titanium metal that you can then turn into titanium metal products. But then from powders, how do we get to final titanium metal product. We can avoid all that hot working process steps. Now today, we are looking at taking our powders and making it into a plate or a 0.5-inch bar and supporting the existing industry or supporting some of our existing customers, who still want to take a traditional bar or a traditional plate. We can absolutely do that, and it will be far more efficient than the existing supply chain. And it can fit into the existing supply chain very easily. But in the case of something like a titanium metal bolt, we can go a lot further. We can go directly into a [ neonate ] shape. We can use our HSPT sintering technology to either go into that bar or go into a plate or to go directly into a titanium metal back and avoid the machining, the costly machining step as well. Not only is the CNC machining very costly, the scrap generation -- scrap generated there is extremely costly as well. You typically have less than 10% yield to a final titanium metal product like a titanium metal fastener through this supply chain, whereas through the supply chain that we're developing with IperionX, our yields are over 90%. You get into that titanium metal blank and then you just thread roll it into a final hed head nut. Now a lot of you may be asking why couldn't this be done before? Well, you needed 2 things. You needed high-quality titanium metal powders, which we can produce through the HAMR process that are at low cost. That was not possible before. But then even if you had high-quality titanium metal powders, you needed a way to sent these powders into high-quality titanium metal products that had the forge-like or row-like characteristics, the mechanical and fatigue properties that you saw from the traditional supply chain that you see here on the left-hand side. But that's what you get from HSPT. So combining it together, you have what the missing links were to be able to make a highly efficient titanium metal supply chain that produces a high performance but low-cost titanium metal product. And that's how our technologies address the ability to bring back and reshore a highly efficient titanium metal supply chain in the United States. Now we've already secured partners, including the Department of War, but also commercial partners across industry, across multiple industries. We're making components for Ford that we expect to go in vehicles later this year. We're making components that are low rate production into military vehicles with Rheinmetall and Carver Pump. We're working on multiple different programs. We're highly, highly focused, obviously, on our defense intersect, and we have active live projects there where we're very hyper focused on getting those products into the market and tested as soon as possible, but there's a range of customers that as we scale our production, we're going to continue to address more and more of those customers. And those will end up being -- end up with more and more contracts or purchase orders for our titanium metal products. We've only just started really ramping our titanium metal operations in the last few quarters. In the December quarter, we started ramping our operations. But this quarter -- this last quarter, the March quarter has seen us significantly ramp our titanium metal powder capacity. We still have some ways to go. We're at about 50 metric tons versus where we want to be at the end of the year at 200 metric tons per annum. But as you can see, the trajectory is in the right direction, and we expect us to continue to see this ramp happen over this quarter and next quarter as we ramp up that operations there in Virginia. I've got to stress again, this is the first technology since the Kroll process to showcase its ability to go from pilot scale into commercial scale operations. This changes the game for the manufacturing of titanium metal products. And so it's important. It's extremely important for us to get to 200 tons and to then expand to our 1,400 metric tons per annum and beyond. But just this milestone of scaling to commercial scale operations is a historic event. And I think it's sometimes lost a bit as to the significance of us scaling the first refining technology since the Kroll process was commercialized in the 1940s to manufacture titanium metal products at low cost. So this is happening. This is not a science experiment. This -- we are scaling high-capacity titanium metal production today in Virginia using a new technology. We've only got one HAMR furnace right now. We're going to be installing more for the IBAS expansion, but we've got one HAMR furnace right now, and it's already achieving this. Your typical Kroll process can have anywhere from 60 to 90 different furnaces. So already, we're showing commercial scale ability for the HAMR process. That in and of itself is a huge milestone and a huge achievement, and I'm extremely proud of the team. We went 24/7 operations that last quarter in the March quarter. It's -- things are looking really great out there. Now once we have powder, again, the secret is you don't just want powder, you want to take that powder, you want to make it high-quality titanium metal components at lower cost. We split our components into -- we split our products now into 3 major categories: engineered products, where our engineers work very closely with the engineers of our customers, our customer teams in designing the final product that they want. Sometimes we deliver a final product like hex head bolt. Sometimes we deliver a semifinished component that is machined by our customers or their supply chain. But these are highly engineered products. These are high sales prices, typically, high average sales prices. This is what we went after first. This is -- in many cases, this is what our customers want as well. There's multiple different projects ongoing today. We're very selective and very focused on a few of our key ones right now. But as we're able to install more and more manufacturing capabilities, we'll be able to address more and more of our customers, and we expect that to accelerate over the coming quarters. But in addition to that, we can also make titanium metal powders. And we have seen, especially this year, a significant increase in the demand for spherical titanium metal powders for non-aerospace titanium metal components through additive manufacturing, but we've also seen and are seeing an increase in the want for angular powders, domestically sourced titanium angular powders for certain Western world applications as well. So that's growing. But we're also very excited about and as we are dedicating more resources to is we can be a collaborator with the incumbent industry by supplying them an intermediate product that fits into their rolling capacity. So we can make a preform plate. We can make a preform bar, and we can supply this into the existing industry. And with the more powder production we have and the more sintering production that we get up and running, we can make more and more of those products and deliver those and work with the existing incumbent industries. We already have a few relationships that we're developing. And these can -- whilst these are typically lower value than, say, an engineered product or a spherical powder, these are very, very high-volume applications. And we are -- and especially with GenX that we'll talk about a little bit later on, we see the pathway to very low cost and the lower cost that we go, the more production, the more and more demand we're going to have for our products. And there's no reason why that 44,000 metric tons of titanium metal sponge that is imported today is not supplanted by production that we can do through our processes here all here in the United States. Just like I've talked about on the previous slide, the more we install downstream manufacturing capacity, especially around our ability to use our HSPT sintering, the more we can service customers. Right now, we're commissioning a monster [indiscernible] machine. It's a 6-axis SACMI press can do very complex products, 300 ton. This is going to be dedicated to a range of consumer goods, fasteners, even robotic-type applications, very impressive piece of machinery. I don't think there's another one in the United States of its kind. It's in commissioning right now, and we hope to have that commissioning finished up fairly soon. We also have cold isostatic pressing. It's not as complex, but makes high aspect ratio components. It's actually -- this one is actually dedicated to defense contract we have going on right now, and we'll have multiples of those. So very simple, can make essentially bars or bars with holes in them. They can then be machined and processed into larger fastener-type components that go on military vehicles or military systems. But all of those pressing operations need to go through the HSPT process. And this is a traditional cold roll sintering. You can use a traditional cold roll furnace for the HSPT sintering process. We've got one furnace right now that's operating, which will pretty max out because we've just got so many products going on. We've got 2 furnaces that are being commissioned this quarter that are each 30% greater capacity than what we have on there right now. So we'll have a significant amount more sintering capacity for our HSPT sintering process by the end of this quarter and then that would ramp up. And then we have a very large furnace coming, which is multiples larger in the third quarter that will be commissioned and available in the fourth quarter for us, and that will take us to be able to sinter -- have our sintering capacity well beyond what our powder production capacity is going to be from our current 2026 plant. And then we will continue to add furnaces in the future as well with our IBAS program, but that's the state of what we're at with taking our powders and making titanium metal components today. This can make everything, fasteners plates, custom components that we're working with different customers with and all being installed and scaled up now. And we've got -- as I said before, we have a range of customer engagements, many of which are accelerating, some which have surprised me, especially around aerospace, I guess, the -- I guess, the tight market today and the need for more defense aerospace components across a range of products has had aerospace demand come to us, which is a great place to be in. You will still have these qualification periods in commercial aerospace and defense aerospace, but being pulled through these programs rather than be having to push through these programs is a better place to be in. We've been engaged in the automotive supply chain for a long time now, and we expect a range of products to be on vehicles or going into the supply chain to be on vehicles for next year, so being delivered into the production lines this year. We have a range of engagements across consumer electronics, especially in the short term, there's some opportunities around powder. We've got a range of consumer goods. Defense is a big one for us, very, very big focus for us because we see that being significant volumes into 2027 and beyond on a range of military platforms. And this parlays and is dual use those -- many of those fasteners that are going to be going into those vehicles will also be dual purpose and be able to be sold into the industrial markets as well. So we like those opportunities, and we see those as very large. And these opportunities don't stop. We continue and we expect to see more and more opportunities across these verticals come to us as we continue to scale up our operations. But where we're also very excited and where we're going to be devoting more and more attention to because we can make and we believe we can supply something that is efficient to the existing market is in the mill products, these preforms, preform plate, preform bar that allows the incumbent industry to avoid the need of importing sponge and melting sponge, making ingot and going through the initial forging and hot working steps and instead working with us to be supplied some sort of preform plate, preform bar, which has the right microstructure, but also makes their processes even more efficient, their own processes and their downstream processes even more efficient. So we've got a range of customer engagements. We expect it to continue to accelerate as we can deliver more and more into the industry and as we commission more and more HSPT capacity, especially downstream in this quarter, next quarter, and we're very excited about a lot of those collaborations that are happening right now. I guess this is a case study. We've had it in the quarterly. We have it here. I would encourage you all to go through it, but it's how -- our customer engagement started in 2024 and has developed into us actually supplying into retrofitting 2 vehicles this year. And those 2 vehicles are expected to move into contracting for retrofits of further vehicles in 2027. And there's also large military programs where it could be a significant amount of new vehicles of a similar type that need similar products in the 2028 and beyond time frame. And this could be an enormous opportunity. And that's just one of many in the defense industry, and we continue to see more and more defense industry interest come towards us. That's a great -- it's actually a really exciting opportunity for us, and it's just going to continue to accelerate. Now we've got a proven track record of winning government grants. We've -- like I've said before, we are the first company in, I think, over 20 years to receive a significant amount of money for reshoring the titanium metal supply chain. We received over $60 million already in grants for scaling up. We've got an IDIQ Phase III contract, where we received our first task order, we're working on multiple more task orders. This is across Army, Navy right now, and we expect it to reach into Air Force as well, but we have a significant amount of interaction here. And the government today is deploying even further funds. And if you want to bet on anybody receiving any further funds for additional titanium metal scale-up or titanium metal products, I think IperionX is in prime position to receive those as well. So we're very excited about what could come to us from additional government contracts in the near future and in the long term, but especially in the near future. We are at the right space at the right time, and we are interacting with the right groups, both within the military and with the administration. And we're very excited about the opportunities that are ahead of us and executing on those opportunities. So we have expansion happening already, where we are targeting 200 metric tons per annum of our powder production capacity by the end of the year, but we are aiming to grow this 7x over 2027. This will make us the largest titanium metal powder producer globally. But that's only still a stepping stone as to where we want to be. We've talked about a 2030 target of beyond 10,000 metric tons per annum. We believe we can hit beyond 10,000 metric tons per annum just from titanium metal scrap. But the U.S. imported just last year, the estimates are the U.S. imported 44,000 metric tons of titanium metal sponge, and that's going to need to increase as the demand increases for titanium metal production and titanium metal products. So there's no reason why we can't build something that negates the need for the United States industry to need to import that much titanium metal production. So this is where our continuous operations come in. We could scale on our batch furnace on our batch process. It is -- it gives you -- I'll just go back to that slide, it gives you that reduction in cost. And as you continue to scale, you'll bring costs down even further. But as many of you know that at scale technologies going from a batch to a continuous process, that's where you get huge operational and capital efficiencies. And that's where we see the ability to drive the cost of titanium metal production to a point where you can compete with stainless steel. My vision is eventually we can build stainless steel kitchens and stainless steel fridges and stainless steel TVs and stainless steel products like that. The stainless steel sheet market is enormous. My vision would be to get to that point where we can make products like that out of titanium metal and have a compete with those stainless steel products. This continuous furnace is the step towards that vision. And this is a result of our brilliant R&D team. We were able to put together over the last few years, bring back together everyone that worked on these technologies, some of which were in the incumbent industry, some of which were with the government at Army Research Labs, for instance. And we've worked on this over the last 3 years, starting with a very small test unit that we tested out back when we were back in Salt Lake City. And as we moved into Virginia, we progressively moved up and up. We moved through about 3 different iterations of significantly large and large capacity. And now we're at a point where commercial scale will be enormous. These types of systems that we're looking -- these types of furnaces that we're looking at can get huge, and they're already used in industries like the lithium industry, the cement industry. So these are off-the-shelf furnaces that are tweaked for our process. But we're at a point where the production from our -- what I would call our first commercial scale semi-industrial scale furnace that we're installing at our new Virginia R&D laboratory will really showcase the ability to scale this technology. And we're doing this quarter, next quarter. We're doing this year. We're doing it safely. We're doing it in a methodical -- we've got a methodical approach to doing this. But as we hit this milestone, this will unlock huge amounts of efficiencies, further efficiencies in the process. We can absolutely scale and there is some benefits to the batch process with some customers. There might be some benefits when you've got different alloys and you're switching between alloys. But with the continuous operations, there's a huge amount of operational benefits that we can unlock. And especially when we talk about significant products like bars and plate and sheet, the continuous furnace is -- we're already going to be cheaper than the incumbent industry. This is where we can start making titanium products that can compete with things like stainless steel. So it's really exciting what we're doing here. And this is going to see us -- this year is going to see a significant progress on what we're doing here with GenX. And this all ties back into -- it lines up with what we're planning to do with the Titan project where we want to back integrate. Titan is where we see our future secure supply feedstock. We permitted this project. It is the largest still compliant resource of its kind in the United States, near surface free dig. It's essentially sand. 2% to 3% of the sand is these critical minerals, the titanium, the zirconium, the heavy rare earths. And it is funded by the Department of War already, the $5 million from the IBAS program has gone into funding the definitive feasibility study, and we're in the final throes of finalizing that feasibility study with the expectation that we release that this quarter to the market. So this Titan has the potential to be a cornerstone not just for the titanium supply that we need for our process, but also for the heavy rare earths that are needed in the United States today, especially with a lot of the recent funding into the rare earth supply chain that many of you have seen all the way through to magnets. The missing link here is U.S. sourced heavy rare earths and Titan has a significant amount of these. And there is more that we could continue to develop in the area. So we see it as dual use, not only developing Titan not only solves for the backward integration of our needs for titanium metal manufacturing, but solves for the other critical industries in the United States, and we're really excited to get the definitive feasibility study out there this quarter. So we're doing all this. We've got a lot of milestones ahead of us, but we are very disciplined with our capital deployment. We've got a lot of government funding available to us. We still got $41 million in obligated government funding that's yet to be received. This gives us huge runway over 2026 to hit our milestones to get GenX out there and to complete the definitive feasibility study on Titan. So our focus right now is derisking our business, scaling our business and getting into that rapid growth that we're going to see over the next few years. So we're really excited. We've got some great milestones ahead of us. We're very focused on executing. The team has done -- the team across the organization, whether it's in Tennessee with the Titan project in Utah, where we still have a big focus on HSPT sintering, whether it's in Virginia, whether it's the R&D side of Virginia with GenX or the operations side of Virginia with 1080 and 1092 buildings producing titanium metal products. Our team is working extremely hard. I'm very proud of them. We're hitting milestones. We're going to hit a lot of milestones this year with our scale up. And we're doing this at the right time. We're in the right space at the right time. We're proving out something that's never been done before. We are the one of one in the titanium metal industry, and all we need to do is execute. And as we execute, we should be able to create an immense amount of value for our shareholders, but also for the Western Wealth here in bringing forth low-cost, highly efficient, high-performance titanium metal products.

So with that, again, this presentation is going to be on the website. I see some questions coming through here. Can these updates happen each quarter? Look, as we -- I've got a question here if we can have more updates like this. We will have more presentations, especially around major milestones that we expect to happen this quarter, next quarter? We will continue to update the market, and I intend to have more and more out there as we get out there. We see -- I've got one question here is 10,000 tons per annum still the long-term goal in 2030. I talked about it in the slide there, 10,000 tons -- more than 10,000 tons per annum is the target. Today, the U.S. imports over 44,000 metric tons of titanium metal sponge, and we believe that's going to increase. Most of that from Japan. There's no reason why we couldn't supplant that with our IperionX made titanium metal products to go into that supply chain. And so it's a big -- and that's why we're focused on not just making our engineered products and supplying into things like the fastener contracts that we have with the U.S. military, but also going into things like mill products or preforms with the existing mill industry. So we're very, very focused on that. Some security around intellectual property in China. So look, all our -- and I should be clear, the HAMR HSPT process, this is our IP, both patents and trade secrets. We have, being in the United States and being funded by the U.S. Department of War, we have an immense amount of support from the U.S. government. U.S. government is our big brother. So if anybody takes -- if anyone in China was to use our process, make our titanium metal products and then export it outside of China, then we would pretty much be control. So we feel very secure in our technologies. We're moving fast with our technologies and continuing to iterate and continuing to improve on them. So we are in the driver's seat with our technologies and in scaling up our technologies and bringing forth low-cost titanium metal products. And we've got the benefit of this is the United States where there is a focus on reshoring and producing these critical materials for these critical industries here in the U.S. Some other ones here. Yes, there's a lot. Sorry, we'll try -- won't be able to get to all of them. There's quite a bit. We're going from production -- from development into production. So over the next 6 to 12 months to 18 months, you're going to see more production milestones. You're going to see more of our reporting on powder production and the type of equipment that we're installing and the type of products that we're making. You'll see probably more on social media as well because it's some exciting stuff that we can make videos of or may take pictures of the scale-up of that equipment and those products. And naturally, with that, you'll see more and more contracts, whether it be government contracts or whether it be commercial contracts for titanium metal products and making those titanium metal products and putting them out to market. So we've positioned IperionX well with the government. We expect the government to continue to support IperionX. One question is on the government support, essentially the government support for IperionX and how we see that going in the future? We've positioned it extremely well for IperionX to be the recipient of [indiscernible]. Nothing is guaranteed, but we have received significant support for the titanium metal industry to reshore the titanium metal industry in the United States. If you were to bet on who will be the recipient of future titanium metal support from the government, you would think that we'll be in a box seat having scaled up production, having the ability to supply into contracts, we are in the driver's seat in this -- in scaling up our capacities. All right. Now we'll try to get back to some people with answers and Q&A because there's a lot here. I really appreciate everyone joining in to see and talk about our -- to listen to this update. We've got a lot coming ahead of us. I'm very excited about the opportunities that are available to us. So with that, I'd like to thank everyone and thank my team for the excellent work over this last quarter, and we are really looking forward to keeping the market abreast with all the exciting opportunities we have ahead of us this quarter and this year and in the coming years as well. It's the right place. We're in the right place. We're at the right time with the right technology and we're doing something really special. We are the one of one in the titanium metal industry to resore an efficient and low-cost titanium metal supply chain in the other space. So with that, thank you, everyone. I very much appreciate everyone joining, and have a great day.