Empire Metals (LSE:EEE) — Pitfield Titanium Project Update

0:01 Good afternoon, and welcome to the EMPIRE METALS LIMITED PITFILE TITANIUM PROJECT UPDATE. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the q and a tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll.

0:28 And I'd now like to hand you over to Sean Bunn, managing director. Good afternoon to you, sir. Yeah. No. Thank you very much, and welcome all to our it was been a while since we've done a an investor meets company conference call like this one, so I'm really looking forward to just quickly running through our most recent corporate deck. And in particular, I'll be able to introduce doctor Neil O'Brien, our chairman. Very important that very pleased and important time for him to come on to this call because I I think we're gonna cover a lot of very important points, you know, this this afternoon. And, without further ado, I'll I'll start. So importantly, just a a quick reminder of the, of the fact that we're making forward looking statements and, not trying to raise money with this presentation.

1:26 So looking at in a snapshot of, of the company at present, we've changed a lot in the last twelve months and particularly focusing on our project at Pitfield. So Pitfield is just North Of Perth in Western Australia, and and Pitfield represents a a a giant you know, it it's a giant mineral system. It's 40 kilometers long, eight kilometers wide, and we've mapped it to about five kilometers deep. So this is a big hydrothermal system that we've drilled. Drilling results confirm that this, this system is full of titanium mineralization. And and importantly, and we'll go into this in a bit of bit of the the discussion coming up, the type of the type of mineralization that we've been discovering.

2:15 Titanium, as as we've as we all know, is a critical element. It's a critical mineral,

2:23 very important in many of the, of the major economies around the world. I think, one of the most remarkable things about Pitfield, know, apart from the the giant mineral system full of this magic titanium titanite mineral is is its location. It's in a in a absolutely world class location. Western Australia, it it's constantly ranked in the top one or two jurisdictions, mining jurisdictions around the world. And, you know, we are very close to major infrastructure. We've got a great board. You'll, you'll talk to some of them tonight. You'll get some chance for q and a. And, you know, we've got a a wonderful team. We've been building a technical team to support that that we're really proud of.

3:12 And, importantly, next steps. Well, the next steps we're gonna be talking about in this presentation in a bit more detail. But we are, you know, we are moving very quickly. This, this discovery was made, you know, only about ten months ago. And for us to be sitting here talking about minerals, metallurgical process, you know, potential to move to a demonstration plant. And that's quite an extraordinary achievement, for any company to to make in such a a short period of time. But we'll expand on why that you know, we'll expand on why that's happening. So I'm pleased to pass on to Neil and and look forward to talking further in the in the presentation.

3:59 Yeah. Hi, everybody. It's, good to be here. I I just wanna leave you with some key messages, I think. You know, in the first you you can read through this slide. I mean, it's more in the titanium market and the uses of of titanium. You know, I just wanna focus on the the critical part of it. You know, everybody's getting bombarded with this this word now, you know, critical elements, critical minerals, etcetera. And, you know, I think what's important, at least at least for, you you know, for us is is critical just means must have, of course. Right? And the world must have, you you know, these these sort of elements and metals and minerals on on the list.

4:49 I think titanium perhaps provides one of the best, if not the best example of of what this whole critical thing, you know, means. And in in in part, that has a lot to do with, you can replace critical with geopolitical risk and and and, you know, and and secure supply chains. And and so, you you know, titanium is something that is used for different things. As you see here, it's it's mostly, you know, pigments because of its optical qualities. But there's there's an element of that that I think you all have been reading about that's, you know, very important in terms of this must have. Right? And that goes to the, you know, the METALS as well. And and so you're seeing this very rapidly, you know, shifting realignments and trading blocks and and and things like that. So I think this is an an almost ideal time for a project like Pitfield to come along because, you know, what does know, you what do countries want? What does what do, you know, the manufacturers of the of the metal and the pigments want? They want security, security of a product, security of a supply line, long term.

6:10 It's it's all about it's all about risk. Right? And it really comes back, I think, lot of it to geopolitical risk. And we're very fortunate, as Sean has said, to be in the, you know, in in the top mining jurisdiction of the world that, you know, is a great trading partner for a lot of countries out there. So I'll leave leave you with that that that message. I'm a geologist by background. I think what I learned early on in in in my career is you can spend as a geologist, you can spend your time looking at, you know, all sorts of things. But your best chance of success is when you focus on giant mineral systems.

6:56 Right? And everybody wants a giant mining district. Right? But it sounds obvious, but you know what? You you will never get a giant mining district unless you start with a giant mineral system. It's that simple. And in fact, I in in my career, I've seen the vast majority, and I think it's probably over, you know, 95% of the exploration dollars are spent exploring things that that are not giant mineral systems. Think about that. Right? So,

7:28 know, I think it's very important early on, and perhaps the most important decision an exploration company can make is is that initial where do we look. And so one of the things that we look for when we came into WA or into Australia, right, was the opportunity to get into areas that we saw fundamental characteristics, enough data to suggest that we are into a giant mineral system. And, there's lots of good public databases. We have a good partner who who who came in there, did some good initial groundwork. And as you can see here in this, this colorful map here, there was databases, some of which we collected as well. The gray background is magnetics, and although you can't see it because the, the airborne gravity that we threw on top of it, the colorful map there, but it's coincident.

8:20 The the the reds there mean you have a very dense, set of rocks there that, that that essentially follow a a sedimentary, an old sedimentary basin. And one of the things you can see there is is the you know, there's no huge disruptions of it. Right? And one of the things I think is absolutely remarkable about and and why we're able to move this project along very, very quickly is the simplicity of of the geology here. You know, those those dots that you can see there are the holes that we've drilled across over 30 kilometers so far. Right? And as as the text says, you know, 60 RC holes, you know, three core holes so that we got to, you know, some actual core to to collect different types of samples, look at the mineralogy, etcetera.

9:15 Right? But what is remarkable across over this is is just the consistency of of of this, sediment hosted, titanium deposit, which is which is frankly remarkable. In in in most deposits I've dealt with and particularly with with giant mineral systems, the, the geology is very often, you know, complicated. One of the things that disrupts and and could be fatal to to any potential ore body is, know, is intrusive. Intrusive that come in later on and cut cut the ore body in two or or or consume part of it and things like that. In all of those RC in all those holes, RC or diamond drill so far, we have not intersected one post mineral intrusive. That's remarkable.

10:03 I mean, I I I've never worked on a project that I can say that, right, across 30 kilometers. Right? So it's it's it's things like that that make this so simple that we're able to derisk a project, move it along very, very quickly. The other thing that that we got into here is is is very clearly is is what controls the grades, right, and and and the mineralogy. And and so very quickly, we we saw that it the higher grades were coming out of sandstone beds. And so that's great. Right? It's like, okay. Well, that's the control. Let's focus on, you know, the the the the the sandstone part of the basin here. So this is a a a a simplification, a bit of a cartoon, but it's quite accurate. And so, you you you know, the basin that you see there between those brown blocks of of older basement rock is this this old compressed tilted sedimentary basin.

10:57 And the lighter colors in in brown brown there, as you see, are are the coarser grain sediments and the darker brown being the conglomerates. They're still all mineralized, but it's really the porous sandstone. It's it's a bit like what you know, if you think like a petroleum geologist. Right? You have these aquifer rocks, you know, that allow fluids to pass through more easily. And those are the sandstones in this case. And you can see on on the west side of the basin, right, there's more sandstones. They're more porous, and and they

11:28 soaked up more of the fluids. And if I just go back to this one, you can see it in the red. That's the denser rock. I mean, this is not, you know, this is not difficult stuff, and this and the scale is is quite incredible. So, you know, this is why we've been able to move this along and have such confidence about what we're dealing with here. Right? Now one of the things, obviously, with with any mineral deposit is,

12:00 you know, the elements aren't aren't there typically as as native metals. They're the metals are are within minerals. So it's very important because you have to be able to liberate and make a product at the end end of the day. So there as you can see that I think the the the the bottom two there are are very important because what we found and this is so far. Right? But we've got, you know, over 10,000 meters of drilling in there. Right? And so I think we can start seeing that at least, where we've been focusing on. Right? There is a we can see results that are are are perhaps representative in terms of of mineralogy so far. So titanite is is a calcium titanium silicate. So far, it accounts for about two thirds of the total contained TiO two.

12:49 Right? But you see as well in that last bullet point there, right, there are other titanium bearing minerals in there, including ilmenite, right, which is where most of the world's titanium comes from. Right? But also rutile group minerals in there as as as well. However, two thirds so far is what we're looking at comes from from titanite. And I'll let Sean talk about that more more specifically from a from a pro processing perspective. From

13:21 an exploration perspective, and I'm a exploration geologist by background, one of the things we wanna do with our exploration now is is we wanna find the highest grades. So we're exploring for grades here now. And very quickly, we figured out what's controlling the grades in terms of the sandstones. But we're also seeing, you know, that some of the sandstone beds are higher grade than others. So, you you know, there's still a lot of potential here. Right? You can take those numbers. Those are the numbers that we know right now. However, right, if we if we continue exploring some of these sandstone beds, right, there is there is every conceivable possibility that we can come up with the find even higher grade sandstone beds within this overall mineralized part of the basin. Right? So that's what our exploration is really focused on here. Obviously, you wanna get the, you know, the best grades with the most consistent mineralogy to to work with here.

14:20 And and so this is just one section, right, of, you know, what we're what we're dealing with here. Now you you I just wanna point out that the deeper hole there is one of the core holes that we've we've sampled there. We got core four. We're using for some of our early testing to put a composite sample together. But I think then you wanna notice in there is that's just one big sandstone rich succession of of of beds in there. Right? And, yeah, we just drilled

14:50 to a certain depth there. Right? The darker brown are conglomerates. They're still mineralized, but, they they the grades aren't as as as great. But you see there, and we just shut the hole down at a a predetermined depth more or less, but there's about 300 meters there of of of little over 6% t I o two. Right? And up dip from that is an RC hole, you know, that has, you know, very similar grades grades to it. Now, you know, both down dip in the bed, but also across the beds is more mineralization. There could be, you know, just west of there or east of there in the sandstone beds, even higher grades sandstone. That's what our exploration is is looking for. So, you you know, we're finding very consistent mineralization.

15:39 And I guess part of the message here is is is, you know, our exploration will be very focused on finding even higher grade beds in that. We know it we we we know that's there as well. But one of the things that you want out of any of this is consistency. Consistency of the beds that you're mining, consistency of the feed that that you're designing your plant around. Right? And and it's really all about, you know, risk in the rocks. This is one of the lowest risk deposit geologically that I've ever ever come across. So I'll hand it back to Sean now. He can talk a bit more from, the downstream, side of things. Yeah. Thanks, Neil. So I'll start with a snap well, an overview of of of, I guess, the the ilmenite industry or the titanium industry as it as it revolves around ilmenite as the mineral.

16:33 So 95% of the world's titanium is sourced from from the mineral ilmenite. And and effectively, if you look at this, it's quite it's quite different in terms of

16:47 there's either hard rock deposits, which are igneous deposits. They are something like a a titanium hematite mix where the ilmenite and the hematite or the iron or the magnetites that are are formed by these igneous deposits, you know, they they are so interlinked. So, you know, chem you know, physically that they can't be beneficiated. You know, they can't simply separate ilmenite from that. So, basically,

17:13 those hard rock deposits, require smelting. And the classic example, the obvious example of that is Rio's, you know, project in Quebec at Lake Teo. They've been around for a very long time, but they basically have to mine through a lot of hard rock, separate out the ore, put it through a smelting process, and they end up with titanium slag. So the the titanium reports to the slag, the iron reports to the, to the mat. The other other side, if you like, of the equation where, I guess, a large part of the ilmenite is sourced is beach sands. We'll call it heavy mineral sands to be clearer.

17:59 So heavy mineral sands are basically still an igneous rock. It's it's still sourced from, from the same sort of arguably, same sort of ilmenite type rocks that are hard hard rock mines, but they've been destroyed over millennia. And they've you know, glacial actions, weathering, actions of rivers and streams, so fluvial upgrading, and then into the oceans. So, basically, you end up with a with a concentrate of of ilmenite black sands on the beaches or on old beaches. So simply put, that's that's that's the major sources of of titanium. Yes. Rutile is another source, but it makes up a very small component of the industry. And it and largely, rutile forms, you know, much in the same way as the the sand deposits. So they're concentrated up as a as a mineral sand.

18:53 Now what's what's important about this particular, slide is pretty everything in the industry has to go through some form of either acid digestion or smelting or roasting under high energy, under under a hydro you know, a a carbonizing sort of system to make, say, synthetic rutile. And even rutile itself has to be, you know, processed at some stage in the process. It has to be digested or or taken through to a system where it can be made into a a metal. So, you know, you know, it's a it's a complex industry. It's there's no cheap source of titanium.

19:39 Now where does that put

19:42 pit field? And I think this is, you know, this is one of the things that we're slowly coming to grips with because titanite, to start with, we talked about titanite very briefly, but titanite is our dominant mineral. It's normally an accessory mineral in in rocks and in ore bodies, and I say accessory in the terms that it it normally only ever appears to be one or 2% of the, of the mineral, you know, the titanium bearing minerals. So it's not it it's it's not rare, but it's not very common to find titanite, and it's certainly not found in concentrations anywhere near what we're seeing. We've got up to 20% of the ore mass, the rock, is titanite.

20:30 And 67, as Neil mentioned, of our titanium mineralization is is attributable to titanite. So we've taken a step back now and said, okay. Well, this is what we found in the earth. This is what we have to deal with. Yes. There's some rutile. Yes. There's some ilmenite. We can deal with that. That's that's conventional. But this titanite,

20:51 is is that a a problem or is it an opportunity? And what we've done with our own research and I think, you know, those who are are familiar with, you know, some of the the papers that have been published, there's quite a lot of them out there now that people bother to search. Will see. That firstly, titanite is not. It is not a refractory mineral, and it does dissolve readily in, in fairly low temperature acid conditions. It's yeah. Once you dissolve titanium into solution, then the world's your oyster. I mean, basically, we can make from that, you know, extracting that titanium out of that solution. Yeah. We can produce a very high grade, you know, titanium product. It's not synthetic rutile.

21:38 You know, it's a different material. We are making what is a a call it a rutile equivalent, but it's basically a feed material that could go to any one of those feeds, you know, those end users that I showed you in the previous slide. So we have multiple optionality once we get to that stage. We don't require an intensive energy, you know, consuming smelting process. And the other incredible benefit that I can point to at this particular stage is we've got up to 10% better than you know, up to 20% we've measured at surface. T I o two, titanium dioxide in the ground where the average mineral sands producer is dealing with 1% t I, you know, 1%.

22:29 So we've already got a massive advantage over the mineral sands producers. We have a big advantage over the hard rock producers. What we don't yet have, and we're being very honest and open about that, is we don't yet have all the answers about how we can beneficiate, concentrate up tight knight, and then apply these low cost acidic leaching processes. So that is why know, clearly, that's why we're working through and focusing now on our processing and metallurgical design. So I just wanted to to raise a few more points whilst we're on what separates Pitfield from the rest of the pack. So we're not in some third world country. We're not a thousand kilometers away from a port.

23:21 You know, we are operating in an absolutely amazing I raised this right at the start. But if you actually go and research and look at where we are, 60 kilometers inland from the coast of, you know, several ports, the major port of Geraldton is a 150 connected 150 kilometers connected by rail. There's a gas pipeline running right down, which comes from our Northwest shelf, all the way down within a few kilometers of our project. There's high voltage infrastructure already established. And, one of the, the other mineral sand players, a Luca, are actually building a 1,250,000,000 rare earth cracking plant. They're cracking their monazite, which was a a waste mineral that they were generating from some of their mineral sands near a place called Eniabra.

24:11 That's 30 odd kilometers away from us. So got this massive industrial hub forming. We're not the first to come into this area. You know, it you know, we're not, you know, we're not explorers here in that sense. We are going to be going into an area that is well supported, well funded, and has all the infrastructure that you can possibly imagine. So what are we working on? Neil touched upon this, and and it's very much comes back to his point, I think, that why can why have we been able to move so far so quickly in, you know, in less than twelve months? How can we be sitting here saying we've defined not only what the key minerals are and what the processes might be that we can test, But we're now also saying, well, we can now zoom in on aspects of our license area of of this big mineral system and start to infill drill this.

25:12 Not near not randomly, but these are areas that we've identified from our surface sampling. So these are high grade sandstone areas that are close to surface. And each of these areas in their own right, seven kilometers by two kilometer areas, 14 square kilometers, are massive. These are massive, potential for, you know, for a resource that we will be moving towards. So what do we have to do? What are we planning to do? Clearly, we're working on the, you know, understanding better this mineralogy and getting better understanding of how this thing actually formed. But I also think what's important is that we are able to quickly now get representative samples.

25:59 You know, we can get 80 meters, a 160 meters if you like of these high grade sandstones from our core and and test them in, in, you the metallurgical laboratories. So here in Perth, there are multiple of them. We don't have to ship this thing overseas to get a an assay, for instance. It's right on their doorstep. So we are we're advancing that quickly. And what we're able to say is that, you know, with our exploration program, we're now able to confine our drilling programs to these discrete areas with the confidence that this is where the mines will probably most likely develop and the likelihood that we'll be able to put grade and tonnage around these targets after this particular drilling program. So we will come back and for once be able to say we've got x billion tons at this grade.

26:53 Now that's a very important breakthrough excited that we, we look to make in the, in if not at the at quite at the end of this quarter, we'll certainly be making it before the mid mid of this year. So where does that lead us? So looking even further ahead, and I think this is where we've really started to understand where this this the potential of pit fill can go. You know, we're not just an explorer anymore. You know, we we have to understand that this is an evolving, you know, this is evolving for us. We don't wanna be reactive. We wanna be proactive. So we're building a team. We've already taken on some very talented individuals.

27:40 We have a process development manager we announced recently, Norel Marriott. We've got two of the of the greatest, you know, titanium guys I know in this particular part of the world. Each of them have nearly four decades each of experience in the industry. We're taking on environmental scientists. We're bringing in researchers from the university. So there's a lot of talent coming to bear on this particular, project in the next few months. And what's gonna be important in the second half of this year is that we consolidate all that effort, arrive at a basic flow sheet, a design, if you like, for how the processing plant might work and what it might look like, and also advance ready to go so that we can start to drill out the resources and move into a a more a a a measured or or, measured indicator resources here at Pitfield.

28:36 So coming out of this year and into next is a really important period for us. And the ultimate goal the ultimate goal at the moment is to get to a stage where we can actually build this demonstration plant, you know, not not rely on metallurgical test work and laboratories to do all the answers for the process design. We have to take it one step further forward. And one of the great benefits of that is that we're gonna actually make product. We're not gonna make a test tube of product. You know, we're not gonna make a beaker of product. We're gonna make drums, 44 gallon drums or turn the leader drums wherever you come from, and we're gonna be making multiple of these. And those are the things that we're gonna be relying on when we go out at the end of that particular period to say, look, we've proven the process, but we've also look at look at what we've made. This is high quality t I o two product, and this is the sort of stuff that we can be taking to, you know you know well, I'm not gonna mention countries at this point in time, but we're gonna be taking these to, you know, metal producers. You know? Why stop at pigment?

29:44 You know you know, all we're gonna try and approach pigment quality. There's lots of upside here, lots of optionality. I'm just gonna sorry. I've jumped once too far. I'm just gonna pass back to Neil. And and, Neil, over to you, mate. Yeah. Just a quick comments. You know, here you see the, you know, the board and and and management. And and, you know, there is there's the four of us. We've kept we've run a very, you know, cost efficient, you know, tight ship for a for a long time. We're we're focused, as Sean will will point out, on on building the technical team. You know? And I and I think you can see here that, you know, there's there's there's room here to to expand upon when when necessary and appropriate. So as the project goes along and we need to bring in more, you know, titanium experience, one of the things we'll, like very likely be looking at doing is is adding that experience as well, you know, in in senior management and and and and on the board. So, know, I think it's probably I only need to to say it there at this time, but we're very fortunate to have Sean in in Perth and to have a processing background as as well and with his contacts there

31:15 to to very quickly attract and and secure, know, some exceptionally talented people. So I'll pass it back to you, Sean, and you can talk about the technical team. Yeah. Thanks, Neil. I I thought we've we've broadcast this recently in one of our announcements that you know? And and I guess, you know, without going into each of these individuals in in great detail, it's it's know, the Andrew, the exploration manager, joined us just on twelve months ago. He's he's you know, this guy's on-site right now. He you know, we're drilling. We've got a a diamond rig, two RC rigs. He's up there twenty four seven. You know? This this is not some guy that has his his bathroom sitting in some office in Perth looking at screens and wondering what he has to do. This is a guy hands on, you know, marking up the call personally.

32:12 So we've got a fantastic exploration leader. Norell, as I mentioned, is an amazing talented metallurgist. She has done an amazing sort of job for for very on very complex, very technically, very difficult metallurgical processing. I I deliberately sought her out. I knew her ability. I knew her capability in terms of being able to tackle these difficult, you know, targets. So titanite is difficult not because of metallurgy that's difficult. It's just that nobody's ever done it before. So I'm really pleased that she's joined us. Doctor Nicholson and Eugene Dodango are absolutely industry icons here and come from completely opposite sides of the titanium industry.

33:01 Trevor's a downstream guy, really understands the, you know, the the pyro and the and the hydro routes that we're gonna need to look at. Eugene is spent his entire life, you know, beneficiation. He's done gravity, magnetics, work for all the for the major mineral sands guys here. And, fundamentally, regardless of the fact that our ore body is not a mineral sand, you know, titanium minerals are heavy, and the rest of our, sediments are not. So the answer, you know, the answer processing wise is a combination of these two guys' expertise. Can you know, how do we separate, get the effective liberation, get the, you know, get the beneficiation of a high grade product, and then apply the hydrometallurgical, the atmospheric low, you know, low temperature routes that we need to make an incredibly valuable titanium dioxide pigment type material.

34:02 So we're gonna add to this list, by the way. This is not, not the full team. We are looking to diversify the team, bring in other specialists in different areas, and continue to, you know, build up an extremely talented technical team to take this through to, you know, to, you know, to commercialization. I'm just gonna talk briefly to the slide, not that I necessarily need to flag exactly what's been happening over the, you know, over well, not just the last few months, but over the last twelve months. We've got a, you know, we've got a a broad mix of, retail type investment at the moment. Not a lot of big funds have come in yet. We've got some great cornerstone investors who've been with us a very long time, and I I look.

34:52 Without mentioning their names directly, I you know, they know who I'm talking about, and I I sincerely thank them for their loyalty and support over this, long journey. But, you know, what what excites me, I think, most of all is the opportunity that this represents. And and it was described to me in a way that I I sort of thought was, you know, you know, I'm not a gambling person per se, but, you know, people are sitting here saying, right. So we're not quite sure what the value of Pitfield is at the moment, but it's, you know, it's it's huge. It's high grade. It's soft rock. Great location. There's lots of positives, but you haven't yet, you know, opened up the you haven't got the key yet, if you like, to to opening up this big treasure chest.

35:38 You know, what's that gonna cost to get to? And and, you know, we can't, you know, we can't put numbers on the table just yet. But, you know, once the demonstration plant is built and operating and we're making and proving that we can make a high grade titanium dioxide product, well, hell, we've opened up the treasure chest. Yeah. People will believe that this thing is going to be, you know, you know, a complete game changer. This is a disruptor for the entire industry. And and what value do you put on that then? So for a very small investment over this particular period in time relative to the value that you can create, you know, that's what that's what EMPIRE represents. That's what Pitfield represents. You know?

36:23 A a a modest amount of CapEx is gonna get us to an awful lot of value if all those, you know, all that technical issues that we are working our way through, you know, all fall into place, which is what we expect. So I'll leave you on that note. I'm gonna pass back to Neil. Yeah. Thanks, Sean. Just to I'll leave you with some of the the messages I think are probably most in in in important. On on value, you know, when you're dealing with something as special as a situation like this, and and, you know, what is the value of scarcity? Right?

37:09 Know what? I don't like to use the word unique because at a, you know, at a various scale, all all deposits are unique. Right? Know, I think the way to look at it is in the titanium space, yeah, it's special for sure. Right? But you can you can compare it in a different way. And, you know, if you if you look at in some of the commodities that I've I've explored for and been involved with in significant discoveries over my career. But when you when you look at sediment hosted systems, right, well, the largest gold deposit or district, if you will, giant mineral system in Nevada is a sediment hosted one. I mean, VITED is also sediment hosted.

37:56 Zinc, you know, you've got Mount Isa, Red Dog. Right? They're sediment hosted zinc. They're the world's largest. They're giant mineral systems. Right? Uranium, the Athabasca Basin. There's nothing like it. Sediment hosted, you you know, systems. Right? And, of course, copper. Right? Kupa Shipper. It covers, you you know, a large part of of Central Europe, one mineral system. Right? And and and, of course, Central Africa. These are the this is what these these basinal sediment hosted systems do. Right? And and and it's not necessarily they're large, but they're robust. These are really strong mineral systems that do very special things. It's kinda like, you know, Olympic athletes. Right? There's athletes. There's super athletes. And then, you know, there's there's the the exceptional ones, right, that just do absolutely amazing things.

38:48 And and and that's really where Pitfield what we feel about Pitfield is it's the titanium member of this very special class of of of giant ore deposit, giant mineral systems. And and I'll and I'll say one more thing aspect of of that. As we see this world become, you know, more risky And, you know, people have, are looking at and they know that, you know, we still need metals, you know, to to make the tools of civilization and and and and all of that. Right? But I but I think the world is is, you know, well on the down the path of demanding more metals come from fewer places. And what does that mean? Well, giant mining districts have always been important, but I think the importance of them is is is going to be increasing dramatically.

39:43 And I think all of this critical minerals and the geopolitical risk and the realignments of trade is is really the catalyst behind, you know, where metal's gonna come from. Right? We need them. We need to call secure. And and if you found a a, you know, a giant mineral system, which we have, right, there's potential to become a giant mining district in in a number one mining jurisdiction, well, that's the value of scarcity. And and and, you know, that's why we're we're so happy to to, you know, have found Pitfield and and move it along. And nothing is is without risk, but I think we've plotted out. And I first identified where are the risks that we need to focus on and and quickly move along it.

40:32 My experience with giant minerals Giant Mineral Systems is is that there's always more good surprises than bad. That's just the way they are. Right? And I'll leave you on on on that note there. Thank you very much for all attending, and I hope you share our enthusiasm and excitement for what is a phenomenal discovery and and, you know, the ability to move it along very quickly to create value for all you got there. Thanks so much. Perfect. Sean, Neil, thanks very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab, which is situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments to view those questions that have been submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via your investor dashboard.

41:22 As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And, Sean, if I could just hand over to you just to chair the q and a, that'd be great, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Yeah. Nice. My pleasure. So what I'll what I'll do is I'll just simply read out the question, that we've been been given. And, either myself or Neil will answer or both of us will answer, and we'll we'll sort it out as we go, which is generally how the board works in you know, on any given day of the week. So, the first question that we will, we've got here is how does Pitfield compare to other global titanium mining projects in terms of size and quality?

42:09 So I I think look. We've we've the the presentations and I think the discussions and everything we've discussed up to this point, I I, you know, absolutely indicates that the size of this thing is a giant it's a giant titanium rich mineral system. You know, we believe, you know, once we get some you know, once we get the exploration numbers out there, we'll be able to see the numbers. But this is running into billions of tons, billions and billions of tons. It's the biggest thing ever discovered in terms of titanium content. And and the reality is what we should be talking about is is quality of the of the of the find. It's high grade in situ. Now as I said, it's up to 10, up to 20% TiO two in situ.

42:57 Yes. The mineral that is dominating the mix at the moment is titanite, and we'll talk a bit further. You know, no doubt we've talked a bit about titanite during the presentation. But, you know, titanite is not necessarily a a bad thing, and, you know, we believe that given the location, soft rock, you know, no strip ratios, you know, relatively low, you know, processing costs once we get the beneficiation sorted, and and a high quality product just completely sets Pitfield apart from the rest of the mining industry. You know, it it is it is going to be the outlier, the disruptor. Well, I'm going a little bit more detail about that. We're happy to talk a bit more about not talk, but we'll publish more about that as we go further forward.

43:51 Second question was, well, is the mix of minerals compatible with the general process? I'm not I'm not quite sure what that refers to, but question is, can you grind, separate, and benefit from various minerals such as copper, nickel, zinc, and silver, or any other mineral in commercially economic concentrations in the same truckload? It's an interesting question, but if I understand what they're driving at look. All of our titanium bearing minerals in this big system, all of the titanium bearing, including titanite, have a particular high SG. So specific gravity. They are heavy minerals. They are sitting in a sandstone sediment sort of bed bed that's full of felsic type rocks.

44:37 So their silicates, their their quartz like, you know, minerals, they have a low SG. So it gets down. Once we can establish liberation size, then a gravity separation process will be a very effective way of concentrating up our titanium bearing minerals. There are other techniques that we're gonna look to apply, but but in a nutshell, it's it's not gonna be that difficult to separate out titanium minerals from the rest of the pack. Once we've separated out the titanium minerals, what we're saying, and I'll repeat this, is that all the evidence, all the research suggests that titanite is nonrefractory and will be quite easily dissolved in a low temperature atmospheric acid, you know, process.

45:28 So that's important, I think, to say right up front that, yes, it it all looks very positive at the moment in terms of how we might go about processing our titanite discovery. Can you validate the commercial viability of turning titanite mineral into a valuable end product? Is a demonstration plant really necessary? Well and Neil can jump in here as well, I think, because of his vast experience in these sorts of of of big you know, getting giant mining systems up. But there's there's certain elements about Pitfield, as we said, that make it different from the rest of the op you know, all that's gone before. We can't point to. We can't sit here and take you people. We can't put up a a a picture of a of a tight knight processing plant somewhere in the world. They don't exist.

46:22 And that's because nobody's ever found a tight knight ore body as higher grade, as concentrated as ours. So why would we go to a demonstration plant? Well, multiple reasons. But one, it gives us and, you know, the the the rest of the the world watching on the confidence that we have a a a process, an efficacious process that can be used to extract titanium. And most importantly, we have product. You know, we we're gonna make something that we can take to the industry and say, hey, you know, would you buy this? I mean, that's a fantastic advantage coming out of, you know, this this exploration early development phase. It it also very quickly, just to point out that a demonstration plant generates an awful lot of technical information about design, circulating loads, flow sheets, contaminants, power consumption, how hard is it to crush, how easy is you know, there's so much information that the demonstration plant can provide that it does provide us a very secure, very high confidence, track, you know, fast track, pro no. Method of getting into final detailed design of a of an actual commercial plant.

47:42 So I I think it's a very important step for the company to go through. Actually, if I can jump in there, I just wanna make maybe a a parallel example. If you go back a hundred fifty years ago to Nevada, it was it was originally a silver mining district. Right? And, you know, at at certain point, people knew that there was very low grade gold there, but it wasn't winnable. And it was like, so what? Who cares? Right? Then the world's gold was basically had to come from free milling, so called free milling gold, you know, and used to use use mercury to make a to soak it all up and then burn the mercury off, etcetera. Right?

48:34 And, you know, in the last century, you know, cyanide leach, a low temperature atmospheric leach, right, came in. It was found that it worked on, you know, certain types of low grade gold deposits. Well, Nevada is the world's greatest gold district. Right? And, you know, using a low temperature atmosphere, you know you know, leach on on on low grade gold ore. And it and, you know, you can you can look at it from this perspective that that there was nothing new about that leach. It was known. It was it was just looking for a giant mineral system. Think about that in in in in this regard from from titanium. It's not that we're we're we're creating some new, you know, processing technology.

49:28 You know? It's it's it's already there. Then perhaps he's just looking he's been looking for, you know, a giant mineral system to apply it to. That's all. Yeah. No. I agree. So so just advancing a little bit further to get through these questions as, you know, as succinctly as we can. Can you explain the timeline for making the pilot plant operational? How confident are you of accomplishing this within an eighteen to twenty four months time frame? Well, it it's, you know, it's a challenge, and we don't, we don't we're not saying that this is our objective just, just, you know, randomly putting out a time frame. What we do believe, however, is that and from experience is that that putting together the units, the processing steps that we need, we can identify those you know, there were there are a number of fundamental steps in terms of getting the beneficiation, applying some leach tests to get the right chemical mixes, the right choices, you know, which acids are we going to go, what do you do next. But the demonstration plant can evolve. It doesn't have to be, you know, completely locked down in in six months or twelve months time. We'll get the front end, we'll get the beneficiation side, and we'll get into the leaching very quickly. And we can start that process and build ourselves, you know, the the infrastructure,

50:58 the permitting, getting the mining permits to get up a small scale pit. All of that can be easily, I think, done within this time frame. And as we go running in parallel, we'll continue to work on optimizing the process. So once the demonstration plant is up and running, you know, we might change as we go. We might add a add a unit to it. We take a unit out and and start to, you know, utilize this to sort of fine tune how to make the best type of product. So so the you know, getting to get to the demonstration plants as fast as possible is, you know, our objective. But now what it does and how long we run it for and what we achieve from it, you know, that that thing is gonna evolve as well. So, yes, I think, it's it's quite possible to have this designed and up and running within the eighteen months, twenty four months.

51:50 And I think it's gonna have an incredible benefit to the company's ability to, you know, to to come back to the market and say, you know, this is the value of Pitfield. Next question's come up. There are dissenting voices saying that the composition of titanite makes it difficult to get the titanium synthetic rutile. Can you clarify? So, look, composition of titanite, let's let's just get one thing sorted really upfront. Think it's really important. You know, ilmenite, which is an iron titanium oxide, and titanite, which is a calcium titanium silicate, based on their their, you know, their their makeup, you know, if you actually sat there and looked at the chemical equations to to, you know, the the the stoichiometric, if you like, breakdown of those two products in acid, they actually consume exactly the same amount of acid. It's bizarre.

53:01 They both require two moles of sulfuric acid. And in actual fact, ilmenite requires 1.3 ton of acid, per ton of ilmenite versus only one ton of acid per per ton of titanite. Where it sort of reverses is titanite's about 40% t I o two, where ilmenite, in theory, is closer to 50, maybe a bit more. So when you actually work it all back, it actually comes at exactly the same ratio. So it's a complete fallacy if anyone's walking around saying that Titan, like, consumes more acid because it doesn't. What we have to get to the bottom of, I think, is what else is in their mix? You know, what else is is part of this ore body and how does this all work?

53:51 So, you know, beneficiation's important, but the other thing I wanna mention is we're starting with a 10% better grade. You know, we've we've got up to 10% t o two to start with, where our our mineral sand, you know, competitors have you know, that the industry is starting with 1%. They've gotta dig up and mine and and shift. You know? For every one ton of ilmenite, they're moving 99 tons of other stuff that they've gotta dump somewhere. So, I don't think titanite is the problem. And, we can make a high grade t I o two product once it gets into solution. That's, again, just basic chemistry. No challenge there, don't believe. Next question. Do ilmenite and titanium hematite minerals necessitate elevated temperatures during the acid leaching process?

54:47 Well, simply, the answer is yes. But they're different things, so let's be clear on that. Start with titanium hematite. Titanohematite minerals is what we call the hard rock. Basically, that's what what Rio, I mentioned earlier, were mining. You can't physically separate, most cases, the titanium, you know, the ilmenite from the hematite, so you roast it. You basically smelt it, to be honest. You melt it down and, produce a titanium slag. The titanium slag then has to go into one of the you know, we we we had a slide earlier showing how the, you know, titanium dioxide pigments are made. It's either the sulfate acid leach or the chloride route. Yeah. Those things all have to be hit with a with a intensive, excessive sulfuric acid at very high temperature.

55:39 Same for ilmenite. If you have a low grade ilmenite material that goes into the sulfate, the sulfate pigment industry, you know, it it generally is leached or or or smashed, if you like, at somewhere between, you know, anywhere over a 100 degrees, but quite closely, you know, somewhere in about a 140 to a 190 degrees Celsius and in excess sulfuric acid to dissolve ilmenite. And rutile, by the way, gets the same sort of treatment. I mean, regardless of what people say. Rutile is a mineral. It's not a powder, so it requires to be dissolved as well, and it is not a particularly straightforward process either. Quite often, has to go into a into the chloride route, which is a very high temperature process where they pump in chloride gas. So none of these none of these minerals are easy to get from the mineral phase into titanium dioxide.

56:40 And, you know, that that's just fact. How confident are you in obtaining government support for the project? Well, we're already here getting some government support. We've had funding for some of our drilling, our core drilling. We are working closely with various agencies now to identify, you know, what sort of support there is for the critical, you know, titanium being a critical metal or critical element here in particularly in Australia. But probably the best example of real government funding that's happened in the recent times is the the Eluka project, this Rim Reyes project down the road where they're cracking monazite, the the federal government and other, government support combined put in $1,250,000,000 to build the plant as a, you know, very low cost, hardly any interest on that to to a Luca and all because rare earths are classified as critical.

57:47 So we've already identified the agencies that we need to talk to. I'm, you know, highly confident as we advance the project that we will, you know, we will see further government support for, for a critical metal industry to be created here in Western Australia. Yeah. No. That's that was the key questions that I had to, had popped up. Neil, is any of those, others, if you're able to to jump in, feel free? Well, maybe just a a a a common. You've been talking about, you you know, the different feedstocks, if you will, that that there are. I I happen to was talking to a a marketing expert yesterday, and he he had recently been over to visit one of the big Japanese titanium producers.

58:56 And he he he mentioned to me about the the feedstock, and he showed you two different kind of stockpiles that they had. And by the way, the Japanese are are are are have been taking advantage of trying to fill the gap, if you will, with some of these supply disruptions, particularly from Russia. Right? That that's going on here. It's a great opportunity for for for the Japanese. But, you know, they don't they don't have their own titanium mine production, they have to import these feedstocks. And and the two that he was basically, he was showing. Right? One, you know, one was a titanium slag coming from one part of the world, and the other was a a, you know, a a rutile mineral sand concentrate coming from, you know, kinda guess where. Right?

59:45 You know? And two completely different feedstocks. And I and and I was thinking about this, and and, you know, and I've I I've got a lot of background in mine operations as as well and and and particularly in camps where you've got different types of ore ore deposits and there's one plant. What does a plant always want? It wants consistency. So what do you have to do when you have different supplies? You have to have big stockpiles, and you gotta blend them and and try to homogenize it. And if you got two completely different things, man, it's just it's not what you want. Right? I mean, ideally, what do you, you know, what do you want? You want one supply that's consistent, that that you know is gonna work, right, and it's gonna go on for a long, long, long time.

1:00:32 And I think that's in in part the opportunity at Pitfield here, right, is is is to provide that and coming again from, you know, world's best mining jurisdiction, right, where the rules are known. It's stable. The rules aren't gonna change. Right? You know, there's nobody, you know, that's gonna disrupt it all. Right? And I I think that's to me, that's you know, the more I I I learn about the titanium industry here, the more I I I see the the role and the place for deposit a and and and a stable supply of a high quality product for some of these these major players in the in in the industry. Yeah. No. Thanks, Neil. Look, the majority of the questions, think, we've either we've either answered during the presentation or there are other questions that we'll respond to outside of this particular conference call. We'll we'll be publishing q and a sessions in the near future, and we'll certainly circle back to any of the, you know, to the group that have asked particular questions that that probably aren't quite not not quite in the position to answer at this point in time, but we will certainly come back to those and follow-up with, with more advice.

1:01:57 I'm just mindful of the time. We've just ticked over the the hour. Yes. Sean, Neil, thank you very much for your time, and thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the 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, but I'm sure you'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of EMPIRE METALS LIMITED, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.