Prepare to unlock the secrets of mineral exploration with Dr. Michael Jones from Impact Minerals, who joins us to dissect the company's strategic journey towards finding world-class mineral deposits. Dr. Jones, a veritable treasure trove of knowledge, illuminates the ins and outs of the Lake Hope High Purity Aluminum Project, revealing its economic significance, thrilling advancements, and the critical negotiations with the Ngaju peoples that could reshape the industry's future. If you're captivated by the complexities of the mining sector and its influence on market capitalization, this is the episode you can't afford to miss.
Venture into the realm of high purity alumina (HPA), a mineral that's become the linchpin of modern industries and has staked its claim on critical mineral lists globally. Dr. Jones details the substantial funding opportunities for HPA projects, inspired by the likes of alpha hpa (A4N) and their achievements, while also guiding us through the electrifying prospects of new mineral discoveries like the Arken project. In a world where technology's hunger for high-grade minerals is insatiable, join us for this episode that concludes with a forecast of HPA's essential roles and market expansion by 2026-2027. It's a profound glimpse into the future of tech and the strategic moves shaping a billion-dollar industry.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andrew Musgrave (00:01):
Welcome to ASX Briefs.
I'm your host, Andrew Musgrave,and today we have the pleasure
of speaking with Dr MichaelJones, the Managing Director of
Impact Minerals.
We'll delve into the company'sdiverse exploration projects,
including their flagship LakeHope project, and discuss the
company's strategic approachesand recent advancements in
mineral exploration.
Mike, thanks for joining ustoday and welcome to the ASX
(00:23):
Briefs podcast.
Dr. Michael Jones (00:27):
Yeah, great to be here, Andrew, and it's our
inaugural podcast, so verypleased to be speaking to you.
Andrew Musgrave (00:32):
Very good.
So let's just get started.
If you can just give us a briefoverview of Impact Minerals and
the key focus areas for yourexploration and development
activities.
Dr. Michael Jones (00:42):
Yes we listed on the ASX back in 2006, and I
had a history of projectgeneration in a number of
companies, but in particularWestern Mining Corporation,
which some of your listenersmight remember.
They were eventually taken overby BHP.
But all of that work that wedid during that was really
looking for what we like to callworld-class deposits.
Now it's become a bit of atrope in a way to do that.
(01:05):
But what I've found over theyears is that unless it is a
world-class deposit and I'mgoing to quote things like the
De Grey discovery, the Bellevuediscovery, even Chalice, I know
it's come off a little bit andmore recently Azure these are
companies that sort of reached abillion-dollar market cap
really without actually turninga sod of earth with a mine.
You know, we see a lot ofcompanies out there that have
(01:27):
got market caps, say $150million, $250 million, and
they're sort of one-minecompanies and it's kind of
always a struggle and it takesalmost as long to bring those
into production as it does abigger deposit.
So, look, Impact has alwaysbeen focused on the bigger
things.
They are few and far between,and so some of those companies I
just described, like Azure wasa 20-year overnight success.
(01:48):
I think De Grey was 17 yearsand so they're few and far
between and it can take a lot ofwork and effort to get to them.
So the reason for that preambleis that we believe that we now
have our hands on a world-classdeposit.
It wasn't something that wefound, but it's a joint venture
(02:10):
that we have and in a way, wedid discover it.
The owner was actually fishingfor joint venture partners on
LinkedIn and we were one of theones that.
The only one that bid, and it'sthe Lake Hope High Purity
Aluminum Project and we can talkabout that in a bit more detail
.
But the thing that makes itworld-class is that the
economics that we put out in ourscoping study is that the net
present value of that project iswell north of a billion dollars
Australian, and that kind ofgives a target to drive our
(02:32):
market capitalisation to overthe next few years.
But very significantly it'salso going to be one of, if not
the lowest cost producers ofthis high purity alumina which
we can talk about.
So that's very much the focusfor the company.
We're in the middle of apre-feasibility study which
should be completed by the endof this year, and we've got a
(02:53):
lot of news flow to come fromthat and we're also tickling
along a couple of our otherexploration assets and we've
done a little bit of drillinghere in the wheat belt in WA and
we'll have some news from thatcoming up as well.
So look very busy and activetime.
Andrew Musgrave (03:06):
Yeah, and obviously, as you mentioned, the
key focus is that Lake HopeHigh Purity Alumina project and
that's central to youroperations.
Obviously.
Can you just give us a bit of aguide of the project scale, its
key components and why it's astandout for the company?
Dr. Michael Jones (03:22):
So the unique thing about this particular
project is that the materialwe're going to mine if you can
call it that, it's really asmall quarry is in the top two
metres of two small salt lakes,or salt pans, as we call them,
about 500 kilometres east ofPerth, literally in the middle
of nowhere, and, amazinglyenough, there's something in the
(03:42):
order of 20 billion US dollarsworth of high purity alumina in
the top two meters of that lake.
It's quite an exceptionaldeposit of unusual minerals that
are exceptionally fine grained,and so that combination gives
us very cheap mining andprocessing costs compared to
other producers or potentialproducers of high purity alumina
(04:05):
.
And it was one of the reasonsthat I got into the project
because of the low operatingcost in particular.
And when you're in somethinglike industrial minerals or bulk
commodities, being one of, ifnot the lowest cost producer is
one of the real keys to successand getting through the mining
cycle, and so thepre-feasibility study that we're
doing at the moment is lookingto sort of firm up those numbers
(04:25):
the NPV that we mentioned andalso the operating cost and
we're right in the middle ofthat process at the moment.
So it's an interesting time.
I've always wanted to build themine and, as they say, be
careful what you wish for.
My inbox fills up with moreapprovals, requirements, more
negotiations with various groups, interested parties, a very
(04:47):
important one of which, ofcourse, is the Native Title
Group, the Aboriginal groupthere, the Ngaju peoples, and
I'll be spending a lot of timein the next 12 months
negotiating a mining agreementwith them as we move towards
production, small scaleproduction at least in,
hopefully by 2026 and 27.
So very active.
Andrew Musgrave (05:04):
Yeah, and obviously you've had some pretty
positive news flow of late.
So what have been the mostsignificant findings on the back
of some of those announcementsand how do they influence your
decisions moving forward?
Dr. Michael Jones (05:15):
Yeah, probably best to sort of put
that in the context of thepre-feasibility study.
So we have there are fourpillars to the pre-feasibility
study.
The first pillar is actuallymetallurgical test work.
So with high purity alumina,it's all about how pure it is,
and so we have a benchmark inthe industry that's 99.99% pure
(05:35):
alumina or aluminium oxide.
It's known in other forms ascorundum and also sapphire.
99.99% pure alumina oraluminium oxide.
It's known in other forms ascorundum and also sapphire.
And so one of the uses, forexample, is sapphire glass that
everyone has in their iPhones,their iWatches and other tablets
, et cetera.
And so the metallurgical testwork is designed to basically
(05:55):
optimise that process and we'vegot a couple of different
process routes we can go andwe've produced HPA in both of
those, and those weresignificant announcements that
we did in February and we'reworking forward in the PFS to
determine which one of those twowill be the process that we go
forward through to mining andprocessing.
So that's the first pillar.
(06:16):
Second pillar is actually themining approvals process.
So one of the great advantagesof this lake is that it's
naturally very acidic.
It's got a pH of three, whichbasically means if you stand
there in your boots.
Your boots will rot quitequickly but as a result, there's
not a blade of grass on thereand there's very few living
animals apart from some spiders,and so from an environmental
point of view, there's noimpediments to mining on the
(06:38):
lake and we've also got heritageclearance from the Ngaju, so
there are no significant nativetitle or heritage issues on the
lake.
So, like I mentioned, subjectto us getting a mining agreement
with them, we're good to gothere.
So that's the approvals routeand we hope to lodge the mining
lease later this quarter.
The third one is where we'regoing to build the plant.
That's moved on significantlysince our scoping study in
(07:00):
November.
We were looking at eitherKalgoorlie or Perth and a few
other options, but it reallylooks very much like we'll be
building in Kwinana.
It's very close to the port ofFremantle and we need reagents
to come in and that's thesignificant cost saving for us.
So we will truck our material.
500 kilometres Sounds like along way, but because we're
basically just digging up dirt,stockpiling it and then trucking
(07:23):
it off site, the operating costis a mere fraction of the
overall cost of producing thematerial.
And the last one and this isvery important in industrial
minerals, bulk commodities isgetting the offtake agreements
with end users, and so we'llhave significant material to
start that process in the backend of this year.
And that's a process that cantake a couple of years to look
(07:45):
towards getting offtakeagreements, but that's around
about the time we hope thatmining lease will be granted and
so we should be able to flowthrough into at least small
scale production in that sort of26, 27 timeframe.
So that's a bit of a greatoverview, I think, where all the
work is happening at the moment, and there's a fair bit of it,
let me tell you.
Andrew Musgrave (08:03):
Yeah, and I think obviously, as we know,
with any mining project you needgovernment support and funding
and you've just actuallyreceived some funding under the
WA government's EIS scheme forthe Caligula copper project.
Can you give us an idea of howimportant that support is for
the ongoing exploration projects.
Dr. Michael Jones (08:20):
Well, certainly, things like the EIS
exploration incentive scheme,which basically all the states
have going now, has really made,I think, a big difference to a
lot of junior companies who'vegot bright ideas and not a lot
of funding.
And the governments havegenerally been quite generous
with the funding of theseprojects because they've
demonstrated it does lead toincreased exploration success.
(08:43):
So it's a great longer-termreturn for the governments.
So in the case of the, so wehave a Caligula copper target.
It's in the Wheatbelt about150km outside Perth.
We'll be drilling that laterthis year.
That's a standard sort ofexploration project, if you like
, and we've got geophysicalanomalies, geochemical anomalies
there and we'll be drillingthat to test it for copper.
(09:04):
In terms of the HPA high purityalumina, it's actually listed on
the critical minerals list forAustralia along with Europe and
North America, and that doesopen up significant funding
avenues for us going forward.
An example of that fundingrecently, the leading player in
(09:25):
this space is a company calledAlpha HPA code is A4N, and
people should look at theirhistory because I'm hoping to
follow in their footsteps.
They recently received 400million dollars in low cost
loans to help build their mainplant and that's the sort of
size and scale of plant we'll belooking at, although our
process is simpler and cheaperand so it won't cost as much.
But that's a sort of example ofthe money that is, you know,
(09:47):
floating around.
You obviously got to go throughprocesses to get it, because
HPA is on the critical mineralslist.
Andrew Musgrave (09:53):
Yeah, and I think, like as you said, the
government's been very proactivein that space around their
critical minerals and how theywant to develop a whole range of
industries locally.
So now, just putting Lake Hopeaside just for a moment, are
there any new areas or mineralsthat you're actually looking to
explore in the near future?
Dr. Michael Jones (10:13):
So, as I'd like to say, news flows are
going to be dominantly the testwork and progress on the
pre-feasibility study.
They're perhaps not the sexiestthings to be putting out into
the marketplace.
And so we are exploring ourArken project, which has got the
Caligula target associated init, and so we've got there's
plenty of nickel, copper, PGD,lithium and gold targets in
(10:36):
there that we're very keen tokeep following up and in that
sense we keep the explorationsizzle going as well.
But the other parts of ourportfolio we are, or were, a
project generator.
We're now a developer thatwe've had on the books for a
little while.
We're looking to rationalisethat.
We have a possible IPO of somecopper gold assets in New South
(10:58):
Wales.
We also have a possible jointventure on our Broken Hill
project where we're one of thelargest ground holders around
the world-class mine there, andthat was actually.
Listeners might not know, butwe were one of the first seven
companies in the first cohort ofthe BHP explore program, a
world recognized program to helpfund juniors in association
(11:20):
with BHP.
That was a fabulous experienceand that was pushing forward our
Broken Hill project.
So that will probably also goout the door as a joint venture
I'm always keen to maintainequity in my projects because I
still have great belief in them.
We can only do so much.
And then we've got a fewsmaller deals lined up on some
of our other projects.
So we're progressivelyrationalising, but keeping going
(11:41):
with with Arkun, so thatsometime next year assuming the
PFS goes all according to planand so far it is then we'll look
to do something with Arkun andget exclusively focused on Lake
Hope.
Andrew Musgrave (11:52):
All right, plenty going on.
I think, just to wrap things up, are there any sort of key
messages you would like to putout to the market to see how
2024 will unfold?
Dr. Michael Jones (12:02):
So our key target is to get to the
successful end of thepre-feasibility study.
That will really put us on afirm footing then to head
towards mining over the nextcouple of years.
And look, one of the keydrivers for all of this is that
high-purity alumina has two mainuses.
One is in batteries basicallystops them exploding because
it's thermally inert, and if yourecall, the Samsung phones were
(12:24):
exploding a few years ago andalso the Tesla batteries
catching on fire.
The HPA in there stops thathappening, and that's obviously
a big growth market.
And the other big market isactually in LEDs, both in light
globes and in things like yoursmart screens, your OLEDs, your
ULEDs, micro LEDs andincreasingly, as I mentioned, in
sapphire glass and also insemiconductors.
(12:45):
So really there's a lot of thatis part of the energy
transition we're going through,and so it's not a widely known
mineral high-purity alumina, butit's actually a crucial part of
that whole megatrend, and sowe're in the start of a trend
that's going to grow at about20% a year over the next decade,
and so we're hopefullyperfectly poised for significant
(13:08):
growth from 26, 27 onwards.
Andrew Musgrave (13:11):
Yeah well, Mike , thanks for your time today.
There's obviously plenty goingon.
It's been great to chat and welook forward to further updates
from Impact Minerals in thecoming months.
Dr. Michael Jones (13:21):
That's great.
Thanks, Andrew.
Andrew Musgrave (13:23):
That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs.
Don't forget to subscribe andwe look forward to catching you
on our next episode.
Welcome to ASX Briefs.
I'm your host, Andrew Musgrave,and today we have the pleasure
of speaking with Dr MichaelJones, the Managing Director of
Impact Minerals.
We'll delve into the company'sdiverse exploration projects,
including their flagship LakeHope project, and discuss the
company's strategic approachesand recent advancements in
mineral exploration.
Mike, thanks for joining ustoday and welcome to the ASX
(00:23):
Briefs podcast.
Dr. Michael Jones (00:27):
Yeah, great to be here, Andrew, and it's our
inaugural podcast, so verypleased to be speaking to you.
Andrew Musgrave (00:32):
Very good.
So let's just get started.
If you can just give us a briefoverview of Impact Minerals and
the key focus areas for yourexploration and development
activities.
Dr. Michael Jones (00:42):
Yes we listed on the ASX back in 2006, and I
had a history of projectgeneration in a number of
companies, but in particularWestern Mining Corporation,
which some of your listenersmight remember.
They were eventually taken overby BHP.
But all of that work that wedid during that was really
looking for what we like to callworld-class deposits.
Now it's become a bit of atrope in a way to do that.
(01:05):
But what I've found over theyears is that unless it is a
world-class deposit and I'mgoing to quote things like the
De Grey discovery, the Bellevuediscovery, even Chalice, I know
it's come off a little bit andmore recently Azure these are
companies that sort of reached abillion-dollar market cap
really without actually turninga sod of earth with a mine.
You know, we see a lot ofcompanies out there that have
(01:27):
got market caps, say $150million, $250 million, and
they're sort of one-minecompanies and it's kind of
always a struggle and it takesalmost as long to bring those
into production as it does abigger deposit.
So, look, Impact has alwaysbeen focused on the bigger
things.
They are few and far between,and so some of those companies I
just described, like Azure wasa 20-year overnight success.
(01:48):
I think De Grey was 17 yearsand so they're few and far
between and it can take a lot ofwork and effort to get to them.
So the reason for that preambleis that we believe that we now
have our hands on a world-classdeposit.
It wasn't something that wefound, but it's a joint venture
(02:10):
that we have and in a way, wedid discover it.
The owner was actually fishingfor joint venture partners on
LinkedIn and we were one of theones that.
The only one that bid, and it'sthe Lake Hope High Purity
Aluminum Project and we can talkabout that in a bit more detail
.
But the thing that makes itworld-class is that the
economics that we put out in ourscoping study is that the net
present value of that project iswell north of a billion dollars
Australian, and that kind ofgives a target to drive our
(02:32):
market capitalisation to overthe next few years.
But very significantly it'salso going to be one of, if not
the lowest cost producers ofthis high purity alumina which
we can talk about.
So that's very much the focusfor the company.
We're in the middle of apre-feasibility study which
should be completed by the endof this year, and we've got a
(02:53):
lot of news flow to come fromthat and we're also tickling
along a couple of our otherexploration assets and we've
done a little bit of drillinghere in the wheat belt in WA and
we'll have some news from thatcoming up as well.
So look very busy and activetime.
Andrew Musgrave (03:06):
Yeah, and obviously, as you mentioned, the
key focus is that Lake HopeHigh Purity Alumina project and
that's central to youroperations.
Obviously.
Can you just give us a bit of aguide of the project scale, its
key components and why it's astandout for the company?
Dr. Michael Jones (03:22):
So the unique thing about this particular
project is that the materialwe're going to mine if you can
call it that, it's really asmall quarry is in the top two
metres of two small salt lakes,or salt pans, as we call them,
about 500 kilometres east ofPerth, literally in the middle
of nowhere, and, amazinglyenough, there's something in the
(03:42):
order of 20 billion US dollarsworth of high purity alumina in
the top two meters of that lake.
It's quite an exceptionaldeposit of unusual minerals that
are exceptionally fine grained,and so that combination gives
us very cheap mining andprocessing costs compared to
other producers or potentialproducers of high purity alumina
(04:05):
.
And it was one of the reasonsthat I got into the project
because of the low operatingcost in particular.
And when you're in somethinglike industrial minerals or bulk
commodities, being one of, ifnot the lowest cost producer is
one of the real keys to successand getting through the mining
cycle, and so thepre-feasibility study that we're
doing at the moment is lookingto sort of firm up those numbers
(04:25):
the NPV that we mentioned andalso the operating cost and
we're right in the middle ofthat process at the moment.
So it's an interesting time.
I've always wanted to build themine and, as they say, be
careful what you wish for.
My inbox fills up with moreapprovals, requirements, more
negotiations with various groups, interested parties, a very
(04:47):
important one of which, ofcourse, is the Native Title
Group, the Aboriginal groupthere, the Ngaju peoples, and
I'll be spending a lot of timein the next 12 months
negotiating a mining agreementwith them as we move towards
production, small scaleproduction at least in,
hopefully by 2026 and 27.
So very active.
Andrew Musgrave (05:04):
Yeah, and obviously you've had some pretty
positive news flow of late.
So what have been the mostsignificant findings on the back
of some of those announcementsand how do they influence your
decisions moving forward?
Dr. Michael Jones (05:15):
Yeah, probably best to sort of put
that in the context of thepre-feasibility study.
So we have there are fourpillars to the pre-feasibility
study.
The first pillar is actuallymetallurgical test work.
So with high purity alumina,it's all about how pure it is,
and so we have a benchmark inthe industry that's 99.99% pure
(05:35):
alumina or aluminium oxide.
It's known in other forms ascorundum and also sapphire.
99.99% pure alumina oraluminium oxide.
It's known in other forms ascorundum and also sapphire.
And so one of the uses, forexample, is sapphire glass that
everyone has in their iPhones,their iWatches and other tablets
, et cetera.
And so the metallurgical testwork is designed to basically
(05:55):
optimise that process and we'vegot a couple of different
process routes we can go andwe've produced HPA in both of
those, and those weresignificant announcements that
we did in February and we'reworking forward in the PFS to
determine which one of those twowill be the process that we go
forward through to mining andprocessing.
So that's the first pillar.
(06:16):
Second pillar is actually themining approvals process.
So one of the great advantagesof this lake is that it's
naturally very acidic.
It's got a pH of three, whichbasically means if you stand
there in your boots.
Your boots will rot quitequickly but as a result, there's
not a blade of grass on thereand there's very few living
animals apart from some spiders,and so from an environmental
point of view, there's noimpediments to mining on the
(06:38):
lake and we've also got heritageclearance from the Ngaju, so
there are no significant nativetitle or heritage issues on the
lake.
So, like I mentioned, subjectto us getting a mining agreement
with them, we're good to gothere.
So that's the approvals routeand we hope to lodge the mining
lease later this quarter.
The third one is where we'regoing to build the plant.
That's moved on significantlysince our scoping study in
(07:00):
November.
We were looking at eitherKalgoorlie or Perth and a few
other options, but it reallylooks very much like we'll be
building in Kwinana.
It's very close to the port ofFremantle and we need reagents
to come in and that's thesignificant cost saving for us.
So we will truck our material.
500 kilometres Sounds like along way, but because we're
basically just digging up dirt,stockpiling it and then trucking
(07:23):
it off site, the operating costis a mere fraction of the
overall cost of producing thematerial.
And the last one and this isvery important in industrial
minerals, bulk commodities isgetting the offtake agreements
with end users, and so we'llhave significant material to
start that process in the backend of this year.
And that's a process that cantake a couple of years to look
(07:45):
towards getting offtakeagreements, but that's around
about the time we hope thatmining lease will be granted and
so we should be able to flowthrough into at least small
scale production in that sort of26, 27 timeframe.
So that's a bit of a greatoverview, I think, where all the
work is happening at the moment, and there's a fair bit of it,
let me tell you.
Andrew Musgrave (08:03):
Yeah, and I think obviously, as we know,
with any mining project you needgovernment support and funding
and you've just actuallyreceived some funding under the
WA government's EIS scheme forthe Caligula copper project.
Can you give us an idea of howimportant that support is for
the ongoing exploration projects.
Dr. Michael Jones (08:20):
Well, certainly, things like the EIS
exploration incentive scheme,which basically all the states
have going now, has really made,I think, a big difference to a
lot of junior companies who'vegot bright ideas and not a lot
of funding.
And the governments havegenerally been quite generous
with the funding of theseprojects because they've
demonstrated it does lead toincreased exploration success.
(08:43):
So it's a great longer-termreturn for the governments.
So in the case of the, so wehave a Caligula copper target.
It's in the Wheatbelt about150km outside Perth.
We'll be drilling that laterthis year.
That's a standard sort ofexploration project, if you like
, and we've got geophysicalanomalies, geochemical anomalies
there and we'll be drillingthat to test it for copper.
(09:04):
In terms of the HPA high purityalumina, it's actually listed on
the critical minerals list forAustralia along with Europe and
North America, and that doesopen up significant funding
avenues for us going forward.
An example of that fundingrecently, the leading player in
(09:25):
this space is a company calledAlpha HPA code is A4N, and
people should look at theirhistory because I'm hoping to
follow in their footsteps.
They recently received 400million dollars in low cost
loans to help build their mainplant and that's the sort of
size and scale of plant we'll belooking at, although our
process is simpler and cheaperand so it won't cost as much.
But that's a sort of example ofthe money that is, you know,
(09:47):
floating around.
You obviously got to go throughprocesses to get it, because
HPA is on the critical mineralslist.
Andrew Musgrave (09:53):
Yeah, and I think, like as you said, the
government's been very proactivein that space around their
critical minerals and how theywant to develop a whole range of
industries locally.
So now, just putting Lake Hopeaside just for a moment, are
there any new areas or mineralsthat you're actually looking to
explore in the near future?
Dr. Michael Jones (10:13):
So, as I'd like to say, news flows are
going to be dominantly the testwork and progress on the
pre-feasibility study.
They're perhaps not the sexiestthings to be putting out into
the marketplace.
And so we are exploring ourArken project, which has got the
Caligula target associated init, and so we've got there's
plenty of nickel, copper, PGD,lithium and gold targets in
(10:36):
there that we're very keen tokeep following up and in that
sense we keep the explorationsizzle going as well.
But the other parts of ourportfolio we are, or were, a
project generator.
We're now a developer thatwe've had on the books for a
little while.
We're looking to rationalisethat.
We have a possible IPO of somecopper gold assets in New South
(10:58):
Wales.
We also have a possible jointventure on our Broken Hill
project where we're one of thelargest ground holders around
the world-class mine there, andthat was actually.
Listeners might not know, butwe were one of the first seven
companies in the first cohort ofthe BHP explore program, a
world recognized program to helpfund juniors in association
(11:20):
with BHP.
That was a fabulous experienceand that was pushing forward our
Broken Hill project.
So that will probably also goout the door as a joint venture
I'm always keen to maintainequity in my projects because I
still have great belief in them.
We can only do so much.
And then we've got a fewsmaller deals lined up on some
of our other projects.
So we're progressivelyrationalising, but keeping going
(11:41):
with with Arkun, so thatsometime next year assuming the
PFS goes all according to planand so far it is then we'll look
to do something with Arkun andget exclusively focused on Lake
Hope.
Andrew Musgrave (11:52):
All right, plenty going on.
I think, just to wrap things up, are there any sort of key
messages you would like to putout to the market to see how
2024 will unfold?
Dr. Michael Jones (12:02):
So our key target is to get to the
successful end of thepre-feasibility study.
That will really put us on afirm footing then to head
towards mining over the nextcouple of years.
And look, one of the keydrivers for all of this is that
high-purity alumina has two mainuses.
One is in batteries basicallystops them exploding because
it's thermally inert, and if yourecall, the Samsung phones were
(12:24):
exploding a few years ago andalso the Tesla batteries
catching on fire.
The HPA in there stops thathappening, and that's obviously
a big growth market.
And the other big market isactually in LEDs, both in light
globes and in things like yoursmart screens, your OLEDs, your
ULEDs, micro LEDs andincreasingly, as I mentioned, in
sapphire glass and also insemiconductors.
(12:45):
So really there's a lot of thatis part of the energy
transition we're going through,and so it's not a widely known
mineral high-purity alumina, butit's actually a crucial part of
that whole megatrend, and sowe're in the start of a trend
that's going to grow at about20% a year over the next decade,
and so we're hopefullyperfectly poised for significant
(13:08):
growth from 26, 27 onwards.
Andrew Musgrave (13:11):
Yeah well, Mike , thanks for your time today.
There's obviously plenty goingon.
It's been great to chat and welook forward to further updates
from Impact Minerals in thecoming months.
Dr. Michael Jones (13:21):
That's great.
Thanks, Andrew.
Andrew Musgrave (13:23):
That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs.
Don't forget to subscribe andwe look forward to catching you
on our next episode.
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