Rainbow Rare Earths Limited (RBW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Rainbow Rare Earths Limited investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to George Bennett, CEO. Good morning, sir.

Good morning, and thanks for hosting this investor presentation. I will move forward to the usual disclaimer, and we'll move on. Thank you. I just want to reiterate that we're very excited about the progress we've made this year with Rainbow. And as I said, we are still what we believe is a low cost and responsible source of rare earths. We've been pioneering the recovery of rare earth elements on phosphogypsum. I might add that there's lots of academic research on the extraction of rare earths on phosphogypsum. So it's been done before in lots of academic papers, but none of those academic papers have ever presented an economic extraction process. And that's what Rainbow is doing. We've been able to take our experience as a technical team and to produce a flow sheet that extracts rare earths from phosphogypsum in a very, very economic way. As I said, it had been done before over the last 30, 40 years, there are lots of papers, but none of these were economic. So even though people might say, are you the first ones to do this, there's risk. No, it's been done, but they haven't been able to do it economically. So basically, we are a very low-cost extract of rare earths because we don't have all the costs associated with hard rock mining, which I'll go into later, for those new to the company. And by having developed this IP in an economic way to extract rare earths, we were -- we've been able to do this with the Phalaborwa Project in South Africa, which is a Tier 1 rare earth project, and we are busy doing this with our -- in partnership with Mosaic in Brazil and Uberaba, which is a far longer life and it's also a very near-term project. We all know that the West is in chaos at the moment with the trade war between China and the U.S., and the U.S. in fact putting tariffs on not only China, but almost every country out there in the West. So right now, the geopolitics are a little bit crazy. And China is using rare earths as a weapon in these negotiations with the West and essentially because not only are they -- have they been banning the export of permanent magnets and certain rare earth materials to the U.S., it's also to European countries as well. So we see that the China has also cracked down on foreign companies trying to stockpile rare earths. And this has led to the West trying to accelerate building independent supply chains for these critical minerals outside of China. And Rainbow is very much at the forefront of this critical mineral supply chain being rolled out and developed outside of China, and we're very excited to be part of this independent supply chain that's being created. We know that rare earths are 17 elements, but not all of these elements are -- have equal value. The 4 main rare earths that are of exceptional value at the moment are neodymium and praseodymium, which are required in permanent magnets as well as dysprosium and terbium. Dysprosium and terbium are also very, very important in permanent magnets. But also, they are used in permanent magnets that are applicable for defense and for the military. So the heavy rare earths are becoming very, very important at the moment because the biggest source of rare earths at the moment -- heavy rare earths is Myanmar, which is controlled by China. And there's very little happening in the West at the moment in these key heavy rare earths, being dysprosium and terbium. Now, when the Ford and European car manufacturers were -- had to shut down production earlier this year with the export of permanent magnets outside of China, everyone thinks that these permanent magnets only affect the electric vehicles or plug-in hybrid vehicles, but no one sort of realized until this happened that your just internal combustion engine motor vehicle, in other words your diesel or petrol vehicle, also requires permanent magnets to make them work. So your drivetrain in the normal ICE vehicle has 7 permanent magnets in it. So you have about 1 kilogram of permanent magnets in the normal vehicle. You have about 3 to 4 kilograms in a plug-in hybrid vehicle, and we have between 3 and 5 kilograms in a pure electric vehicle. So yes, these permanent magnets are critical, not only in vehicles but wind turbines and all your modern technology, your drones, your -- it's permanent magnets going to MRI machines, for an instance, using the chemical space. So they affect the -- all modern tech and are basically the vitamins of modern technologies we'd like to describe them. We also see a massive new frontier of demand being involved over the next decade for permanent magnets requiring rare earths, and these are not only industrial robots, but humanoid robots. Humanoid robots are -- take 3 to 5x more permanent magnets in an EV, and we've seen a massive exposure of drone deliveries in the U.S.; for example, Amazon. These are real. This is not just a Star Wars lookalike photo. And then advanced air mobility or basically air taxis at the moment. The first air taxi's commercial flights have started taking place in the U.S. And these have exceptionally large amount of rare earths in there -- in these air mobility vehicles. And just to give you an idea, from LA to San Diego, which will take about an hour to 1.5 hours depending on traffic in the motor vehicle, will take you 8 minutes on one of these air taxis, but at the price of a Uber Black, so you can see why there will be a massive increase in demand for this type of transport. And of course, with drones, with the modern warfare now we see in Ukraine and Russia being fought largely with drones, we can see drones playing an even more important part from a military aspect. And, of course, these drones also require lots of permanent magnets requiring rare earths. So the macro, we believe, for permanent magnet demand globally across all applications is very, very much in place and growing. We've seen the deal done between MP Materials and the Department of Defense in the U.S. in July, where they agreed to set a floor price for NdPr, that's neodymium and praseodymium to enable MP Materials to be able to know that they're going to get a minimum price for these rare earth elements in the resource. And that led to almost immediately a change in pricing out of China for NdPr. We know that China has been manipulating price of these materials to the low end of the chart, as you can see there, circa $60 a kg or slightly below that. But the minute this DoD deal was announced, and we've seen since then that the Australian government is talking about setting a floor price for critical minerals, not only rare earths, but other critical minerals as well as the EU now saying that we are going to entertain floor prices for critical minerals. We saw the price of NdPr move from circa $60 a kg in China in July 2025 -- or sorry, May 2025, in July to up to about $85 a kg. In September, it has come back slightly, but we still believe that we are going to see a price bifurcation of NdPr between what the West pays and what the Chinese are trying to keep the price at. And we've seen this with dysprosium and terbium. For the last 6 months in Europe, we've seen dysprosium and terbium trading at between 2 and 3x the Chinese pricing for these 2 key rare elements, which bodes well not only for the market as a whole or the industry as a whole, but also for Rainbow because we have a significant amount of dysprosium and terbium in what we're going to produce in our product that we're going to produce. And as I said, the fact that we've seen different pricing out of China is going to support us when we negotiate contracts for these elements that are currently underway with Rainbow and various OEMs and potential offtakers. As I said, this year has been a very exciting year for Rainbow. We've pioneered the breakthrough of using CIX now with large lab testing here in South Africa, where we've been able to produce a very high-grade mixed rare earth product that could either be a mixed rare earth oxide or a mixed rare earth carbonate depending on what our offtakers require, but with very, very low impurity levels. And we believe it's one of the highest grade mixed rare earth products produced anywhere in the world at the moment at over 55% grade of TREO in that mixed rare earth carbonate or mixed rare earth oxide and with impurity level sitting at below 7%. Now, the Chinese spec for mixed rare earth carbonate sits at between 42% and 44%, and we had over 55%, so a much higher spec than what the Chinese require and facilities in -- refining facilities in the Western will require. And the Chinese impurity level has to be below 10%, and we're below 7%. So we think this is a significant achievement by the Rainbow team. And also very importantly is that by incorporating continuous ion exchange into our flow sheet, which is a technology used in mining in various minerals, like uranium, for instance, we've been able to reduce our volumetric flow by over 300x from circa 340 cubes an hour of pregnant leach solution. After our impurity rejection steps of first CIX and then some precipitation steps, we have reduced that flow down to circa 4 to 5 cubes an hour, and that's also successfully incorporating cerium depletion into our MREC product now. So that means that our final downstream separation circuit will be very, very small. And we've recognized that, and the -- and by able to achieve this in our lab at a very low cost, I might add, and in record time is turning out to be very, very positive for Rainbow on all fronts, and I'll talk about that later. As I said, the interim study and the subsequent test work that we've been performing in our lab in -- here in South Africa has confirmed that we're at the bottom of the cost curve in the industry. We're below Chinese pricing, and there are a couple of Western sort of benchmarking reports out there that show that we're below the Chinese cost of production. And we know that we're one of the highest margin producers. We will be one of the highest margin producers in the world as well. So we're at the top of the margin curve, and we're at the bottom of the cost curve, which is good for any project in any sort of mineral that you're looking at. Just to give the audience background, who aren't familiar, one of the reasons why our project is much lower cost than other projects is that because initially, a, we are a brownfield site. So we're within 5 kilometers of an established mining town in South Africa called Phalaborwa. What you see there is the fencing area of our brownfields project. We're going to be taking the rare earths out of those 2 phosphogypsum stacks that you see there. And on the top right-hand corner is the old, mothballed Sasol phosphoric acid plant that produced a waste residue of phosphogypsum and deposits on these stacks. Now, just out of that photograph, just above it, you've got a phosphate mine run by Foskor. And this phosphate mine produces a high-grade phosphate rock, which is a concentrate in the slurry and for 60 years was fed into that phosphoric acid plant you see in the top right-hand corner there. That phosphoric acid plant added sulfuric acid and heat to create phosphoric acid, which is used throughout the world for a key ingredient into fertilizer. And in the production of phosphoric acid through this process, it creates a phosphogypsum waste product, and the rare earths that we upgraded in the phosphate slurry deported into the gypsum stacks following the waste gypsum stream into these 2 gypsum stacks. So we're now at 35 million tonnes of resource at 0.44% TREO, which is very high grade for this type of deposit. If you compare this to ionic clay project, which is -- have a very low mining cost, that 0.04% to 0.08% on average grade, we have between sort of 6 and 10x higher grade than your average ionic clay project. And we've got a lot of infrastructure already in place, which helps bring down our CapEx. We've already -- it's already fenced. We've got high-voltage power lines running through the project. We've got a high-voltage switchyard within the confines of our brownfield site and so forth. And we service by road and rail as well as air within the airport at Phalaborwa. So very accessible, 500 kilometers served by highway outside of Johannesburg and served by rail as well. So anything that we need to bring in for this project is easily accessible compared to a lot of projects, which might sit in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of the Australian outback or the middle of the bush somewhere in Africa. The project economics are as you see on the screen. As I've mentioned, at the publication of our interim report in December last year, our CapEx was $326 million, and the operating cost per kilogram of total rare earth oxides was sitting at circa $12.90 to $13 a kilo. Our test work and the work we've achieved in the lab this year has been able to confirm that those metrics are firmly in place, and we'll be making some announcements very shortly on this, and I'll talk to that a little bit later in the presentation. But importantly, we're going to be a significant producer of separated neodymium and praseodymium oxide, and we're producing what's known as an SEG+ product, which has got our dysprosium and terbium as well as cerium, europium and gadolinium and yttrium in our product, which are sought after, and yttrium is very sought after by defense in the U.S. at the moment. So it's also a key rare earth that we have in our resource. The project has got 16 years. And this SEG+ group is exactly what Lynas have done since they have been in production in Australia. Lynas have always separated NdPr themselves. They did that in Malaysia and on site in Australia. They've recently built their own separation refinery on Australian soil, and they have started separating NdPr themselves on China. And the SEG+ group was always sent to China for separating. So they never ever separated, the heavies themselves always done in China. And in the last 3 or 4 months, Lynas have just commissioned a heavy separation plant in Malaysia, and they're now separating the SEG+ group themselves in Malaysia. But as I said, this is only a sort of -- only occurred over the last 4 months or so. So Rainbow are doing -- we've realized we need to do what Lynas has done for many, many years, separate the NdPr, and we're going to produce a very high-value SEG+ group, which we have seen massive demand in from refiners you want to secure this SEG+ group in the West, and that be it in Japan, South Korea, Europe, France, as I say, as well as the U.S. and Canada. So there's massive demand for this SEG+. As well as, obviously, we're talking to OEMs about our separated Nd oxide to feed their supply chain as well as people like Less Common Metals in the U.K., who are also -- we have a letter of intent to supply separated NdPr. So those ongoing offtake discussions are firmly in place, and we will be reporting on those shortly as well. Just to confirm, this is done by Argus Media, just confirming Rainbow is at the very top of the margin curve, and that we believe has been reaffirmed by the work we've done in our trade-off studies over this period -- over the course of this year, and I'll talk about that a little bit later. I think this is a very strong chart. If you look at the bottom right-hand side -- left-hand side, sorry, of this chart, it shows the Rainbow basket at $60 a kg NdPr, which is at the low -- roughly the low point of the price cycle for neodymium-praseodymium. If Rainbow had been in production at the time, we still would have generated $60 million of EBITDA at steady state. And -- whereas at that price point, MP Materials were losing money in the U.S., which is why the Department of Defense came to their rescue with that deal. And Lynas were just making a marginal amount of money. And Rainbow would have still been very, very profitable. So that shows how we are -- show that we are very robust as a project in terms of the price cycle. If we look at the base case for the PEA, and it's the same price for NdPr, the $110 a kg, which is a benchmark price now set by MP Materials, and that's a price we use in our PEA. At steady-state, Rainbow would generate $180 million of EBITDA per annum, which we believe is from the size of the project and the capital is one of the best -- we still know it's one of the best projects in development in the world today. As I said, we've used this year at Mintek to -- with our laboratory we built at Mintek to maximize REE recovery and impurity rejection using continuous ion exchange as a first stage, which we recognize that having the best impurity rejection in our final product that feeds the final separation circuit is very, very key to being able to achieve the purity that we want to produce in our separated oxides in our SEG+ group. As I've mentioned earlier, we've also successfully incorporated the cerium rejection step, reducing some 65% of metal content for separation, which means, once again, that final separation circuit can be far smaller than one would envisage if you didn't use a continuous ion exchange to reduce your volumetric flow. We -- I've spoken about this reduction in volumetric flow, and it has a major positive impact on size, energy and reagent use in the final separation circuit. The fact that we've incorporated CIX and precipitation steps, that's the IP Rainbow brings in terms of being able to produce this high-grade mixed rare earth product with very, very low impurity levels. And on the top right-hand side, once again, you can see what our TREO was over 55% that we've been able to produce this year consistently now, far higher than what we were able to produce in our first pilot that we ran in 2023 and 2024, and it's much higher than the Chinese spec required. So this bodes well for Rainbow, and we are seeing the positive results of that already. We mentioned in our environmental -- sorry, our economic update in December last year that we saw some optimization opportunities. We've been working very hard on some trade-off studies and looking at optimizing the front-end part of our process flow sheet, which is circa 90% of the OpEx and CapEx for the project. So it makes sense to focus in this area. And as mentioned, these are progressing very positively, and we expected to announce the first of these trade-off studies and the results of that optimization work very soon. And we believe it's going to show very, very good results in terms of power, labor and capital costs for this project, and we'll be announcing these optimization results in stages as we've 100% signed off on the CapEx numbers and these trade-off studies. And basically, we expect these trade-off studies will enhance the project economics, which is already very, very good, as you can see. And I'll talk about the DFS shortly, but very importantly, these optimizations, the time we've taken to use this time with -- during the delay in the DFS is resulting in us producing a far, far better project, derisked project for our shareholders. And I think that's what the shareholders need to consider is that, yes, we've announced that there will be a slight delay in the DFS, but this delay is not resulting in higher CapEx or higher OpEx and a reduced project economics. This delay will result in a far, far better project -- derisked project for our shareholders with better CapEx and better project economics. And I think that's a credit to the Rainbow technical team because I'd rather see us deliver the correct technically proven project and rather one that we rush to meet a DFS timeline that the test work didn't support. And in the end, we end up with a project that doesn't work or fails or more importantly, takes a lot of money to fix. I don't want to point to other projects in the world, but there's a project, ionic clay project in Brazil that's in production that only produces a mixed rare earth concentrate -- sorry, a mixed rare earth carbonate, which they sell to China. And this project had to stop because they had problems with their design of their flow sheet, and they've had to reengineer the plant and stop production, and that cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. And as I said, with the experience within the Rainbow team in terms of developing many, many projects as all coming out of the mining engineering team on behalf of clients, we're now doing it for ourselves. And we've always said we will make sure that we deliver a technically sound and proven project. And the fact that we're taking a bit longer, but with improved project CapEx and economics that we believe will be shown once we publish the results of those optimization studies. I think that the technical team should be giving credit for Rainbow, and I'm very pleased to say that. Once again, this is a couple of photographs of our world-class lab that we now have at Rainbow that's enabling us to achieve the results that we're looking for in a far, far quicker environment and far, far lower cost. So if we hadn't built our own lab, the cost of the work to get to where we are would have been circa 10x higher. So instead of spending $1 million over this period on our lab, we would have spent $8 million to $10 million if we'd still been doing this work in the U.S. or using outside laboratories. So I think that's also another very positive that the market should be pleased about. So the next steps, and I think this is a key because we spoke about it briefly in our year-end financial statements is that we've done extensive piloting test work. We've established the production of this high-grade low-purity feed stream, which is key to achieving separated rare earth oxide of desired purity levels. And as I said, this has been achieved by producing this very high-grade mixed rare earth product, which could either be a carbonate or an oxide depending on the best feed stream into the final separation circuit. It's also given us flexibility, as I said, to decide what is the best product to feed into the final separation circuit. And because of the delay we had with continuous ion chromatography, and I'm not going to make any excuses, we did see a delay because we always -- test work, one never knows what the pathway and what test work will deliver because essentially, CIC was more of an R&D route that had not been proven commercially. And we believe if proven commercially, it was a very good way to separate rare earth oxides. But we weren't getting the results that we -- that K-Tech promised us. We did get initial results, but we couldn't get any better results. And we recognize that if we continue down this path of continuous ion chromatography, we didn't know how long that development pathway would take. We might still prove it down the line, but we could -- we knew it would lead to even further delays in our DFS. And once again, it wouldn't have been proven on a commercial scale, even though it would have been proved in piloting. So we started looking at a well-known solvent extraction versus continuous ion chromatography. And as I said, we will make an announcement on this. So we're evaluating both processes. But all I can say is that solvent extraction is the proven gold standard for separation, and we're just evaluating the commercial aspects of this, and we'll make some announcements quite soon. But we know that the final route will deliver 99.5% purity of separated NdPr, and we will produce a high-value SEG+ group. And this, we know we will achieve, and we will make some announcements very shortly on the evaluation of SX over ion chromatography. It's important to note that even though we've acknowledged that because our test work was never -- when we announced the timeline for the DFS at the end of 2025, it was always predicated on successful test work to deliver separated NdPr. And as I've mentioned, one can never put -- your timeline for test work is always predicated on your results. So you get to certain set of results, and it might lead in a different direction. As I've said, during our test work, we realized that we could achieve this very high-grade mixed rare earth product for our final separation, we could reduce the volumetric flow, and by investigating these options to produce this much higher grade sort of product to feed our downstream that test work took a bit longer, but rather come up with a better product, which takes a bit longer than not pursue improving your product and making sure you got a final separator product that's the best that we can produce in the market. And I think we've shown that by taking a bit longer, we are going to produce a far better project, much better results. And all these results are very important because they're helping us with our project in Brazil. The project at Uberaba is progressing in terms of economic assessment. We expect that economic assessment to be completed by the end of this year, and we expect that we will see a very, very positive project out of Uberaba similar to what we see at Phalaborwa because all these learnings have been -- we've been able to apply to that project, which is a far longer life project than Phalaborwa at a much higher grade. And I'll talk about Uberaba a little bit later again. But importantly, our overall timeline hasn't changed. We're still expecting to be in production in 2020 -- sorry, in construction in 2027 for production in 2028. And even though we have a slight delay in the DFS, we don't see that overall timeline moving out, which I'm pleased to say. Once again, we are -- from an ESG point of view and a green project, this is very good. We're taking rare earths out of a waste product, the phosphogypsum. We're also going to be selling this phosphogypsum into the South African market, which are not in our project economics yet. They will add to the economics of this project. And we are anticipating being able to sell, we hope, somewhere between 400,000 to 600,000 tonnes of this phosphogypsum into the South African gypsum market. And when we can get -- we have a letter of intent with the biggest gypsum trader in South Africa for them to be able to sell this product for us. And we -- in fact, we're just updating those numbers and getting an idea of pricing for our feasibility study, which will add to the project economics. But also, once again, over a 40-year life, even after we finished processing this phosphogypsum, we'll be selling this phosphogypsum into the South African market. And eventually, those stacks will be 100% level with the ground. So it's a complete rehabilitation of the site, which for any project, we believe, presents very strong ESG credentials. As I said, because we've been very -- we've had a lot of profile over our extraction of rare earths out of phosphogypsum, we've had a number of approaches from players and elsewhere in the world. As you can see there, we -- I've spoken about the MoU we have with Uberaba in Brazil to jointly extract the rare earths out of their phosphogypsum that's been produced by their phosphoric acid plant in Uberaba in Brazil. As I said, this is a plant that's going to run for another 40-plus years. So we're very excited about that, even higher grade than Phalaborwa. We've been approached by Canadian junior to look at maybe doing the same thing with their project that they're looking to develop there. We've been approached by OCP and the Saudi government mining company, Maaden, a subsidiary of theirs called CERC to look at their phosphogypsum stacks they have in Saudi Arabia. But these are long-term R&D projects with these 2 countries, and we'll see how those develop. But it gives Rainbow -- we're getting a lot of profile. We've had a lot of success in being able to do this, extract rare earths out of phosphogypsum economically, and that's why we've seen these approaches from other potential projects around the world, which I think is -- a strength in Rainbow is that we will not be a single project rare earth company. We will have multi-jurisdictions and multiple projects, which will derisk Rainbow politically from a political risk environment as well as the project environment. If you have a look at the Uberaba project, you can see in the bottom right-hand side, that photograph of the phosphogypsum stacks looks almost identical to the photograph of Phalaborwa. To the top right of that is their phosphoric acid production facilities. It's a very large-scale facility. I was there 2 weeks ago going through the draft of the economic assessment, which we believe will result in a very, very strong project. And we've already got the site allocated by Mosaic within their facilities there. Once again, this is within their plant site. It's already fenced. It's already got roads. It's got access from the city of Uberaba, which is about 15 kilometers away. It's in the middle of the sugarcane belt in Brazil. We're not chopping down any virgin bush or displacing villages or chopping down virgin rain forest for this project. It's already in a well-established brownfield site. And as I say, we're very excited about the very low cost that we've engaged and been able to get to an EA in this stage for circa $230,000, shared 50-50 between Mosaic and Rainbow. We're going to come up with a project that where we believe is going to be exceptionally strong. And for $230,000, if this was a project newly discovered somewhere in Brazil, in the jungle in Brazil, you would still be site establishing your drill rig for $230,000. So this, we think, is a significant achievement between Rainbow and Mosaic to achieve what we're achieving here. In terms of Rainbow's team, we've got a very strong team, as I think I've indicated to this audience before. But we've got a very, very strong technical team in the form of Dave Dodd, Chris Le Roux and Roux Wildenboer and Tammi. She's also a process engineer, but she's the manager of our studies. All these guys come out of the mining engineering business background. So we know how to take projects from grassroots all the way through to design, construction and commissioning. We've done it many times on behalf of many different projects as a team, and the same team now is doing it on behalf of Rainbow internally. So we would like to think that you've got an experienced team here that will be able to deliver because we've delivered this so many times before. And with Pete Gardner, our CFO, he's been involved in many mining financing -- been involved in the mining financing for many, many mining projects in his career. And I'm pleased to say that he brings a wealth of experience when it comes to the debt financing for Rainbow. And it's an area, which I don't have a lot of experience in, but Pete has. He's done it before on behalf of other companies he's worked for. And of course, I have a lot of experience on the equity side of raising money for mining projects, but Pete brings that experience on the debt side as well. I'd like to thank you all for your participation, and I'm opening to questions by the audience.

[Operator Instructions] As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. I please ask you to readout the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I will pick up near the end. Over to George to go through the Q&A.

Thank you very much. I haven't seen the first question come up yet.

George, can you see the Q&A tab on the right-hand side?

I'm looking for it, but...

There is small blue button at the bottom of your screen that says Chat.

Yes. I have got Chat, but can I -- here we go. Questions are coming in. Okay. It says, how can the company improve and increase the pace of hitting the commercialization milestones, which unfortunately seem to be slipping in recent year or 2? As I said, it's a question, I think I probably largely answered in my presentation, which is we announced a delay in the DFS to the end of 2025 a year ago. And as I said, we acknowledge that there's a further delay, but the further delay is for very good technical reasons. It's going to -- we will deliver a far -- well, not a far more, but we will deliver a technically sound and proven process with better project economics. So even though there is a delay, most delays you see in projects lead to non-improved economics, non-improved CapEx. We believe we'll be delivering both of these, and we'll be delivering a derisked project, which, as I said, is worth having a slight delay and not -- and have a better project -- more robust project down the line. And I think this is important. But also importantly, as I said, the overall timeline, we believe hasn't slipped out significantly. We're still targeting production. There's no reason why we won't start construction of our plant in South Africa in 2027 and to be in production in '28. And that timeline -- that overall timeline is still in place to be in production in '28. There's a question of, why not start selling MREC first and then develop the separation refinery? This -- Rainbow does have that ability. As I said, we're producing a very great MREC or mixed rare earth product, far higher than the industry specifications. And if we wanted to, we could do what various projects in the world are doing, which is stopping at an MREC and selling that. But we know that we are having success with our final separation route, which will be to separate NdPr and produce the SEG+ group. And we think we'll get far higher value by doing that, and we'll do it at one time. By producing the SEG+ group, we do have the flexibility now to start production -- producing NdPr and SEG like Lynas have done for many years, and then, we can target doing that final separation ourselves of the SEG+ group, possibly in Europe or possibly in the U.S. And we know the U.S. is looking for heavy rare earth separation, and we know Europe is looking for heavy rare earth separation. So that gives Rainbow that flexibility. So what I'm saying is that there's possibly a hybrid in this question is that we will separate NdPr ourselves. We'll produce a mixed rare earth SEG+ product. And then, we've got the ability in a couple of years time to do the refining of that product and separating that heavy product elsewhere in the world. And we think we'll get a lot of funding to be able to do this from various funders, be it the European funders or U.S. funders. So having read the annual report, it's saying, it looks like we're not going down the separation route of CRC, but we're looking at SX. I have spoken about this in my presentation. As I said, we are -- when we were looking at the -- we did achieve separation using ion chromatography, but not to the levels that we were requiring to have a salable product. And we realized that the timeline to get to achieving that with ion chromatography would take far longer than what initially envisaged. And as I said, the test work, it takes you in a direction. If you don't get the right results, you will experience delays. No one can say definitively when you'll finish a test work program from a timeline point of view because results point -- take you in different directions. As I said, when we realized that we weren't getting the purity required with ion chromatography, we started thinking that we should look at maybe the alternative, which is solvent extraction, which is the global gold standard. As I've mentioned, we're busy evaluating these solvent extraction versus ion chromatography, and we expect to make an announcement on that very shortly. But what I can say importantly is that the reason why looking at solvent extraction came into play is that we've been successful in reducing our volumetric flow, as I mentioned, from 340 cubes an hour to circa 4 or 5 cubes an hour. And that we realized would -- it made sense to look at evaluating solvent extraction versus ion chromatography. I'm just looking. I've got a question here. Did the U.S. government receive an equity interest for its $50 million commitment? So this -- the DFC's $50 million commitment into Rainbow is for equity in the Phalaborwa project. So yes, they will be getting equity. It's not debt. This, we believe, gives Rainbow a strong partner in the U.S. government by the DFC, which I think is very beneficial for all shareholders. But more importantly, this is based on the percentage of equity they get will be based on forward forecast rare earth pricing, which is very positive, as we all know, and it will be based on the final NPV value of the project. So I can't tell you exactly what that equity commitment is -- that equity will be, but it will be -- Rainbow will still be by far the majority shareholder in this project by a long way. And as I said, it -- the calculation is based on very positive metrics, I believe, for Rainbow. I'm just saying that, regarding the timelines and considering in-house resource, does this delay the publication of the DFS, meaning there's a knock-on effect on the Uberaba project? So I'd like to say that, no, there's no knock-on effect. It's positive because of the time we've used to look at various optimizations and trade-offs in the front-end flow sheet, which we believe are going to be very positive for the project. And as I said, we'll be announcing results of those trade-offs very shortly in stages. We've been able to apply these to the Uberaba project. So it's making the Uberaba project even stronger. We're applying these trade-offs and these optimizations to the Uberaba project. As I mentioned, the project economic assessment will be complete by the end of 2025. And the Mosaic are looking to fast track this project into production as well. And so we -- so basically, it's had a positive impact on Uberaba, not a negative impact. And hopefully, that answers the question to the satisfaction of the questioner or the inquiry. There's a good question here. Is any equipment under use currently under scrutiny by Chinese government? I'm pleased to say that all the equipment in the Phalaborwa project and the Uberaba project is stock standard, off-the-shelf processing equipment used in the mineral industry worldwide. We're using leach tanks. We're using agitators. We're using pumps, vacuum filters or we'll be using vacuum filters or filter -- or belt filters. These are all supplied by Western supply companies. Continuous ion exchange is -- those units are built here in South Africa. So there's nothing here that requires -- that is coming out of China that we require for this project. So it's all stock standard stuff off the shelf as well as reagents and the resins. So the resin we're using in our continuous ion exchange unit are readily available via either die chemicals or Purolite out of the U.S. or elsewhere. So there's nothing there, and the reagents are stock standard, sulfuric acid, oxalic acid, sodium chloride and so forth. These are readily available in South Africa and in the West. So there's no risk there from that point of view. It says, can you talk about the recent acquisition of LCM by USA Rare Earths and whether that impacts the agreement in place? I'm pleased to say I've already had discussions with the Chairman of LCM, who was a biggest shareholder in LCM, is now part of USA Rare Earths is that, in fact, if anything, it increases his requirement for separating NdPr from Rainbow because with USA Rare Earths now behind LCM, they are going to be expanding a facility and building a new facility in the U.S. as quickly as possible. They're expanding their facility in the U.K. already, and they are building a new facility in France. And if anything, as I said, this has strengthened our relationship between LCM and Rainbow. So a very positive result because USA Rare Earths need upstream supply, which -- and that they're looking elsewhere to go upstream and get the supply, which they need to feed, a, not only LCM, but all which will eventually feed the enlarged permanent magnet facility they have in the U.S. Have samples been sent to potential offtakers from Rainbow? I'm pleased to say we have sent sample, but we are -- in our pilot plant in South Africa, we are producing even more sample over the next couple of months, which will be sent to potential offtakers for the -- because the -- as I say, the improved flow sheet is resulting in a far better product for offtake negotiations. And these samples, we are going to be sending over to various offtake customers. Within the next couple of months, we'll be sending more samples to these guys. Is Aclara Resources a serious competitor to Rainbow? I don't believe so. Aclara is ionic clay project. In Brazil, these projects are typically much lower grade. And yes, they were producing some -- they said they will be going all the way into producing -- or their heavy rare earth project, and we are also going to be producing dysprosium and terbium in significant quantities. The world needs these heavy rare earths, even more so than neodymium, praseodymium, it would appear. And so we need Aclara, we need other projects to coming on stream. Just another thing in terms of DFS timelines and project timelines, Rainbow realized that we had rare earths on these phosphogypsum stacks when we started drilling them in January 2021. So from January 2021, where we started to realize that we had a resource and we drilled this resource out at Phalaborwa. And we've developed a flow sheet, as I said, which is -- we knew it had been done in academia, but never economically. We've now developed an economic flow sheet very successfully over the last few years, and we are targeting to be in production in 2028. That's an 8-year timeline. Just to give you the audience what an achievement this will be for Rainbow to give an audience a bit of a sense of why rare earth projects typically are far longer timelines and all mineral projects, in fact, take longer. Arafura in Australia was actually founded in 1997. They produced their bankable feasibility study in 2019. They still aren't constructing their project, nor the minerals in Australia. They were initially incorporated in 2006, that's 20 years ago, and they're only in construction now. Peak Resources in Tanzania, they were incorporated in 2005. The team at Rainbow produced their bankable feasibility study for that project in 2015. This is when the whole Rainbow team worked with me in MDM Engineering. So we know that project very well. They're still on some construction. We got Vital in Canada. They were incorporated in 2004, and they are only a project that's in development in Canada right now. So that's just -- when I've mentioned before that projects take 20, 25 years to go from discovery to production, that's not an unrealistic timeline for rare earth projects. So what Rainbow is doing at Phalaborwa is exceptionally fast track still even with the delays of the DFS. And we -- and those -- and all this learning, we'll be able to apply to the Uberaba project in Brazil, which we believe will be even a shorter timeline than the Phalaborwa project. So we are fast tracking. We are basically like a Ferrari on a racetrack in terms of -- from cradle to grave of the Rainbow's project at Phalaborwa, and we believe we'll see a similar, even better timeline for the project in Uberaba. So yes, I'm not going to make excuses for the delay. I believe we will deliver for our shareholders, which is key, a lower risk -- well, not a lower risk, a derisked project by the time we announce our final separation route as well as a far better project in terms of project economics, NPV, CapEx and so forth. So yes, we do have a delay. But in the overall scheme of things, this is a very, very fast-track project that's coming to the market in terms of production. And I think that the Rainbow team can be congratulated on that in terms of what -- technically what we will have been able to achieve over the last few years. In terms of -- can you provide more background on the pilot plant, your plan to run? Which steps at in the lab and the size and cost of the pilot plant? Well, I'm pleased to say that the cost of our lab is significantly lower than the cost of doing all this work at outside laboratories like we were doing for the past few years. As I said, it's circa 1/10 of the cost, very importantly. And in terms of running the pilot plant, we had a budget in place to run this pilot for the final separation at -- in America by bringing the pilot plant back to South Africa, doing a far more extensive test work in-house, which is delivering a far more robust project in terms of economics. We are still on budget with that in terms of our initial budget that the raise covered last year as well as running the pilot plant. As I said, by bringing the pilot plant to run it in South Africa, we've saved a fortune. We are starting a new pilot plant run, which will be commissioned next month, and I welcome any investors to come and visit us in South Africa. And this pilot plant is producing product for further offtake discussions as well as just for -- to confirm the parameters of our final separation circuit that we'll be announcing the route, as I mentioned very, very shortly. Obviously, in terms of funding, the market is asking when are Rainbow going to be coming to the market to close the next funding gap? We're a development company. As you know, every year, we produce a qualified statement, which the market picks up on is that Rainbow, again, need more funding. If you look at the history of Rainbow and all the funding we've done, we've been able to achieve this very successfully. I'm glad to say that all the funding that Rainbow has undertaken since I've been with the company have been at a premium to the market price, and we've done this very successfully. Last year, we did the Ecora deal, which was nondilutive. And yes, we will be funding. We are already down the line in negotiations with strategic funders, which will, once again, I'm looking at a funding option, which will give the best result in terms of dilution and protecting shareholder dilution and without doing this at a massive discount to the market price. We haven't done any funding since I've been involved with Rainbow at a discount to market pricing. And I would like to think that we will continue in this vein when we do announce our next success in funding to take us through to FID, which we believe will be -- which will be at the end of 2026 to allow us to go into construction in 2027, as I've mentioned before. George, can you comment on the U.S. push to source new rare earth supply? And how long before that supply will arrive? And what is your interpretation of the political overlay in our market? Once again, as I mentioned, even if new rare earth sources are found in Greenland or in Ukraine, these projects are 20 years away from production. So yes, the U.S. is supporting the development of rare earth supply outside the market, but this new supply is not going to come on stream in the near term. So all the projects that are near term like Rainbow, you've got Northern Minerals being built, you've got Iluka in Australia being built and so forth. I think those projects need to come on stream to fulfill the shortfall in demand for separated rare earth oxides. And I believe that there's not going to be enough supply coming to the market in the next 15 years, which will result in any sort of impact on pricing for rare earths going forward for the next 15 to 20-odd years, as I've mentioned. And I think that concludes our time for this presentation. Thank you.

George, thank you for answering all those questions you can from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

Yes, I'd like to think that the market continues to have confidence in the Rainbow team. As I think we've shown, we've published some very, very good test work results in terms of impurity rejection and the purity of our final product going to the final separation circuit. We have had a delay, which we're not going to hide behind other than the delay is resulting in a far better project, I believe, for shareholders in terms of all metrics, in terms of derisk, in terms of CapEx, OpEx, NPV and so forth. And we are still on track to be in production in 2028. So I thank the audience for their time and listening to me, and I welcome any further questions we can answer. And if anyone wants to talk to the technical team independently, we are very happy for people to question our technical team because we are very confident in what we are developing and delivering for our shareholder base. Thank you.

George, thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure it will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Rainbow Rare Earths Limited, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.