Lynas Rare Earths Limited

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Linus quarterly results briefing. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 11 on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference has been recorded. I'd now like to hand the call over to Linus Rath. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to the Linus Rare Earth Investor Briefing for the quarter ending 31 March 2024. Today the briefing will be presented by Amanda LaCasse, CEO and Managing Director and joining Amanda is Garden Sturzenegger, CFO, Paul LaRue, COO, Daniel Havas, VP Strategy and Investor Relations and Sarah Leonard, General Counsel and Company Secretary. I'll now hand over to Amanda. Thanks Amanda.

Thanks very much Lauren. Good morning everybody. Now I'm told by the people who manage this conference there are already five questions in the queue so I will probably keep my remarks very brief therefore so that we have plenty of time to deal with those questions. As always I am certain and that's the reason why you've got lots of questions who've already read the report So I don't intend to pick over it in detail, but simply to pick out a few highlights. The absolute highlight of the quarter was the production outcomes. As we had disclosed in our half yearly, we had a very successful shut for the last six months of last year. And indeed at LAMP, we have put in a major new facility for the receipt and processing of MREC from our Kalgoorlie facility. And this has been done really with very smoothly, minimum of fuss, and most importantly, safely. So not only was the shut managed well, but the ramp up from the shut has been really quite outstanding. We thought that we were going to do better than what we had guided on late last year, and indeed we've done better again at 1,724 tonnes. We think we will sustain that in that sort of vicinity for this quarter. We won't be bringing in a lot of the new capacity that we've now got available to us in Malaysia until we see some further improvement in the market. So a very successful production ramp-up. and we are confident in using our time to test and make sure that the new circuits work. Of course, another highlight is the Mount Weld expansion. It remains on track. Stage one, which some of you will recall, really focuses on our dewatering circuit, which is the current bottleneck at Mount Weld. is very well advanced and we expect to start energising, energisation and commissioning over the next few months. We certainly expect that we will have a step up in Mountwell's capacity by the end of this calendar year and that will be followed by the further step up which will come with the completion of phase two next calendar year. Progress in the U.S. remains very positive as well. U.S. government, as I think nobody would be surprised, is very focused on ensuring that this project moves forward and moves forward as quickly as possible. We received the NEPA National Environmental Protection Authority approval during the period. Interestingly, the DoD was the proponent on that and so it really helped us to ensure that, you know, I know one of the things that people ask is what's it like going into a new jurisdiction and when you're partnering with people who are expert in that jurisdiction you certainly are able to avoid any of the, you know, traps for new beginners. So we've continued with the engineering design review. We've had our engineering teams working together in Malaysia on a number of occasions, and we see ourselves commencing with Earthworks at Cedris by the end of this calendar year. Another highlight was the appointment of the Carey Group for a five-year contract for our mining services at Mount Wells. Kerry is an excellent and proven contractor in this space, 30 years of experience, and at mines which are close to our Mount World mine. It's also really very positive. Daniel Tucker, the principal of Kerry Mining, is from the area, so it's his country. It has many family connections in that area. We're really pleased that we're able to have an excellent mining contractor who also brings the First Nations experience and knowledge of the country in which we're operating. So what were the lowlights? Well, the market continues to be less than kind to us. and to anybody else in rare earths, of course. Paul and Daniel and I have just spent a couple of days at a rare earth conference in Singapore. There's a general view in that conference that the slight improvement in price will probably continue to firm, but not at a significantly accelerated rate. Certainly, as you listen to all of the various industry commentators, their assessments are wide-ranging, but there's a general consensus that the current price is below cost for many Chinese producers and that there's also a general consensus that the Chinese economy is is starting to pick up momentum again. So with these various sort of influences, as everyone would have seen, we made a decision to hold some of the inventory rather than having it sitting in other people's warehouses, appreciating as the price goes up. We thought it would be best if it sits in our warehouse and appreciates as the price goes up. Then the other one which we have disclosed in here is that as we're approaching sort of final, final activities, construction activities in Kalgoorlie, as we're finalising various different contract arrangements and sort of claims backwards and forwards, We think that we're going to end up more in the range of about 800 million in capex rather than the previously disclosed 730. We see this casually as not surprising us in terms of some of the challenges that you face as you're in your early commissioning and ramp-up phase. skilled and capable people on site and look forward to it really now starting to accelerate as we complete a number of matters. The issue with power, certainly I think once again when we did the half year we disclosed the effect of the January power outage in Kalgoorlie. The downside to that was that we didn't have any power at all for two weeks. The upside is it gave us some good learnings around the way that the plant would respond to an interruption of power and we have been able to enhance some of our processes and some of our equipment to deal with that. So we continue to work on Kalgoorlie and right now as everybody knows we have excess capacity theoretically in C&L and we can certainly consume all of the feedstock available from Mount Weld at present. And as we move into the next stages, we commissioned stage one at Mount Weld. We would like to have Kalgoorlie actually ramping up in parallel with that increase in feedstock coming out of Mount Weld. So as said, I'm sure you've all read it and I'm happy to take your questions. The big highlight is production and coming out of our shutdown very well. And we look forward to probably a somewhat better run through to the end of the financial year. Happy to take questions now.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask questions on the phone, please press star 11 and wait for our name to be announced. There'll be a short silence while questions are being collected. One moment for the first question. Our first question comes from the line of Chen Jiang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Amanda. Thank you for taking my questions. Good morning, Amanda. Thanks for taking my questions. Two questions from me, please. So firstly, among world, CapEx increased by 70 million AUD. I guess given Calgary is yet to achieve commercial production, I'm wondering if this increase is final or Linus will continue to capitalize the cost during the ramp-up, how should we think about the total capex for FR24 and FR25? Thank you, Amanda. I have another one after this.

Okay, thanks, Chen. We have tried to indicate this. We are managing our capex within the capex envelope that we had previously indicated, which is about $600 million for this year. And we will manage our various projects. And of course, within that $600 million, we even had know what we would call opportunity projects which you know we now will not complete within this period of time. So we think that the CAPEX is manageable and in terms of when do we start When do we stop capitalizing the operating costs? Well, there's complex accounting rules that tell us when we can do that. And once we tick the boxes on those rules, then we'll make that change.

Sure, sure. Thanks, Amanda. Another one is on Kalgoorlie. Now Kalgoorlie has started to take rare earth concentrate from Mount Weld. And then in the release, Linus mentioned additional work and activities required. I'm just wondering the challenges or, you know, issues faced by Calguli. Is that what Linus expected or those are new, you know, new technology or engineering issues? Thanks. If you can provide any comment on that, Amanda. Thank you.

Thanks, Chen. Look, I think that we are, to your question, is as you expect. We are, as I think everybody knows, an unfailingly positive and optimistic firm. That's part of our culture. We believe, somebody said to me one day, that we believe we can do anything. And this particular person, I think, was a grumpy old man because He sort of saw that as a negative and we see it as positive. So is it going as well as we would have liked it to have gone? No. Is it presenting issues that would not be expected as you ramp up a plant of this size and complexity? No. So we would always like things to go faster. But we're not surprised by some of the challenges. But as I said, when you talk about as we put the concentrate into the plant, yeah, you find things that you would have rather not found, like the dose rates end up, you get some blockages, you've got to actually deal with that. None of it is remarkable. But all of it takes time to address.

Right, right. Thanks for that. Good to hear that it's not surprised by Linus. Thanks. So last question. Is Linus still on track to deliver, I remember previously mentioned, 750 times per month of NDPR equivalent in the current quarter, in the June quarter? Thank you. That's my last question.

Yeah, that's fine, Ted. I tried to indicate that we can deliver the 750 in terms of the circuits in Malaysia working as designed. Given that we've already made a decision to hold some inventory from the previous quarter, we won't be accelerating that production at this stage. And we would expect that this quarter is going to be around about the same sort of production numbers as the quarter we're just reporting on.

Great. That's very good, Carla. I appreciate that. Thank you, Amanda. I'll pass it on. Thanks, Jen.

Thank you for the questions. Next question comes from Austin Yoon from Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Morning, Amanda and the team. Two questions from me. The first one is just on the CAPEX. You confirm that the capex remains unchanged for 24. So, given this, you know, $70 million increase from Kalgoorlie, I'm just curious to understand what projects have been kind of being pushed out to the next financial year compared to the second one.

Thank you. So, with respect to that, I mean, even with the $70 million of Focal, it was not all full due in this quarter. So that's part of it. It's sort of a cash flow effect on that. What we're estimating is sort of our final cost of this. And all of that cash won't go out this quarter. We've, for a variety of reasons, we've just delayed a little on a couple of our other major projects because we want to ensure, we've sort of reviewed everything that we're doing and we want to ensure that we keep sufficient powder dry to also implement some new cost efficiency initiatives that Paul and his team have identified. And so we're just adjusting the capital plan at present. You know, you guys see the big projects, you know, which is the Mountwell expansion, CAL, and the LAMP industrial plan. But of course, you know, we have normal, you know, sort of operating CapEx, in quotation marks, but, you know, sort of CapEx programs that are part of our normal operating rhythm, and some of those we'll be looking to adjust as we move forward.

Great. Thank you, Amanda. The second one is on the Karkodi plant itself, like, you know, Clearly, you have a lot of learnings during this extended commission phase. And you also commented just now that the NDPR production is going to be flat, or the acceleration of the growth will be kind of slowed down a little bit. I'm just keen to understand for the Kalgoorlie plant, is it possible to run at a half capacity, or would you be running in a kind of a campaign phases? given, you know, understand the large capacity of the plant. So, you know, if any colour can provide, that would be appreciated. Thank you.

It's a very good question, Austin, and it's one that we are studying at present because, you know, even once we have the stage one upgrade at Mount Wells come online, we will still have excess capacity in the cracking step of our processing and so managing that and particularly within a sort of a tighter price environment managing that to give us the best possible cost profile is critical and so our team is assessing a variety of scenarios but implicit in your question which is is that large chemical plants typically don't like to be run at half speed. So is there an opportunity to run on a campaign basis? Are there other ways? And it's really assessing both Kalgoorlie and the Quantone facility and making sure that we've got production strategies in both locations which are complementary. So I can't tell you the answer to that right now because of course the first thing is to get the plant up and running. But we are working on what does it look like once we have confidently got the plant up and running.

Thank you, Amanda. Just a really quick follow-up. In terms of the concentrate you feed into Kalgoorlie, how much flexibility you have to take different oil types with different mineral assemblage.

So particularly if we run on a campaign basis, taking concentrate from alternate sources is relatively easy with the exception of some mineralogy. but generally speaking for many of the junior projects proposed sort of material, we would see that there's good opportunity in that area. So what we find in a lot of instances is that it's less about the rare earths assemblage and more about you know, sort of the presence of thorium and uranium elements in many of the other deposits. So we engage with all of these, all of the sort of developing projects. We think that there is good opportunity for us to work in a way that is good for the whole of the Australian rare earths industry. But we don't have anything else to put into the plant just right now.

Thank you Amanda. Thank you for the questions. Next question is from the line of Daniel Morgan from Barrenjoy. Please go ahead.

Hi Amanda and Tim. Just the comments about your plans to ramp up Kalgoorlie and your business from here, if I correctly read, is you're going to be looking to produce less than what your full capacity could be from maybe the next few months. Is that 100% a market decision or is there niggles in the Kalgoorlie ramp-up or design flaws or anything that you've identified that need rectification? Thank you.

Thanks, Daniel. No, it's that we have Now that we are operating two cracking plants, we have more capacity in cracking than we do in any other stage of the process. So once we finish the Mount Wells expansion, we'll have the equivalent of 12,000 tonnes of feedstock in Kalgoorlie with the combination of Kalgoorlie and Malaysian cracking, we've actually got sort of at least 15,000 tons of cracking capacity. So we just have to make a decision on how to manage that, most cost effectively, that additional capacity. It doesn't trouble us that we have more, that this is the case, because whenever you're running a process as we do with sort of five different stages, the bottleneck moves around. And we talked about this quite a bit, I think a couple of years ago, that CML was going to potentially be the bottleneck if we didn't resolve matters in Malaysia. Given that we've resolved that, and we took actions accordingly, now that we've resolved quite a lot of those matters in Malaysia, CML is indeed not the bottleneck, and the bottleneck has moved back to Mount Weld, we've already released some of the downstream bottleneck with the work that we did at the end of last year. So it's just a case of managing capacity as the bottleneck moves around the process.

Okay, thank you. And Mount Weld, when do you expect that to be ready to ramp up? One could interpret that the lift in capex of 70 mil to Kalgoorlie but no change to FY24 guidance implies obviously less spend elsewhere and perhaps, you know, Mount Weld, perhaps that's a few months behind. One could interpret that as.

Could you just go back? Well, one could, but one would be wrong. No, Mount Weld is... I think, look at the third paragraph. The Mount Weld expansion project schedule remains on track. Right. So... Clearly, as we make decisions, given that this is the bottleneck, this is where the bottleneck has moved, is concentrate production, that we're not slowing that down because we will need more feed and we talked a bit about this when I did the half yearly You know, the one thing you've got to be certain about in the rare earth market is that you are ready to go when the market picks up, as it surely will. You know, so we have to be able to be successful when the price is low, and we can, you know, because we are a low-cost producer. And then we have to be ready to take full advantage of market conditions when market conditions improve. I think though that it's really important to note that as we're looking at these various projects that we're doing and even the very good performance that we've had in terms of production in the past quarter, a lot of that is actually driven by the team continuously improving and continuously focusing particularly on recoveries. That's going to deliver us cost benefits over time and our recovery program looks at recoveries all the way from the mine to big bag, but it certainly is operating at every single site. So, no, I don't think that you can assume that the Mountwell expansion is not on track because, as we said, it is.

Okay, thank you. And the discretionary decision to ramp up the business in response to market conditions, what are you looking to see there? Is it an elevated or an increase in levels of inquiry to your marketing department? Will we be able to view it as a price threshold that you'll be looking for? How do you think about that?

I think the amount of resource is really precious and I want to make sure that when we sell it, we're selling it for the best possible price. So certainly, price is an input to that. At present, we are engaged in a number of discussions with a number of parties with respect to sort of ongoing contracts. when we didn't have the confidence in the additional production or indeed you know it's still relatively fresh that we've got you know issues in malaysia resolved um we could not add substantial new contracts to our portfolio but polar main are very progressed in a variety of those discussions so both inputs will be relevant but yes particularly We don't have an appetite. You won't be surprised to know that end-use customers are on the phone all the time when the price is low to say, well, let's agree a fixed price. And you also won't be surprised to know that we're not all that enthusiastic about fixing a price when the price is low. So the negotiations are ongoing.

What is your mindset when you, what are you seeking to do with your contract book? What does the ideal contract book look like from here?

You know, I don't think there is a single ideal contract. I think the trick in any business, I mean, you know, without getting too theoretical, it's about risk management. So having a pricing portfolio which allows you to manage risk, price risk is, very attractive, and so that means having a variety of different price formulas. However, there are limited opportunities, not with anyone, anyone might like to tell you, to sell NDPR without it ultimately having some sort of reference to the market price. It's processed into a metal and a magnet and so therefore our opportunities to introduce differentiation around the chemical or physical form are somewhat limited. And so unlike the work that we're doing and all of our R&D is really focused into the use of things like our cerium and to a lesser extent lanthanum catalysts in the new energy fuels. In those areas we have an opportunity to really differentiate the product both chemically and physically. We've now registered a number of patents in that area that we believe will give us real value over time. But with the rest, it's really making sure that we balance our portfolio with NDPR, that we balance our portfolio. And we have some which are at fixed price, some which follow, and some which follow the market. And, you know, as I said previously, some which are floor ceiling. And, you know, that's the way that I think we manage price risk best in our business.

Okay, thank you very much for your perspectives, Amanda.

Thanks, Daniel.

Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Al Harvey from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Amanda and team. You mentioned in your opening remarks that the confidence feedback around pricing was that you're expecting to see a bit of a recovery, and you also mentioned that a lot of China players are underwater below cost support here. I just wanted to clarify that. if it's your impression that that's across all players, including smaller and higher cost producers, and whether or not the larger players are kind of sitting below cost support level here.

I think that we have a fairly confident view that there are only two firms which can be sustainably producing NDPR oxide profitably at this sort of price, and that's Northern Rare Earths, which still has got, we would say, a slightly lower cost base than ours, and some of that's driven certainly by volume. and that everybody else is either marginal or loss making at these prices.

Sure, thanks Amanda. In terms of your comments around the excess cracking and leaching capacity that you've got now, I guess we're trying to understand how we think about utilisation of this and how you weigh it up against potential upstream development in Malaysia. Just noting the clays typically don't need packing and leaching, so it doesn't really resolve that overcapacity.

Yeah, that's right. If we have mixture area, if the material which will come out of the ionic clay developments in Malaysia will be a mixture of carbonate, which is another reason why we've made this significant investment in the front end facility to receive mixed rare earth carbonate in Malaysia. We have opportunities to further increase Mountwell production over time, but as I was asked earlier by Austin, we would like to think that other projects are able to come to market with Concentrate and that we are able to provide a non-Chinese outlet for the processing of that concentrate. At present a number of firms have reviewed their investment models and a number of them are talking about production of concentrate which will inevitably be sold into the Chinese market. you know, without being too jingoistic, I applaud the Made in Australia policy and wouldn't it be good if we could process it domestically?

Yeah, makes sense. Maybe just finally, with the US project, are we likely to get a study before ground is potentially broken at the end of the year?

A study? Well, we're doing our studies and our planning. We weren't planning to specifically release a study, no. We are working closely with our partner and you know, we operate with that partner on the basis of certain agreements with respect to what we do when and with what level of confidentiality.

Cool. Thanks, man. Maybe just, if I could just squeeze one last one in, I just know the revenue numbers presented on a gross basis this quarter. So last year, it looks like that was $112 million net on a gross basis. It was 136. I'm just, I'm wondering what the change in the presentation is there, and is there a like-for-like number that we can use to kind of compare on the net basis?

Look, we just found there's just a better number because the price is quite volatile at present, and so it's difficult for us to finalise them, and as you would know, we sell material that SOGITS holds in Japan, which is then sold through to the end user customers where final pricing is resolved. And so that's the reason why we've presented it in this way, because whilst we account for it on a ... Gav Enns can jump in if I've got this wrong, but I believe we track it on a weekly basis and account for it pretty much on a monthly basis. It's bouncing around a lot, so we felt this was a better way to do it. Govind, did you want to add anything to that?

Yeah, I confirm your point. I think the messaging is clearer. It really shows how the market goes if we present it at the gross level and taking out the interference of the of the final settlements, which are really jumping around very much. So it doesn't give you the right picture how the market goes. And we do obviously recognize that on a monthly basis, but particularly with April having kind of a positive price trend, it changes the data all over again. So I think the gross one gives a better picture than the net, which will be in the half-yearly and the yearly data, obviously.

Yeah, so probably better. Certainly we've given you five quarters of like-for-like growth revenue there, which I think should be sufficient to give you good direction.

No worries. Thanks, Amanda, and Goddins.

Thank you.

Thank you for the question. So our next question comes from Paul Young of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Yeah, morning, Amanda and team. Amanda, really interesting comments you make about pricing and the market, and I think it's very prudent you're holding back supply. I also agree with that. Just on the market backdrop, I mean, if you look at Chinese magnet demand at the moment, it's really, really strong, from EVs, winds, air conditioners, and base electronics. But we know supply is strong. in China as well. So what do you need to see? What do we need to see, sorry, for the price to increase? Do you think it's actually Western world-based electronics demand to improve, or is it actually Chinese supply to start moderating, like a rare oxide supply?

I'll invite Paul to speak to this as well, but I think that it is, and we mentioned this I think last quarterly, that It appears that the Chinese government got out in front of its skis last year with the quotas. As you will recall, there were three quotas last year, and definitely those quotas resulted in there being surplus material in the Chinese market. I think that what we're seeing now is that we're seeing some tightening of that, and As that continues we will expect to see some continued firming of the price. But I do think that in this instance we are seeing some supply side dynamics here and indeed our decision to hold inventory is partly also to ensure that we don't put further pressure in terms of that supply side dynamic. But Paul, if you wanted to address that any further, I'm happy to hand over to you.

Well, it's true that the situation results from the excessive amount of production quotas released last year, especially the additional and very unusual third lot of quotas released, I remember, end of November or December. Now we see some recovery on the demand side in China. EVs are doing pretty well, correct. The one sector that remains quite depressed in China is real estate and therefore air conditioning, elevators, et cetera. So that's still a segment of the economy that impacts negatively the demand. But definitely we see a slight recovery of demand, which is very good for everyone.

Okay, that's useful. Thanks, Paul. And then, Amanda, on to Mount World, I find, yeah, the comments around the staging of Mount World in a way really interesting, and particularly around the new thickener and concentrate filter. When that's online, you can push the plant harder. And I know you've got, you know, you did have a terminated throughput of 240,000 tonne a year of ore, and you've been building out the utilities. But once the concentrate thickener and the new filter are actually commissioned, can you actually push the mill... harder so we can actually see a step up in that well production to a level above current rates before the additional, the new mill and the new flow plan are constructed and commissioned?

Yes. Yes, Paul, we can. So even though we have our baby mill at present, it's sort of smaller than some pilot plants We can get a little more out of that mill. So the dewatering circuit is the bottleneck today when we have this beautiful big filter building that you can see in the aerial photo of the Mount Weld expansion. When that comes online, we will be able to press production at Mount Weld. You know, that will be, you might not be surprised to know, that will be more sympathetic to the 750 tonnes a month that we will then be able to produce in our downstream assets in Malaysia.

Yeah, that's great. And phasing, it's also sensible. So you're not going to tell me, though, what potentially the mill can do with the new filter plan and the thickness rate?

No.

I'm just making that conclusion already. Hey, last question for me, and that's just on the US Refinery. I mean, ongoing commentary about doing stuff at the US Refinery, but not much happening on the ground. And I get all that as far as studies and engineering are concerned. But can I just ask you this? Would it make more sense to expand an existing US Refinery rather than building a Greenfields?

That's a fairly complex question. I think that any time that you're working on brownfields development, it costs you less than if you're doing greenfields. I mean, gee, that's not a huge insight that I've provided, is it? You could all come up with that. So I think that that certainly makes brownfields developments very attractive. On the other hand, particularly with this refinery, we are doing this in conjunction with a quite powerful ally who will whose view is that this is the way that they would like this configured at this stage. So it is quite complex. We have made a decision that we should proceed with this. And bear in mind that our shareholders are not bearing a lot of the risk other than the risk that we've got, you know, sort of our skilled and competent people working on this. But certainly not... wearing the financial risk.

Yeah, okay, thanks Amanda. Magistral observation, the chemistry sets seem very, very similar and complementary between LAMP and the other US refinery.

Well, in some ways, in some ways, but yeah.

Yeah, I understand. Okay, thanks Amanda. I'll leave it there.

Thanks Paul. Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Rich Spencer from Canacol. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, Amanda. If I could just jump back to Kalgoorlie. You mentioned earlier on the call that you guys were looking at various scenarios as to how you would look at capacity utilization across Malaysia and Kalgoorlie. I'd like to think that costs would come into that consideration. Clearly, it's too early to... Oh, no, you bitch.

No, you bitch. Do you really think we think of that, Tom?

Well, I suppose the question I'm asking is, given that Kalgoorlie is more than likely to be materially high-cost operating environment than Malaysia, can we then start to presume that while pricing is where it is at the moment, that you'd be looking at a higher utilisation rate in Malaysia and Kalgoorlie. And you then mentioned that lower utilisation rates would only serve to increase your unit costs. So is there any chance that if pricing stays where it is, you may make the decision to leave Kalgoorlie or switch it off?

The simple answer to the last question is no. OK. So I think that we have many options on the table at present for how to really optimize this. We do have a variety of other process developments that we're working on that may see us utilize even, say, for example, the Malaysian facility in a slightly different way. I don't really want to set the hares running just right now with what all those different opportunities are. Suffice to say, that's what we're working on and I can absolutely assure you that cost is a key part of our assessment of those different scenarios.

Could I be so bold as to ask whether some of those scenarios might look at third-party feedstock?

Sure, sure, but I'll just say again, you know, everyone wants to ask us about third-party feedstock. We've been consistent in the fact that we're happy to, you know, sort of assess third-party feedstock. If I asked you to go out and buy me some feedstock today, Reg, where could you buy it?

Good point.

Yeah, so we are very open. We engage with, as I said, all of the different junior and developing projects. We are very open about the fact that, you know, we actually know what we're doing and we're open to de-risk their projects because they can start making sales of con as soon as they start producing it, all of that sort of stuff, but we haven't. There is none available.

Understood. Thanks, Amanda. Just one last quick question again on Kalgoorlie. CapEx increase. I was just wondering if you could help me understand how you get such a meaningful increase at this late stage of development, given that you're now right in the middle of headlong into commissioning. It's not a small increase relative to the overall build cost. And I know you mentioned some of the drivers of that, given the extended commissioning timeframe in the report itself. But is there anything else that you can help me understand why that increase at this stage is so large?

It's a really good question, Reg. And I don't have as good an answer as you might like. But certainly... We've done a fair bit of work on electric backup capacity, those sorts of things. We were hoping that we would have things like the gas pipeline resolved by now, but we've still got LPG on site and that going on as well. We've got the finalisation of a number of contracts, and you know on any major construction site that you'll have some which we've got a one or two million dollar variation, others where we're sort of still in dispute with the particular contractors. But when you get a project this size, just a little bit in a lot of areas actually ends up adding up to quite a lot. But we, you know, I think that what I can tell you is that we internally have recognised and understand a number of the issues, some of which were unavoidable because we were working on this compressed timeframe and in the middle of COVID and blah, blah. But, you know, we've taken all of those and made sure that we address any of the issues that we see may have been there in the way we executed the Calgary project. and ensure that they are lessons learned for Mountwell, which is why, you know, we can write with such confidence that it remains on contract and within budget.

Yep, got it. Thanks, Amanda, as always. Thanks for your time. Thanks, guys. Pass it on.

Thanks, Ray. Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Shannon Sinha from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi Amanda and team, thanks for taking my question. A lot of mine have been answered already but I just have a quick follow-up on the Kalgoorlie CapEx. So I just wanted to check if your original, that $730 million, was there any contingency in that CapEx or not?

That ends. Can you recall that? I think maybe there was definitely contingency in the 570 which was the previous disclosure. And I'm not sure when we got to the 7.30, I think that we felt that we were, you know, sort of on pretty firm ground, which is why we didn't have a lot of headroom sitting in there. But I wouldn't want to mislead you on that. Gavens, can you recall, was there actually contingency in the 7.30?

Well, we had contingency, but it was very, very tight. We did not expect too much at that point. So yes, it was, but very minimal.

Okay, that's fair. And I just had a follow-up around the pricing, so I think we've had a few on that in the opening comments that you're saying that you've started to see some improvement into April. Do you think that's really driven by the fact that you're holding back tons from the market or is there a real underlying demand uptake that you're expecting that could come to help draw down the NDPR inventory that you've built up?

We think that there's a real demand uptake. We are big enough that 500 tons into the market would have some effect, but it's This is really about making sure that the oversupply from last year works its way through the system as demand picks up.

Great. That's all from me. Thank you. Thanks, Shannon.

Thank you for the question. One moment for the next question.

Maybe no more. Just about an hour.

We have a next question from the line of Rican Boros from Bell Potter Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, Amanda and team. Much like a previous call, most of my questions have been answered, so I'll keep it quick. But just in terms of the inventory levels moving forward, I mean, if we see sort of similar pricing this quarter around that $55 a kilo in DPR, should we sort of infer that you're going to do exactly what you did last quarter in terms of the inventory?

That's not our current sales plan. One of the things that we're doing is increasing the production of our separated ND and PR which allows us to address some outside China sales that we didn't have previously. So our current forecast for this quarter sees us holding the inventory at or about those sorts of levels.

Okay, great. And then just in terms of, I guess, finding and confirming everything with Mount World coming online, you're still obviously targeting that 12,000 tonne per annum capacity by the end of calendar year 24.

How do we sort of think about... The year 25. Well, sorry, by name... We will be bringing it online during next calendar year. Stage one will be this calendar year. Stage two will be next calendar year.

Okay, okay, got it. And then in terms of, I guess, the capacity uplift between the two, I'm sure there's not a lot of guidance there.

Not yet, no. We will give it to you once we've... You know, that was the conversation we were having earlier about how much more can we... ring out of that mill and she will see it in production.

Okay, got it. And then just with the cost capitalisation at Kalgoorlie, I think you mentioned before that those costs will be continually capitalised until Mount World gets up to speed.

No, no, no, until Kalgoorlie gets up to speed.

Okay, fine. I think that was everything from me. Thank you for that.

Okay, terrific. Thanks very much, David.

Thank you. We do have a last question from the line of Jonathan Sharp from COSA. Please go ahead.

Just one question from me coming up to the hour. So just one question. Just the US election is coming up. How do you think a change in the US government would or could affect the direction of the you know, critical supply chain for ERIS?

Well, John, that's a completely different question. That's interesting. Actually, excuse me, the way that we see or what we have observed in the US is that there is a great deal of alignment across both sides of the house with respect to China. And that in fact is something which started in Trump's presidency in 2018. And in fact, all of this project that we have really gained momentum under the Trump presidency, which continued into the Biden presidency. So we think it will not be a substantive effect.

Okay, very interesting. Thanks. I'll leave it there, Amanda. Thanks, Jonathan.

Thank you. There are no more questions on the line. I'd like to hand the call back to Amanda for closing.

Terrific. Look, thank you all. As Jonathan said, coming up to the hour, my computer tells me that it is 10.59 in Sydney. So once again, thank you all for attending and for your questions. And as always, you know, Danielle and Gad Ams will be happy to take any follow-up questions that you might have. I hope you all have a fabulous day.

That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.