Empire Metals (LSE:EEE) — Recent progress at the Pitfield Project, and future milestones towards commercialisation

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the EMPIRE METALS LIMITED investor presentation. Throughout this quarter meeting, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time by the q and a tab situated in the right corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. Due to the significant attendance on today's call, the company may not be in a position to answer every question received in the meeting itself. However, the company can review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Sean Bunn, managing director. Good morning, sir. Yeah. Good morning, and welcome to everybody on the on the call this morning. I greatly appreciated the attendance. It's a it's a great turnout. We're just gonna give an update on the current status of of the pit field project, flag a few of the important milestones that we've achieved in the last six months or so, and maybe have a bit of a look ahead at some of the the real value opportunities that we see, you know, just over the horizon.

1:06 Obviously, disclaimer about future looking statements, but nonetheless, we're gonna make some. Yeah. Look. Many of the Apologies. Okay. Sorry about that. Technical difficulties. I'm not sure where we cut out. Yeah. So just to to repeat myself, unfortunately, you know, today, we're gonna look a look back in at some of the major achievements that we've made over the last, say, six months or so, but highlight some of the the big milestones that we also see coming up. So I think it's a very important opportunity for us today to sort of give the you know, give our shareholders and our investors a clear image and view of where we see the real potential lies for the pitfall project.

2:18 Clearly, in October, we released our maiden MRE, a fantastic result, 2,200,000,000 tonnes, just over 5%. It is obviously one of the world's largest titanium resources reported. And keep in mind that this only reflects something like one fifth, 20% of the surface area that we know the mineralization sits across. And also, we don't often get to mention this, it also is only sort of cut down to around about a 100 meters. It captures most of the weathered zone, it extends slightly into the fresh bedrock. But what's really important to understand of course is that the ore body extends well down below that 100 meters and we have drilled, you know, we've drilled, tested the ore body down over 400 meters.

3:08 So clearly, this resource that we're sitting on here at Pitfield is a complete it's an absolute giant district scale event, exceptional grade, continuity between holes across the ore body, down the ore no. Down the holes has been exceptionally good. I mean, it's it's basically no meter that we've ever drilled has ever hit waste material. It's it's all all. We often talk about the fact that finding a giant ore body in Western Australia is an is is a fantastic location from a mining perspective, But we're only about three hours drive from Perth. I mean, it's incredible. There's many communities in the area. This is a wheat belt district of Western Australia, 160 kilometers away from an established port.

3:59 You know, we have excellent infrastructure. We'll go into that a little bit more and and certainly have a great government support. We talked about purity of the oil from time to time. We did announce earlier in the year back in June that we've made a a product, a a pigment from the ore body, 99.25 TiO two pigment. And and this stems from the fact that the the ore, the ground is relatively free of of any radionuclide, so no uranium, no thorium, very virtually no color what we call color forms which affect the quality of the pigment. So the chrome, no chrome, vanadium is low, phosphorus is low, all the the key things that affects, you know, say, a a nilmenite source pigment are not a problem for us. And, of course, you know, the the rapid pace of development that we've set from day one, you know, an exceptional exceptional achievement, to be honest, to be able to come here, you know, just over thirty months from discovery and to to have a a mineral resource estimate plus, you know, a a process flow sheet that we're going to now look to take into into continuous piloting.

5:20 So I'm just gonna hand over to Greg for the next couple of slides to talk about the market. Thanks, Sean. Titanium is not just another industrial mineral. It's formally classified as as a as a critical mineral by The US, the EU, The UK, Canada. It is strategically important and has become an an essential strategic metal for governments, for supply chains. It it's it's essential because of its unique properties. It's strong. It's lightweight. It's corrosion resistant. It it has properties that no other metal is able to replicate at any scale.

6:07 It underpins advanced sectors of the global economy, including aerospace, defense, medical, energy, renewables, and, of course, pigments and coatings. The the the key sort of downstream sectors of aerospace, medical, defense particularly have have really moved their focus on to securing, strong, stable, long term supply chains. One of the biggest challenges with with strategic metals is is is not just securing them, but securing them for a period of time that allows large aerospace producers or defense producers to plan ten, twenty, thirty years in advance.

6:57 And of course, the scale of Pitfield fits perfectly into those requirements. It is a it is a product that is more and more is becoming more and more scarce. There is a shortage of high grade natural TiO two materials like rutile. Over 90% of the current world supply comes from ilmenite. Ilmenite as a feedstock is low grade. It uses a lot of energy to upgrade. It's dirty. It's a carbon intensive beef process, and it's an expensive process. It needs significant upgrading. It needs significant energy, and this creates a major sustainability issue and bottleneck for downstream suppliers.

7:49 So what we have with with Pitfield is a strategic opportunity because it contains natural high purity anatase and rutile within this weathered cap. We can potentially deliver a premium feedstock without the carbon, without the energy burden of ilmenite upgrading. So it presents it presents Pitfield as a supply to to present us to be in a position to supply strategic partners like The US, Europe, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and others seeking to secure a non Chinese supply. The the the cost is a is a primary element here as well.

8:34 Upgrading low grade ilmenite is a very expensive process. As I mentioned, supply is reducing. However, we do see demand increasing over the coming years. The bulk of the $24,000,000,000 market size in 2024 is the pigment industry, But we do see the metals demand growing over the next five to ten years, particularly as countries and economic regions like The US and The EU look at moving their their reliance on supply from countries like China, Russia. We've obviously seen tariffs come in and have a major effect over the last six to twelve months.

9:20 The EU brought in antidumping regulations in 2024. So the market is growing, but supply of high grade feedstock from safe strategic jurisdictions is reducing. So, again, it puts Pitfield in a in a very, very prime position to be able to supply this this strategic market. As a result of of strategic minerals elements, we're also seeing a lot of engagement with governments. We've been working very closely with the Australian government, both federal and state. We've already had a number of introductions from the government to two potential future suppliers.

10:08 So there is a real there's a there's a real engagement process ongoing, not just with the Australian government, but with The US, with the EU. And all of these countries, all of these large titanium downstream producers are looking at working with their Western partners, strategic partners, to try and secure that ongoing supply. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Greg. The Greg touched upon this, and I think, you know, we'll just take an opportunity here to have a think about what we've actually seen on at PIFField. We mentioned that ilmenite is the dominant feedstock for both titanium and sponge metal.

10:55 So it is obviously a relatively common mineral found on beach sands and other heavy mineral deposits. Some of the ilmenite deposits like Rios or the Norwegian Telnus are mined as hard rock deposits. Now most titanium, as we have pointed out previously, starts as a low grade ore, requires a very costly process, a polluting process if you like. That's because of the iron content within the ilmenite. So it's it's it it really does have an impact when you have a mineral that is only about 50% t o two and the rest is is iron oxide. Our anatase, our rutile in the weathered cap doesn't have that particular issue.

11:43 It's it's already been converted by mother nature into t I o two. So what we're dealing with is not only a district scale giant ore body at Pitfield, very pure in situ, But it basically is one of the seven you know, it's it's a geological wonder of the world. Mother nature has already converted the titanium minerals into basically a t I o two mineral. Our challenge is how do we effectively separate that? How do we mine it, bring it out into a into a concentrate, and move that through beneficiation process? We're gonna have a look at how the circuit's coming together, the flow sheet, over over over the next three to four months. I'll go in a bit more detail shortly about that. But I think the real value proposition here is that Pitfield is the better alternative better alternative to ilmenite to supply the market going into the future, and we have a multigenerational supply chain here at Pitfield.

12:51 Infrastructure wise, we've pointed out many times just how important it is to have a well established, you know, access to rail, access to roads, infrastructure is fantastic, but the real key here is our access to green energy. So one of the most important things about about developing a titanium industry, particularly if you want to produce metal, by by its very nature, the crawl process that is it uses an electric arc to smelt the the feedstock down and to be able to produce a titanium sponge metal product. So obviously, very high energy consuming process. So having access to low cost energy, green energy, wind, solar, we're looking at geothermal.

13:44 We've we're talking to a group in the in the near on on our western border, if you like, in the in the area where the mining, the the oil and gas industry has been established for some time. We know that there is a geothermal operation there being considered. That would be an absolute breakthrough for us to be able to use what would be the lowest cost and least carbon intensive of all energy supplies. So we're really excited about the opportunities that we have around us within this infrastructure area. We're talking to various groups about how we can access the Port Of Geraldton just a 160 kilometers to our north. The other key factor here is that the level of investment coming from both The US and the Australian governments into developing a critical minerals facility, this project doesn't require huge investment for the infrastructure.

14:45 So any monies that we can get from the various federal agencies really just goes straight into the project development. We don't need people to build us gas pipelines. We don't need rail to the port. It's an absolute great step up for us. So we released a maiden resource maiden mineral resource just recently. As I said, 2,200,000,000 tonnes. It contains 113,000,000 tonnes of TiO2. Now that's enough to keep any mine operating for well over, you know, hundreds of years. So we're in a really powerful position already with our maiden resource. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about our our plans for drilling and drilling out this resource, But the real important thing here is to flag that we've got nearly 700,000,000 tons of that resource, so just about a third of it already has been brought into indicated.

15:43 We're gonna be drilling this resource out to bring it up into measured and the majority of the resource will then be measured and indicated. Most of the resource tons sit down at Thomas to the south, as you can see on the image on the right hand side there. Basically, that's the area that we focused on in our last major drill campaign. But we're gonna go back up to Cosgrove in the New Year and we're gonna bring that up into the same sort of order of magnitude that we currently enjoy with Thomas. There is some plans to drill further to the south of Cosgrove and follow that high grade trend down, so that's gonna be an exciting extension for us to have a larger optionality around two high grade near surface targets rather than the stick to the current main focus at Thomas.

16:36 We talk about this weathered cap and lots of confusion as to what we're actually referring to here. So we've got 1,300,000,000 tons within this weathered zone at the moment within that resource. We plan to focus on the weather cap, but the weather cap extends down anywhere down to 60 to 80 meters from surface. So it's it's quite an extensive ore body in its own right. Now the weathered cap is where the fresh minerals, the titanite minerals that we found at depths in the in the fresh sediments. This is where mother nature has already converted them into the anatized and rutile minerals that we we think will give us the initial feedstock for a processing facility. So we've got a very high grade, very pure ore resource sitting there right at the surface.

17:30 There's no overburden. There's no interburden. There's no waste to remove. We simply have to remove a bit of the topsoil and get straight into free digging, highly friable ore. So we've got a great prospect here to have a very low cost mining scenario feeding a beneficiation plant. We've already announced previously what that plant might look like. Some of the test work that we announced a few months ago certainly was very encouraging looking at the mineral separation phase, getting excellent results now across our flotation technology. So, basically, we're now looking at how we can optimize that. We're doing that in batch scale at the moment, but we plan to move into a continuous piloting process early in 2026.

18:23 But effectively, what we're seeing is anywhere up to about 77% recovery in the rougher stage, nearly 80%, and about 90% of that gets caught up in the cleaning stage and pushed further into the into the the flow sheet if you like heading towards the leaching stage. So that's quite a highly efficient recovery for even a mineral sands operation. We are right up there with with most of their peers that are operating in the mineral sands industry. The recoveries are very good. The grades of the concentrates are now becoming even more impressive. We're hitting the 30% t o two and concentrate marks on a regular basis. We're looking to upgrade that. And all of the tests that we've done to date on how to digest the the concentrates and get the titanium out has resulted in very high leach efficiencies.

19:18 So we're getting about 98%, up to 98% of the titanium coming out of those concentrates and into our refining process. So this is not a refractory ore. This is definitely something that is going to respond very very rapidly to leaching. We don't need high temperatures. We don't need high pressure. And as a consequence, we're now pursuing, you know, an atmospheric type leaching process to bring the titanium out and then take it further forward into pigment refining. The last thing I wanna comment about here and one of our critical success factors, our advantages that I keep pointing to is we have very low levels of iron. So our iron oxide in the feed when it comes into this stage is only about well, it's less than 5% on many occasions.

20:11 So we don't end up with a very high acid consumption, and we don't end up with a large iron acidic iron sulfate waste product. And that's one of the challenges that faces the the ilmenite industry. So the flow sheet is relatively straightforward at the moment. We basically are following conventional technologies. So the the likelihood is that we will end up with a run of mine ore stripping the weathered zone, a scrubbing process, no need to crush, no need to grind. Basically, you scrub out the material, break it up in a in a mineral tumbling machine. We deslime that and basically have the choice then of either floating off a a concentrate from the finer product and using gravity to coarsen up and and and win the titanium out of the the coarser material, or we may look to try and do a hull of ore float if that's more effective.

21:12 Either way, we generate a a low mass high grade concentrate that goes into an acid leaching process, and then we move into purification. We remove all the the materials or the byproducts that we don't want in the final pigment, so we might end up with a with a with a a couple of different byproducts from this process. And then what we'll end up with is a is a high grade pigment that can either go to rutile pigment or anatase pigment, or we can convert that to to titanium tetrachloride and take that through to the sponge metal industry. So we still have lots of optionality. That comes from the fact that we've got a really pure feedstock.

21:58 There's none of these really difficult to remove heavy minerals, heavy metals, and we don't have the uranium and thorium to deal with. So it makes it much simpler to get to a final finished product. So looking ahead, some of the key things that we're going to be dealing with in the or currently drilling. We've announced that just recently. We have a diamond rig on-site drilling out some of the Thomas prospect. I'll talk a little bit more about that about why that is happening, but basically, it's an important part of us developing a higher grade, more confident MREs and moving to measured and indicated at at Thomas.

22:44 We plan to continue to drill aircore and RC holes at Cosgrove and to do further development around that particular resource target. That'll happen in early first quarter twenty twenty six. We're working on batch testing. We're optimizing the float float conditions at the moment and we're building up those tests so that we have a much bigger, you know, dealing with tons of ore now to try and produce bulk mineral concentrates for further testing downstream. But we are working through a number of digestion phases. So in other words, what we're trying to look for, having having developed a process route that is very effective for bringing the titanium out, We are looking at alternative digestion steps along the way so that we can target specific products.

23:38 So that might be to move towards the titanium tetrachloride route and to move towards metal production. So all of that's happening over the next few months. We end up moving towards a continuous testing, a pilot testing phase towards the end of the first quarter of next year. We are currently moving towards making our initial bulk pigment samples, and we've taken on a marketing manager with the view that that guy will be able to get out there, you know, again, probably towards the end of the first quarter and start to talk to to prospective end users, customers about what it is that they would like us to think about producing. So all of those those efforts, those studies, those developments, they will feed into what will become our engineering and economic studies that go into, you know, an ultimately feasibility study process and and lead us to a, you know, a a decision to to bring this project into commercialization.

24:46 So that's a big a big process pipeline ahead of us, but we're well equipped to to execute that. Got a great team. We're working really at at accelerating this development. Capital structure. I guess the the main point I wanna highlight here is we recently did a £7,000,000, fundraise from existing institutional shareholders. With our existing cash balance of £4,000,000, that's put us in a very, very strong position. Our group cash position, which was announced, on the October 30, is £11,000,000. So puts us in a very, very strong position to move ahead with the, the pipeline that Sean's just been running through, over this next six six to twelve months.

25:47 I I I'll just talk a little bit about the board of directors and the management team. You know, Sean's mentioned the progress we've made over the past thirty months, thirty months since the first discovery hole, which which really is unprecedented if if you look at exploration projects moving through discovery and into development. A big part of that is down to this just incredible ore body we have and the simplicity, but we couldn't have progressed it as quickly as we have without the board and particularly the management team. I mean, I think everyone knows Sean is a is a metallurgist by background. Neil O'Brien has spent his career discovering and developing these giant mineralized systems.

26:34 And Phil Brummett, who joined us recently this year, is just has exceptional experience as a mining engineer in in delivering major product project development. And then down in down in Perth where our operational team is based, we we have you know, Sean has has managed in a very short space of time to bring together an incredible expert team. And and look, a a big part of that is, again, thanks to the location. You know, being three hours north of Perth, we we're not dealing with remote locations where we have to try and, you know, go out and attract these, you know, these experts in their fields.

27:21 So we we have a, you know, part of the leadership team is on this slide. Andrew, our exploration manager. Alan, who joined us recently, who's undertaking the the mining and and will move on to scoping studies and and into feasibility. Norel Marriott, who's our process development man manager, who's been instrumental in putting together this very simple process flow sheet that allows us to to make the most of this amazing deposit that we have at Pitfield. And Michael Tamlin, who joined us recently, who who has just a wealth of experience in marketing and will well, is is very busy and will be getting very busy into the new year as we continue to engage with end users in The US, in Japan, in all of these global markets who are really looking for a new supply of strategic titanium.

28:19 Yeah. Thanks. Just to wrap up on this particular part of the presentation, we will be answering questions post the the formal presentation to to answer some of the or to explicitly try and address some of the concerns or queries that have come through. But I think it's really important that we just stop for a minute and reflect, as I said, about what the true potential of Pitfield might be. So we always talk about the fact that it's the largest discovery. It's it's the greatest discovery of titanium minerals, you know, ever reported. You know, the the scale of this, the continuity of grade, the chance to have a project developed in a tier one location that could run for hundreds and hundreds of years is is ex you know, these opportunities do not come around very often at all. I mean, this is really a rare, unique discovery, you know, something that that we obviously are very proud and pleased that we've been able to bring it to this stage of development.

29:31 But one of the most important things moving is is is looking forward. Now we can celebrate success. We can celebrate our exploration activities. You know, we can flag that we've made great the the process development. We've made products that will no doubt be of high value and very attractive for not only, you know, end users who who might want the pigments, you know, the aircraft, you know, the major aircraft groups around the world that are looking for securing titanium metal. But also governments, you know, The US, the the Europeans, the Germans, the Japanese, you know, even the Australians are now all looking at how federal governments can come in and, you know, help support build these critical mineral projects to secure, you know, what is a is a critical strategic metal. Now as I said, these things don't come around very often, and we've gotta make every every opportunity that this that comes across now that we can jump forward, make giant leaps, not just chip away at this.

30:47 That's what we're focused on. So we're really working at a rate that is phenomenal. We're going into piloting early next year as I mentioned. We have several of the world's best metallurgical laboratories right on our door step. They can run tons of that now, tons and tons of materials through their their piloting stage. So we've got access to pilot technology. We've got access to scientists and and and key support structures. We're using all of these these types of industry experts to try and push this project, you know, into something that we can very quickly then move to commercialization. Economic studies, you know, evaluate the capital and operating cost structures, show that it's going to be able to produce titanium pigment metal at a much lower cost than our competitors.

31:44 And, you know, untap that that sort of hidden value, if you like, that we are still working our way towards. I mean, lots of people would like us to come out right now and say, you know, this is our cost of production. This is our capital cost. This is our economic, you know, assessment of the ore body. But, you know, we're not there yet. And so I know that's something that many of you would prefer that we could just suddenly, you know, produce a whole pile of economic statements, but the reality is we have to go through this processing test period. We have to move into the continuous testing to show and and validate our our flow sheet, and we'll be able to then very quickly consolidate that into into our economic studies.

32:33 So I am looking forward to being able to come back in a relatively short period of time, you know, with a lot more clarity over the real opportunity that Pitfield represents. So I'll leave you on that note. Happy to take questions as they come through. We do have some questions previously submitted that we'll also be able to to respond to. So thank you very much for your your attention. That's great. Well, Sean, Craig, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions. You can do so just by using the Q and A tab that's situated in the top right corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments for either 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 dashboards.

33:18 As you can see, we have received a number of questions. And what I'll do is I'll just hand back over to you to run through the q and a, and I'll pick up from you both at the end. Great. Thank you. There've been a lot of questions submitted, Quite a few around the same topic. So instead of answering each question individually, we'll probably group some of them up and hopefully cover off cover everything off in in sort of one answer. I'll jump in first. There's been a number of questions about share price, share structure, listing, intention to list on the ASX. So I'll I'll try and I'll try and answer that as best I can. I think in in response to a few of the questions in relation to the share price over the last couple of months, I guess what I could what I would say is there's been no material change to our operational position, financial position, or outlook.

34:18 There has been some volatility in the share price, but we remain very confident that this project and our strategy to advance it will continue to deliver long term value to shareholders. You know, we're not focused on trying to just jump at short term share price movement here. You know, we're focused on delivering. We've made tremendous progress in a very short amount of time. I mean, the momentum's been incredible. Having just done this fundraise, we are now fully funded. And so our real focus is now on just continuing to continuing to keep this momentum going, continue to deliver, and continue to deliver more value, you know, which which we have done over the last over the last couple of months.

35:15 There's been a couple questions in relation to the ASX. Look. We have great respect for our AIM listing. We think the company has performed tremendously on AIM over the last two years. We have continually been one of the most successful AIM listed companies. We've had very, strong support from our retail investor base particularly, and more recently as the company's grown from institutional investors. We we maintain our intention to dual list on the ASX as we believe that as the company grows, given the the scale, given the world class nature of this deposit, given it's in a tier one mining jurisdiction, exposure to institutional investment out of Australia and Asia will really be necessary to continue to drive this forward as we as we move into more of the development phase.

36:15 So we don't we don't have any intention to move off AIM. We see the dual listing strategy as being something that will work as we continue to grow the company. And so we continue to to look at that in the in the new year. Yes. So as Greg mentioned, we have multiple questions relating to the same topic. So I'll just cover off on the drilling and exploration work that we're currently undergoing. Some of the questions on this related to moving the resource into a measured category. Others have asked about whether we plan to connect the Cosgrove Thomas you know, deposits into a single operational target.

37:02 One question related to, you know, how will the diamond drilling we're doing increase the weathered zone or at least the below the weathered zone at Thomas to increase the MRE. And and and, basically, people are asking why did we choose to use diamond drilling in the first place. So the the simple answer on the diamond drilling program at Thomas is that that's a really critical program for us. It it it really is focusing on not only just adding a few more holes to the database. It's focused on geotechnical sampling, which is important for our mine development. It's focused on establishing a better understanding of the ore densities densities as as we we go go through the weathered zone into the fresh rock. Again, very important for us moving to a measured category.

37:51 We're going to get further information about the average moisture contents, you know, the water tables, but also it's gonna generate some more metallurgical samples and all characterization. So a lot coming out of these just these 10 holes in terms of our development plan. The real push, however, to extend the mineral resources that we have, and I mentioned in my in the presentation, a lot of the extensional work will be done up near Cosgrove. Cosgrove wasn't a very big part of our our initial maiden resource, and I'd like to have the optionality. In other words, have at least two high grade targets within our current development plan that are both of about the same order of magnitude and both give us a long life.

38:42 Having optionality at this early phase is is tremendously important. It helps us, you know, it helps us come up with optimized plans for infrastructure, access to rail, you know, access to water resources, all those things that we're still working through early phase of development. So part of that drilling will extend the Cosgrove deposit chasing a high grade trend further to the south towards Thomas. I don't necessarily think we'll connect the two. They're 20 kilometers apart, but the ore body obviously does run between the two at surface. So at some stage over the future of this, you know, no doubt, we'll have a a development plan that allows us to have multiple mines along that route.

39:29 So, yeah, the major push for us will be a Aircore and RC drilling campaign. Don't plan to start that until early next year. It's it's not the right time to send up the drill rigs at this at this point in time as as the farmers are still moving through the harvesting phase. So we'll we'll hit the ground running pretty hard post Christmas and and get the drilling that we need to get measured and indicated resources for for mine reserve calculations. Just jumping over a page. I might just jump in quickly. There were a couple more queries on funding. I covered off bit in my previous answer, but look, you know, that that last fundraise we did was we were we're really, really happy with that. The £7,000,000 came in at a premium. I think it was a 15% premium to the price on the day we did it from three existing, long term, very supportive shareholders.

40:33 I mean, we are very much focused on continuing to build our share register as the company's grown, as the market cap grows. It now opens us up to talking to larger institutions, in particular institutions that have a much longer sort of time horizon here when looking at investment. And just the other thing I'll reiterate on the funding side of things, we mentioned it during the presentation, but the the the government support is just tremendous. You have Export Finance Australia. Australia currently has two critical minerals funds, one for circa 12,000,000,000, one for circa 4,000,000,000. The government of Australia and the state government are very, very focused on trying to establish these sort of tertiary industries in Australia.

41:25 So we've already had discussions. We have constant updates with these government bodies, and and as we particularly progress over the next six months, those discussions will continue to advance. Yeah. Definitely. We had some questions come through earlier on some of the the relation, you know, the or for instance, the tenements and and our access to the ore bodies, particularly given this is farmland. You will see in the picture there, you know, basically open wheat paddocks that we're drilling through. So one of the questions relates to, you know, how do we move forward with the farm, you know, with the with the with the natural, you know, the farmers, the landowners. We have access agreements signed up with all the farmers where we're drilling currently and working our way through getting it further farms signed up to access agreements.

42:19 You know, looking for infrastructure and other other sources, you know, other potential access to water, for instance, in the area. How it works quite simply is is that the farmers, they don't own the mineral rights, but they obviously own the the near surface land. So we have access rights to to come on-site and drill that allows us to do our exploration phase. If we do decide that we wanna develop an area that is covered by one of these farms, then we do have to reach a compensation agreement with the farmer. But all of this is covered under, well, you know, existing legislation. There's a there's a process that everyone goes through. We can't be vetoed. We can't be told, you know, you can't develop the mine, but it does get down to a a fair and reasonable negotiation with the landowner if we wanna take over part of his his property.

43:17 So I think that's that's relatively a straightforward. It it's not an uncommon process here in Australia. One of the other critical things people are asking is, were there any areas within the tenements that, you know, for instance, would require ministerial consent, you know, reserve land? Look, there it it we've got a thousand square kilometers under tenement, and the ore body itself runs over 300 square. So I'm pleased to say that there are no reserve lands that sit, you know, you know, correspond to where the ore body and the mineralization lie. You know, there are areas of of natural heritage importance. There are there are an area called the Yarra Lakes, which a salt lake system on our East that has certain value to the indigenous land unit, you know, the the original owners, the EMPIRE Corporation who we deal with under the under the land access agreement.

44:22 So we don't necessarily have to to to enter into those areas and disturb areas that are particularly of sensitivity to to those groups. There's no war body there, so that's great for us and and very easy to work with. So no, there's no requirement here at Pitfield to to to do anything that would require sensitivity or disturbance to either the environmental areas or to the to the natural heritage type groups that we're constantly working with. I'll jump in. We had another question just in relation to the joint venture.

45:09 So Pitfield is a seventy thirty joint venture. The 30% is held by a group called Century Minerals. We are the majority joint venture partner. We're the operator. Basically, what the agreement states is when when the when the decision is made to mine, the joint venture partner will will have the option to either invest in the project, either sell to us, or be diluted. But regardless of that investment, EMPIRE will retain the majority share and remain the operator under the joint venture agreement. Yep. Yep. That's that's right. So the some questions about products, a little bit more of a bit change of focus here, which is good. There was a question relating to and a very good question, I might add, to the t o two pigment product because they're talking about different crystalline forms. So in other words, what we're talking about is is pigments can either be a a rutile pigment or an anatase pigment. So the crystal structure of the pigment, not the not what's in the ground.

46:14 Curious enough, we've got an advantage over, for instance, the the chloride pigment industry in in the fact that chloride pigment production is always rutile crystalline. They can't produce an anotized crystal from that process. The sulfate industry, the sulfate pigment industry, can if they choose to make an anotized pigment, they change the operating conditions to do that, or they then can convert the anotized pigment to a rutile pigment. So we have that optionality at the moment with our sulfate recovery process. We have made a a an anatase type pigment to date, but it's quite straightforward for us to be able to convert that to a rutile pigment and we could actually be making both depending on what our consumers and customers want from us. So we do have a a an actual competitive advantage because of our our product mix.

47:15 One of the other things that people have asked about in terms of of product is how do we how do you get the tickle from that process? So in other words, you know, how do you get your titanium dioxide and and and change it into titanium tetrachloride? Well, effectively, that's how the industry does it now. I mean, most of the the feedstock that goes into a chlorinator is is either rutile or or upgraded smelter slag from say Rio and those guys who who produce a high grade t I two feedstock for the chlorinators. So they're looking for generally feedstock that's up around about 90% t I o two. We've already shown quite clearly that we can easily make that.

48:01 The only challenge for us is is the particle size that we operate at is much finer. However, there are technologies to, for instance, to just simply granulate that into a a course of product size that would then go into a a chlorinated, if you like, which is a fluid bed process. So it's quite straightforward for us to convert our t o two products. We don't have to refine them into a pigment that would go to paint, for instance. We can we can break out a product stream before we go to that level and convert it into something that we could convert to a convert to a feedstock to go to metal. So that that technology is well understood and and is constantly being used around the world.

48:49 We've covered those. There was questions relating to to some of our other licenses, in particular, the Eclipse project, the gold project that we were looking at when we first came some five odd years ago to to Australia. We've put a you know, we have made no secret that that project is non core and that we would look to find a buyer for that particular project. So that's that's a work in progress. Nothing to report at the moment, but there is a lot of interest of course in picking up a gold project given the gold price. So I do anticipate us being able to execute a deal on that particular asset. There was questions relating to our other tenement at Walton.

49:39 Walton is still one of the one of the tenements we wanna keep at the moment. We wanna maintain that tenement in good order. We're not actively drilling at Walton, but we are doing surface exploration work and some plan to do some geophysics down the track. Basically, Walton is a highly prospective for both copper and gold, and it's something that we wanna keep an eye on. But it certainly doesn't take away any of our focus at the moment away from the pit field project. We're just gonna have a quick look through some of the questions that have been put forward. I think we've probably answered some of those. Some. Yeah. I think that's pretty well covered.

50:25 Yeah. I think so. I think the just bear with us for a second. There's a lot of questions coming through. At the moment, we can't actually, you know, and we will come back to the market with some answers to the questions that we haven't quite got a a prepared response to. And part of that, of course, is that we have to be mindful of what's what's public information and and already been released to the market. We are working on a number of important strategies that we will come back to the market early next year and discuss. Those will include how we how we advance the project in terms of, you know, partnerships and and looking for, you know, support from either government. We talk about the government critical mineral facilities.

51:14 But there are others out there that might want to who are non government groups that might want to participate. Users, for instance, might want to have a strategic relationship with us in terms of locking up supply. So there's lots of lots of opportunities down the track that I think, you know, we're gonna start working on and the sooner that we can get a a project to the stage that we're doing continuous piloting and can bring groups out to look at how we process the better. So that's that's a wrap. Perfect. Well, Sean, Greg, thank you very much for answering those questions from investors. Of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today.

51:59 I will publish the responses on the investor meet company platform. But just before redirecting investors, provide you their feedback, that's particularly important to you both. Sean, I was wondering if I could just ask you for a few closing comments. Yes. Certainly. Well, obviously, we thank those who attended today and have given us your time. I appreciate that. It's it's something that we we often encourage, and both Greg and I often talk about the importance of of being able to respond to these to our shareholders, the investors, the questions that they have. You know, we're always delighted to try and and get as much clarity out there as possible. There is, as I said, a lot happening at the moment, a lot of work in progress.

52:46 I appreciate your patience in terms of how we're going about this development phase, but the reality is there's still there's still some work to be done over the next few months to push through this this phase and come back out in, you know, early next year with a very clear plan of how we're gonna commercialize Pitfield. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much. That's great. Well, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could the please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback and when the management team can better understand your views and expectations? On behalf of the management team of EMPIRE METALS LIMITED, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all. Good morning.