- Hello and welcome back to the Proactive Studio. I'm Tyler Tully, and today I'm joined by Ionic Rare Earth Managing Director, Tim Harrison, to talk us through how the company secured at $2.46 million in grants and was chosen by the UK government to lead a magnet recycling solution collaboration. Tim, thanks for joining us. - Hi, Tyler, thanks for having me. - So to start, can you talk us through this $2.46 million your subsidiary Ionic Technologies has received and what's the money for? - Yeah, so it's another grant that we've received as part of the Climate's two program in the UK. So Innovation UK on the back of the successes that we've been able to demonstrate from the Climate's one program last year as awarded Ionic Technologies, another two grants, totals about 2.46 million Australian. So those two programs, one is the Revaluate program where we're gonna be working with less common metals, which is a UK based metal and alloy manufacturer in the Rare Earth space. We've got a long history working closely with less common metals, so they're a natural partner for us. And Vacuum Schnolds, which is a German permanent magnet manufacturer, one of the only, one of a handful of magnet manufacturers that exists outside of China. And so working with less common metals and Vacuum Schnolds to develop 100% recycled magnets using both light and heavy rare earths. So it's a very exciting development for the company, one of a number of things that we've been working on with with other supply chain partners. So yeah, very pleased to be able to now talk about that one publicly. And the second program, Magnostic, which is looking at new technologies to assist in the demagnetization of permanent magnets, used in a raft of different applications. But one of the key areas of focus for us is decommissioning the large generators, the magnets used in the generators for wind turbines. So, we're pretty excited to be working with our partners there in MPI and it's once a university and being able to sort of unlock some new opportunities for the company and positions us right at the forefront of the wind turbine decommissioning process and then access to the magnets and ultimately turn that back into magnets to be used in other applications. - And so you've been selected by the UK to lead this diagnostic collaboration. Can you expand a bit more and tell us kind of the focus and the significance of this? - Yeah, look, I mean, we've been talking with Innovate UK and a number of stakeholders there in the UK around some of our ideas to help make it easier or for this material to be recycled. We've been working with a number of other groups and in dialogue with the OEMs and wind farm operators to try and understand some of the challenges when it comes to dealing with these large magnets. And so the team has identified an opportunity, working closely with MPI as well as university. Yeah, it's a pretty exciting opportunity. It's a new area, I think, for the company to look at how we can commercialize the business in the UK and develop IP and technology that we can then take to other markets, which has been a real focus as we think about how we grow from our base there in Belfast and take technology to get key markets in the US and Europe. How do these opportunities really align with your long-term goals in terms of business strategy and where you see the company heading? - So about two years ago, we acquired what is now on technology as part of a mechanism to penetrate into the downstream supply chain, to be able to unlock access to high purity magnet rare earths and then be able to work within incumbents in the supply chain existing capacity metal alloy magnet manufacturing that is looking for an alternative supply of material that is pretty difficult to source outside of. And so through recycling, we see a mechanism to get immediately to revenue to production, generating products and cementing our relationships across metal alloy magnet manufacturing. And that then provides the footprint for the company to grow, build our revenue base through the modularisation of the technology and key markets. Certainly, obviously with the initial potential in the UK, but we're also quite advanced to opportunities in Europe and the US and other parts of Asia as well. So, we do see recycling as being a mechanism to bring near-term supply of magnet rare earths. It's looking for an alternative source, other than the existing supply coming out of China to be able to feed into key markets. And some of those markets include very geopolitically sensitive markets in the military and defence space, but we see huge opportunities across the automotive and energy transition space as well. - So, what's next for the company? Where do you go from here? - Well, we're taking the technology, we've demonstrated a commercial at demonstration. We're now working towards commercialisation. So, when the final stages of being a feasibility study on the commercial prime in the UK, and hopefully we're in a position to talk publicly about some of the developments that are happening with that opportunity, we're heavily engaged with the UK Government on commercialising the prime in Belfast, so many relationships and certainly seeing a lot of really positive things in the UK market as they're looking to develop recycled rare earth magnets or sector, the automotive sector there, they're all employees of about 900,000 jobs. And so there's a real motivation from stakeholders in the UK to explore that recycled feedstock. But beyond that, now with that base and the basis with being the feasibility study, being able to progress relationships, commercialisation opportunities in those key markets that we're looking at in the US and Europe. So, I think where we're on the cusp of a real sort of change, and we've been pushing extremely hard in the recycling space because we do see it as being near revenue, near term revenue and an ability to quite quickly into production and to scale. - It definitely sounds like very exciting times for the company, Tim, thanks so much for joining us. - Thanks, Ty.
