Asiamet Resources (LSE:ARS) — Ares - Latest News & Meet the CEO

0:00 Welcome to the ARES STRATEGIC MINING INvestor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, attendees will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and they can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please simply type in your questions at any time and press send. The company may may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review your questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and I'd now like to hand over to CEO, James Walker.

0:31 K. Great. Hi, everyone. Thanks for jumping on the call. I see we've got quite a number of people here today. So I we recently got back from Mongolia where we were having we're part of the international floor spa conference and meeting other industry members. And so we had some very interesting discussions. So we we spun this presentation together about some of our learnings that we've got from from the industry, but there's it looks like there's a lot of people who are new to the company and new to the industry. So we'll give a bit of an overview of what we bit of background about Florspar and the industry and what we've learned recently and all the encouraging things with regard to Floorspar and the and the country, and then we will talk a bit about the company and our and our recent progress. So great.

1:23 Okay. So one second. Okay. So it might not be very known about, but the it's the floor spa is a major component of a lot of different things. I mean, everyone's got a everyone's got a fridge. Everyone's got a refrigerator. But refrigerants are a massive end use floor spot, probably the the larger one of the largest components in the world if you include air conditioning as well. A lot of the a lot of the floor spot that goes into a lot of these components is the high grade material, and we'll speak a little bit about our progress on our flotation plants within this presentation as well. But it's it's really used everywhere. I mean, we've listed a few things here, but in addition to this, cement industries, glass industries, steel.

2:15 And already, we're receiving we're receiving interest from glass manufacturers in Japan or cement manufacturers in in The US. But the the interesting part, say, even in lithium ion batteries, obviously, everyone's heard about that. There's a big push to put them out there, but not a lot of people know that there's actually more floor spar in a lithium ion battery than there is lithium. So it gives you an idea of how useful this component is in the global infrastructure and actually the global industry. And so, you know, if there is gonna be this push on decarbonizing, you're gonna need a lot more fluorspar. And the interesting other part about fluorspar is it can't be recovered once it's been used in a product. And, typically, you would find the ability to recycle a lot of components within electronics.

3:03 In this case, you can't actually do that. So, yeah, demand is rapidly go going up, and it's driven predominantly by the electronics industry, the lithium ion batteries industry. So, Matt, can you jump to the next page? So the demand that we've that I mentioned there is is going up quite a lot. And so, obviously, there's it's being also it's I've mentioned it was being driven partly by the increase of electric vehicles. And, obviously, in Europe at the moment, you're seeing people being penalized for having conventional cars using conventional fuels, increased taxes on them just as an incentive to try and get people to switch over to electric. And, you know, the numbers of electric cars being used in The United States obviously growing growing massively up too. But one thing that's actually we also pushed the industry a lot and put a put a real squeeze on the amount of floor spar is things like AI and data centers.

4:01 And in that in that kind of environment as well, the these facilities need a lot of floor spot to go into the processing of their microchips to go into these systems. And they're very energy hungry systems, but also very mineral hungry systems as well. So the lithium ion batteries and and electronics, that's sort of acid grade. That that makes up sort of two thirds of the of the act of the whole industry. But there's the METSPAR too. METSPAR is the lower type of grade, and it's more suited for things like flux in iron and steel production. That's about a third of the entire industry. So, Mav, can you jump to the next slide? So as I mentioned earlier on in the in the presentation, you can get an idea here of how much floor spar is used in a in a in a potential battery.

4:55 So one one very interesting thing here is that as these as these sort of machineries are improving, they have actually tried to look around and and and alternatives to lithium ion batteries. And you've probably seen a lot of different technologies floated around over the number of years. There's they've never actually had much success developing other forms of batteries. So the if the argument comes up that that it could be replaced with a different form of battery that doesn't need floor spar, the issue there is that even if they were to shift away from lithium, fluorospars would still be necessary in the anode, the cathode, and the electrolyte because of the individual properties that it's got. It's a it's a very unique mineral, which is why, obviously, it gets classified as a critical mineral. You can't readily replace it. You know? It's why, you know, when you're making Teflon, you can't get away without making that frying pan without florispar.

5:53 So that's and that's so this is driving a lot of the price, and this is coming at a time as well where global production is obviously stagnating and also increasingly finding it difficult to actually produce enough floor spot at a time when the demand is going up. So our recent financial projections are actually improving massively because of that squeeze. So we'll talk a bit bit more about that as over the presentation. So you can sort of see how over the next few years this is gonna play out. There is gonna be a big deficit in with with regard how much there is we're able to supply and what the demand is. So, historically, China produced a lot of floor spa. And what they were doing is as they were industrializing as a country, they were flooding the market with cheap products, and, actually, that killed a lot of industry in The United States because it couldn't compete with essentially cheap product flooding the market and undermining the cost of labor or the cost of producing within The US. But China now has obviously got to a point where they've exhausted a lot of that high grade material, and they're now a net importer of product.

7:02 And that's that's but that's not helped in the international scene in the as the demand has gone up, that deficit is widening very quickly now, and you're seeing that squeeze on prices that I mentioned in the previous slide. Obviously, very beneficial for our future, and I'll touch on it in the later part of the presentation as well. But, historically, I I was always looking out for more grants and things and DOE or DOD support. And now that there's this sort of squeeze on floor spa, you're seeing more government assistance and funding opportunities becoming available to support the rebuilding of domestic industry. And that's becoming increasingly important as the world becomes a bit more polarized. And the but The US actually has very good deposits, and I think ARES will be in a very good position once Utah is up and running very fluently to move into the other areas because it's not an industry The US has anymore, and we'll be we'll be the preeminent experts in this to try and make up that deficit.

8:04 Mav? So the The US is currently completely dependent on imports. Like, a 100% of everything comes from abroad, so Vietnam, Mexico. But even even countries like Mexico are having certain issues with regard composition of the of the floor spar, an ability to supply regularly. And the that important amount of metric tons is a bit low, but it also doesn't include all the downstream products that you might expect. So, I mean, if you mentioned things like Teflon or lithium ion batteries that you would import or or solar cells, then it it amounts to millions of tons of floor spoilers required to support The US industry.

8:52 Even if you're shipping in steel, it means that a lot of that product would have had to have used floor spar in its manufacture. So it is really millions and millions of tons of floor spar that The US is very dependent on, especially if you consider that, say, The US manufacturers have 80,000,000 tons of floor spar a year, and each ton of floor steel requires 20 pounds of floor spar. You get an idea of just how much floor spa is actually required, and that's just one industry. So the the because there's this sort of desperate need to try and ensure that US industry won't be so dependent on an insecure international supply.

9:39 There the DOE is now investing a significant amount of money into the critical mineral supply. And, actually, very recently, the ARES has been talking with the Department of Energy and the the Department of Defense within The US about funding opportunities to strengthen its mining operations. So it's being encouraged to apply for some of these grants and funds. I think in the last month, I think there were three applications that just went in as well. And so depending on how well we wrote those things, we'll see how they go. There was obviously, it's a critical mineral fund, so you're still competing against other companies. But we're certainly on their radar now. And one very critical thing as well that we have not mentioned is that there is a big rush back into nuclear energy, and you've probably seen Google and Microsoft talking about building reactor systems to power their data centers, their AI centers. But all uranium needs to be enriched with the use of Florspar.

10:45 You to create uranium hexafluoride, you need a lot of it. And so Honeywell, the American groups like that, Arano that have just moved to Tennessee, if they're gonna do any sort of conversion or any sort of enrichment, they're gonna need a lot of floor spa. Otherwise, you can't enrich, you can't produce uranium, you don't have a submarine, you don't have an aircraft carrier, and effectively, you even the US military stops. It gives you an idea of of how critical it is, and that's why the DOE is actually putting money out there. Because of because of this, desperate national need to be able to be self sufficient with regard critical minerals to support the country, So you can have an aircraft carrier in a submarine and and and be self sufficient in these areas. There's been bipartisan support for critical mineral investments and and developing domestic supplies. So whether Trump wins next week or Harris wins next week, it's it doesn't really affect us. They are not in a position where they can pull up funding for this because any sort of pulling up of funding here would sort of damage the supply chain that's necessary to sustain the country.

11:54 So we're we're obviously in a very strong position. It it we have been asked, I think, about who who would be more beneficial for us for us to win, for which candidate would be more beneficial to us if they won. It actually is not important to the company no matter how important it is to to the individual. Matt? So so as I mentioned earlier on, we were just we just got back from the the Mongolia International Floor Spa Conference that's held every year. And, it was we're actually a bit of a hit there because, there's not many mines coming online at the moment, and we're we're in a very unique position that we're coming online.

12:40 And we're the only one that was representing the whole of North America. So a lot of Asian countries were there, some South African, some European, but, obviously, there was a huge amount of interest in our project. And so especially, actually, from countries that have been sourcing from China in the past. So a lot of conversations with Japanese investors, Indian investors, people like that who have been dependent on China. And, obviously, that that ability to be able to supply that international market is is evaporating up. So since then, we've had a tremendous amount of interest in investing in our projects, supporting us, providing expertise, all sorts of things like that. So there should be some good announcements coming out in the future about some of these partnerships that resulted from this forum.

13:26 So Neve? And just to move go into our own mind and what we've been up to very recently as well. So, Neve, you can jump to the next step. So I'm I I think about half of the people on this call have heard my the the story about the project quite a lot, and the other half are new to the story. But just as just as an overview very quickly, we already have a permitted mine site with over with almost 6,000 acres of claims. It's now got it's fully permitted. It's got all the ramp installations installed. It's got all the heavy mining equipment. It's got all the staff on-site. It's already been inspected by. I'm sure it's been signed off by BLM. And in the and in Delta, the nearest city to the mining claims, we've got a 50 acre industrial site. It's already industrially zoned. We've got a plant that's already on-site with screens that are into process, and we've got the storage facilities and the utilities all all were all hooked up as well as our own supply to water.

14:30 And we've even got our own rail spur that's been constructed as well, so we're ready to ship. And, you know, this the good part here is that when we when we turn the taps back on in November, so really not very far away, it's very simple for us to start drawing that ore out and putting it through the through the screens that are set up at site, and then we can ship it straight away. And there's a tremendous amount of interest in our product. So, Matt. So there's been some strategic collaborations over the years. I think one of the most important ones for us to establish ourselves was back in 2020 when we first listed. The group has been very supportive of us, and they've connected us with groups like Everbright in in Hong Kong that have been involved in equipment, design and manufacture for us. In fact, both of our plants, have come out of that relay, that that relationship.

15:26 And the reason why that's important is because The US shut down its own floor spa industry to actually go out and get expertise and knowledge about how you build up build these sort of plants and how you manufacture floor spa. It's something that was a bit of a lost art. And to be honest, we were we were fairly nervous and from going actually out to Thailand and seeing how they do it now, they're probably more confident in our project than we were because they they visited our site. They really liked our ore, and they ran it through their own plants and bay and designed plants for us based on that metallurgy. And it was it was obviously very, very successful. The a good partnership has actually resulted as as a result of the results we got from the metallurgical work and plan the processing we did with Wood Jim and Everbright.

16:19 And so the Kramer, they visited the site, and they've also put together an agreement with us that to supply them with pretty much as much as we can produce on an annual basis. And so that's the customer that's waiting, obviously, to take a lot of it. And there's a forward sale just sitting there waiting for us to seize it. We were probably about a month a month away from it, I think, as well. But, like, they've they're still working very closely with us, and we even met them in in Mongolia and talked through customers and deployment times. And the as we've as we've been building up our networks as well and through some of our contacts that we've made from be now being in contact with defense department DOD, that's beginning to bring in longer longer term holding hands, so institutional investors as well. And we we've most recently got our first one, but we we we've actually had interest from other big potential institution investors. Even, actually, even big manufacturing companies as well that are involved in chemical manufacturing as well that have a strategic interest in investing in ARES. So we'll probably add that, hopefully, as the next one to the roster.

17:34 K. Mav?

17:38 So as we built up, I would say the the the wonderful thing about the the project is it wasn't compared to a lot of mining projects, it's not been very complicated. I would say that it probably is has been the worst time in the last four years for the mining market, and it's I mean, half the juniors have been crushed by it. We were obviously very fortunate that we sourced alternative funding through government funding and loans, and we're able to keep pushing the project along, and we still continue to do that. And that's enabled us to get as far as we've got. If we've been reliant on the capital markets at a time when the the markets are this depressed, I think we we would like everybody else, we probably would have been completely sidelined.

18:23 But now we've got it all the way up till, you know, like, the cusp of production, we can't really get much further. So the good part here is that we're gonna start ramping up again next month, and then we can actually take almost immediately 10 to 20,000 tons out of the ground straight away because we are at that ore phase. We can process it through the the screens within a couple months after starting that process and actually get into that, not just revenue, but forward sales as well, and then complete everything else we need to do. And the the other good thing as well is that there should be a press release out about this next next week. But we we also recently shipped our flotation plant, so we did that this week. So that's a big system.

19:11 It'll be the only one of its kind in the country. It's fifteen fifteen ISO containers of of machinery and and components. So that's I think that's hit the seas right about now. So we should be expecting that to land in the Port Of Los Angeles probably, well, sometime in the next six weeks. I'm not I can't remember how long it takes to ship these things by sea, but they're they I I never understood why they were so slow. But that'll arrive this year on-site, and we'll get that all unpacked and and ready to construct so that when we when we do unload the when we when we are completing some of the construction work, the flotation plant can be bought built alongside it. And the the good part here is that when we get into first revenues with the lunch plant and the screens, the flotation plant could quickly follow after that, and we'll we'll have two jewel producing items. But, effectively, we've got a whole domestic market there just to our just to ourselves. And so and after that, I wanna do, once the once the operation is very quickly established, is that the former, centers in The US of where Florspar was manufactured, it would be great to start, additional operations there. But, obviously, we'll we'll be conservative and play things very carefully as we've always done with with cash before we launch another operation. So we'll make sure Utah is a big success and then expand from there. So, ma'am, so the current work underway at the moment,

20:45 there's still what what we did recently is that we we made a huge amount of accelerated progress sometime in middle of this year. We we fell short of being able to draw ore out install the second ventilation systems by about a million dollars. So we we ramped down the activity and just kept a low level, but that hasn't stopped us doing things like steel welding, utility upgrades in the in in the facility, well installations, getting the flotation plant all constructed, fabricated, and shipped. And so the next stage now will be we have a we have a financing that should close in November that will allow us to restart a lot of that activity. Also, not restart it, but ramp it back up so we can pull that ore out of the ground, get the forward sale, and then finally get this thing off off the ground. Because I'm sure like everybody else, like, it's it's annoying when you are so close, and you have to just basically sit there and and just twiddle your thumbs while you wait for certain finances to come in. Honestly, I think at any other time in the entire history of mining, if anybody else was this close to launching a project this good with, you know, these with numbers this good.

22:01 It would have been a breeze, but we're contending with some very difficult market conditions. But one nice thing is that when we do finally start revenue producing, we will be a manufacturing company. It will the stock and the shares and the the company will be treated a lot differently, and it will attract a new base of investors and a new level of attention. So it'll there should be there should be some blue sky upside for all of us here as well. Neve? So for those who don't know who we are, we are ARES STRATEGIC MINING. We are a junior mining company. However, we're looking to transfer to transfer into being a manufacturing company as quickly as we possibly can.

22:48 So the aim here is to produce, obviously, floor spa, but the advantage we have as well is that we should be the only manufacturer of floor spa in the country. And that gives us enormous blue sky potential for additional operations in the future. But we want to also produce a variety of different products for US industry and re and basically try and be the company that's behind the rebuilding of this particular infrastructure. And the the the good thing about where we are now is because there is there is sort of a reindustrialization process occurring in The US. It's even though the market conditions aren't great for junior miners, we're we're we're emerging into a time period that's very fortunate for anybody with critical minerals for industrial minerals Because partnerships with big companies like, you know, the Honeywells of the world, those kind of organizations, those are on the table for us to take advantage of and work with them to produce more US industrial products.

23:46 So there's it's very nice that I'm fortunate that we get to actually be part of that reindustrialization process because a lot of these industries are obviously shipped overseas. And it's only really now that they have to come back because there's no alternative anymore, especially when the we fortunately have a lot of these resources in the ground. They've just not been exploited while some of our competitors in the past are now running out of that material. So very d very decent position. So we are a public company, and we are floated on the the OTCQX and the Canadian Securities Exchange as well as the Frankfurt Exchange in Germany.

24:29 So we don't need to dwell too much on our management team, but I think we've got a really wonderful team. You know, if you ignore me, I think Victoria, our chief our CFO, who's got about thirty years of of experience managing companies. A lot of and she's managed a lot of junior mining companies as well. But importantly, I think here, Bob Lee, who's our director, who's also the the executive chairman of Group, and a Thai company as well, who's who's assisted us hugely on understanding the market, metallurgy work, components, reagents, things like that. They were also in Mongolia with us, and so they already sell to a lot of the international players, and so they introduced us to a lot of end users. And, obviously, that's that's how we got connected with a with a lot of these organizations.

25:21 And, thankfully, we've also got another floor spar expert in the company, Raul Sanabria. He actually got a start as a floor spar geologist at Europe's largest floor spar mine, MINRSA in Spain. And so it was key for him for developing the project to have him involved, finding the floor spa, you know, where where we'll drill, where we're gonna mine, where we're gonna put lidar and geophysics and all those kind of things. And that's been obviously very facilitated by our VP of exploration, Paul Sargent, who, again, I think I think this presentation's at least updating because Paul's definitely got well over thirty years of experience now as a geologist and running public companies. So that's I think that that wraps up the presentation, and happy to jump on to on to questions. That's great, James.

26:12 Thank you very much indeed for updating investors. If I could please ask investors to continue to submit your questions just using the Q and A tab on the right hand corner of the screen. I just want James and the team take a few moments to review the questions you submitted already. I just want to remind you that the recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your Investor Meet company dashboard. James, Carl, you've had a number of questions from investors ahead of today's event and a number throughout the presentation. So thank you to everybody for your engagement. Carl, if I may just hand over to you to moderators through the Q and A and I'll pick up from you at the end. Yes. Thank you very much. So thank you very much, everybody, for your questions. We'll get through as many of them as we can in the time that we have. There's been a lot of very good questions. Some of them have, doubled up, and some of them can be merged into multiple questions.

27:00 So I'll do my best to cover all of the topics. So the first one, James, if you could help us understand with a little more clarity, maybe simplify things a little bit on the difference between the two, facilities that you've brought in, the one that currently is in place and the one that's being shipped. How do they differ, and what advantage to those, does that equipment give, ARES? So they they are different plans, but we've actually designed them so they can be an integrated system. But it's an integrated system that is two plants that produces two different product lines. So one one plant, the one we've actually got on-site at the moment and is it's all been assembled and is ready for, obviously, insertion into the steel structure is the is the MetSpa plant that specifically lumps.

27:57 Now the the reason why that's in there's a difference between a MetSpa plant and a lump a MetSpa lumps plant. Now lumps sell for a bit of a premium. Now the the issue has always in the past been that to produce lumps, you've they've been done by hand, and that's why they've usually commanded a bit more selling price. So I think I think our partners actually developed the first plant that was able to manufacture lumps that used a automatic process. And so that's that's a big boon. So that's one plant, and that's very unique. We're actually they don't share technology. The only reason we got to share it is because we did have a strategic partnership in place.

28:44 The other plant is a flotation plant, and that produces the much higher grade product. That's currently hit the seas, and it's it's traveling over now to to Port Of Los Angeles, where we'll unload it and move it to the Utah site. So anything classified as, any anything that's 97% plus floor spa purity is acid spa, and that's used in aluminum, hydrofluoric acid, fluorine, hexafluoride, electronics, lithium ion batteries, those those kind of high end things, whereas the MetSpa lumps are for steel, glass, cement, those kind of downstream industries. But the good part here is because the plants are designed to be integrated, we lose as little product as possible. So what can't be turned into lumps goes to become flotation. What can't go up to as far in the flotation feeds back into the lumps and gets pelletized in that system.

29:44 So carrying off that, it's a three part question. So one, we you've talked a little bit about the pricing and the shortage of FluorSpark. Has that affected the market price of FluorSpark? Talked about different types of FluorSpark. What's the difference in pricing? And then thirdly, once the plants are up and running, what's the possible maximum production a day that the company could do? Okay. I'll try to remember all those three questions, but I'm very tired. So I might need to, yeah, do one at a time. So, yes, like, the prices have been affected. So, there's obviously been an increasing demand. I think that graph showed very succinctly how, supply is not keeping up with the demand, and, obviously, that's that's led to a big increase in pricing. Obviously, that's very beneficial for us.

30:36 With regard to two types of product, the most common that's produced is actually float is actually acid spa. Now that is the larger part of the market, but often you can get big spikes in met spa price because there's just not enough of it. So if you'll if the if the manufacturers are producing mostly acid spa and the ability of them to actually manufacture all that met spa gets reduced, if there's a squeeze on the on the general supply chain, met spa usually spikes, and sometimes it can actually jump above the cost of AcidSpa. But the good part here is that we should have an advantage to take or an ability to take advantage of both markets. So if we do get that spike, we sell them MetSpa. If we normally, we'd obviously manufacture a lot of acid spa because the flotation facility allows us to recover a lot and use material that wouldn't be suitable for lumps.

31:35 So we've got we've got both aspects. And you have to remind me of the other part of the question. Once up and running, what kind of production do you think the company could do in the day? So the the plants are actually pretty like, substantial plants. Like, they if we if we had all the feed we wanted, we could probably do 150,000 tons of product a year. And, like, that's that's a that's a big operation. But what I what I would say here is that the bottleneck isn't the plants exactly. It's it's the fact that because we have a non contiguous ore body and we have sort of clusters of pipes that you need sort of ramp installations to go into the ground to remove it, That that's where your bottleneck occurs.

32:21 And so that really if you're gonna just do one mining operation at a time, that might limit you to removing maybe 120,130,000 tons of earth from the ground, of which maybe 40 to 50,000 tons will be final product. So what I would preface that with is there's nothing stopping us once one operation is going at the Spall Mountain to starting up a secondary one. So then but the if we do that, the plants still have the capacity to to to process all of that that product. We just need to to track a lot more. Actually, even I didn't mention on this call, but in recent weeks, we saw so sorted out a trucking, so it's all ready.

33:06 So we've got those contractors who are ready to start delivering product from site all the way to the processing plant. Thanks, James. I just want a follow on question to that topic. You've already talked about arranging sales and having contracts in place. With the fluctuation in price, are we gonna be locked into those contracts, or is the price change with the market? No. So we we sometimes you can get locked into a price if you're doing, like, a pre agreed forward sale, but what how we've structured this is that there is a third party intermediary to agree on on the price. And so you obviously, as a customer oh, sorry. As a producer, we want to sell for as much as we can. And, obviously, all of our customers want to pay as little as possible.

33:56 So what you normally do is you get a third party intermediary that examines the market. Now one good thing here is that we can never really be cheated because we already know a manufacturer in the market, and we know what they sell for, and we know what they sell for in different international markets. So that's actually data that we can supply a third party intermediary with to help inform how they would evaluate the the selling price that we would actually go for. So we're never gonna get squeezed or or locked into a floor spa price at a time when it's when it's spiking. We'll always be able to take advantage of that big spike in big spike in the market.

34:42 Good. Now in in our conversation tonight, you talked about being limited by a million in financing that you're hoping to see in November. Can you tell us any more about that? And if that closes or doesn't close, is there is there a backup? And could we possibly see a production by this end of this year? So what the mining engineers have told us is regard, like, as soon as we start ramping back up, it's, like, six six weeks to eight weeks before we have ore that's ready to go out by rails because that's the big advantage here. It was very unfortunate because if we had continued that sort of momentum that we were carrying on from all that we were doing this year, like, we should have been in production in August very comfortably and been revenue producing. But, like, you never want to keep going with the momentum that puts you into date, into into a lot of debt at a point where then you stop. It always makes sense to basically ramp to to keep your expenditure in line with your resources.

35:50 Now what actually happened is we did have commitments earlier in the year, but due to, I don't know, essentially a bureaucratic system with some of the groups that were investing, Their financial because it fell outside of their financial year, their investments couldn't be complete. So based on those those circumstances, we ramped out and just kept everyone on sort of care and maintenance. Now it's in a very comfortable position. It's So and it's very easy for us to ramp up because we never took everyone away from site. There are still people there at the moment maintaining everything, making sure everything's good, making sure equipment is all maintained and serviced, making sure everything at site is is there, making sure all the the screens that are are ready to deploy.

36:37 All of these different aspects, we've already kept as as perfectly as we can so that the ramp up can be as smooth and as clean as possible. We also have kept up with all of our lease purchase agreements with the equipment as well. So that's we're just increasing the number of assets in our books. But as we close that financing, I can't speak a bit too much about that yet because I'm a public company and it's not closed yet, but it's anticipated to close in November, then we would immediately start that ramp up straight away. Great. Now just a little shift in in topic. You talked a little bit about enriching uranium. Could you explain a bit more about the role of that? And then also your relationship with Nuclear Nano, can maybe for those that don't know about it, you could talk really briefly because we're, you we're talking about ARES tonight. But how that relationship how you manage those two roles, and could that relationship help benefit ARES in any way?

37:39 Yeah. Certainly. So I'm that's actually what I'm I would really like to see happen in the future. So the role of Florspar in in nuclear power is that when you just just to go from basics, when you're mining uranium, the the mill will produce something called yellow cake, and that's in a form of u three zero eight. The next stage is conversion where you take that yellow cake and you create uranium hexafluoride. The uranium hexafluoride is actually the material that you need to enrich, whether that's laser enrichment or whether that's centrifuge. But that uranium hexafluoride is where you need fluorine, which needs fluorospar. You need hydrofluoric acid, which needs FluorSpa. And this basically feeds into creating u f four, and then once combined with further fluorine, you create u f six. There's quite a substantial amount of FluorSpa that's actually needed in this process. So they're the two major components.

38:35 There's no there's no nuclear energy without it. And even when it goes through the the enrichment process, even at the the end of the enrichment process of uranium, you've got in in enriched uranium hexafluoride that then gets deconverted into other fuel forms. But the the good part here is that nuclear energy is making a real big revival in The States. And as I mentioned, like, we were talking about reindustrialization. Nuclear is actually a big part of that. The Department of Energy is throwing money at the moment at at nuclear. So there's been already this year some big RFPs, some big funding opportunities, billions of dollars that have gone out to nuclear companies to build back.

39:24 But there's still if they want to produce a domestic product, they're still gonna need that domestic supplier of floor space. So we're in a very good position. And even even groups like Honeywell who run conversion facilities to produce that uranium hexafluoride and visited our site because very likely, they're very interested in the long term manufacture of these of these gases to feed this this sort of research in industry. And, you know, I do I do have a place in a nuclear company as well. And what I would what I would really like to see is that company become more involved in conversion facilities, which would which would enable a direct partnership with ARES to supply them the floor spot that they would need to create that uranium hexafluoride.

40:16 And then, you know, obviously, if if we were doing that, then it'd be a it'd be a wonderful businesses to you just to try and be a supplier for that resurgent industry. But with regard time, there's a lot of, you know, ARES occupies an enormous amount of my time. So probably the the vast majority because, you know, there's a there's a lot to be done, but I think the good part here is that the the role that I'll have will shift very dramatically once we're in production. It'll go from building to operational and optimization. And so maybe I wouldn't need to spend sixty hours a week on ARES. We'll see, but probably fifty. There's a question to justify dilution in the company. Are you expecting more dilution, to raise the rest of the remaining capital?

41:08 So it's a nondilutive financing that I'm expecting for this next round. So there is there has been it's there's actually might be two two types of funding. One might it's very likely to be in the form of investment from directors and and people like that because they they see how close it is. It's a it's a wonderful project, and we're gonna try and do our best between all of the boards to push it over the line. But even all of that plus the the other big sort of equipment backed financing that we'll be doing is all nondilutive. To be honest, I mean, the the we've been fairly fortunate in the sense that most of our funding has always been nondilutive deliberately.

41:54 So the bond money, the USDA loan, even loans from directors and and institution investors, they these kind of things. We've always we've always been trying to steer towards non dilutive just to protect the shareholder. And and look. We're all invested in the company. We all wanted to to burgeon and do well. And so, ultimately, that's part of that part of ensuring that is a tighter share structure as as close as we can physically get to that and not just over diluting so we just keep driving down the the share price. What I would like to see is once we become a manufacturing company and we're in revenues, we treat it very differently. That gradual appreciation and then, you know, if you what the the advantage there is that if you do get to a a very decent market cap with a very strong share price and even small equity raises to launch new projects, then even those are relatively nondilutive.

42:56 But that's a future consideration. We'll get there. We'll get there in time. Yeah. There's an interesting question here about the estimated tonnage. It it says that prior to 2014,169,000 tons have already been produced. Are there how many more tons are there? Can you kind of give any kind of clues to the size of the the ore body that's in the lost sheet? So you're talking about what was produced from the lost sheet project? Yes. So this investor is talking about what's already been produced, which is a significant amount. So How how much was the how much is the amount that they've put on there?

43:44 169,000 tons already produced prior to 2014. Oh, interesting. So it's actually a lot more. Like, the the purple pit alone probably did 200,000 tons by itself. So it's it's difficult because they're they're they're probably not great record keeping just because it was artisanally mined. And so because of that sort of artisanal minor thing, we've only we only know how much produced by looking at sort of receipts that we we we sort of inherited with the company. And maybe when the USGS was doing its assessment, it didn't pick up everything. But for instance, if if they're asking specifically about that area, that was 200,000 tons from the purple pit, but the purple pit is much deeper than where they were able to get to. So the difference here is that they were excavating from the surface as deep as they could get. We there was practical, but anything deeper than the level they got to was completely off, but the but the grades continued downwards.

44:48 They just couldn't access them. But if you think that, say, 200,000 tons is at the surface, we don't know actually know how deep that goes. Like, we've got a ramp system now that's over 700 feet that's been installed. And even then, that's sort of intersecting that ore body at a few 100 feet depth, but that's still not the bottom. We we would still need to keep going. So I I would say that already we know that there's several 100,000 more tons in that one pipe, but it could just keep going. It could just keep going until it intersects a larger ore body at the bottom. We don't we don't know exactly. But that that operation there also is only one pipe of several that that ramp installation that we've installed will be mining. So when the ramp is installed, there'll be the offshoot edits that will shoot out and intersect different different pipes and different and and those pipes at different levels.

45:44 So it's it's very likely we'll we'll we'll draw down hundreds of thousands of tons from that lost sheep area before we move to, say, the next most likely mining area will either be the Northeast of the of the lost sheep area or the Bell Hill claims in the South where there's a big cluster of pipes. But in both areas, like, it it doesn't even matter how much there is there because there's so many floor spa showings along this sort of a 10 mile length of the Spall Mountain that you could just keep mining down there, and you could you could even just once the ramp is installed, just keep that an added system just to keep intersecting ore body. So I don't it it would be a long time before we run out. The the only bad thing about this kind of deposit because, obviously, it's very good grade, low impurities.

46:36 There's a lot of pipes is that because it's not a it's not a a a contiguous body. You still need to do that kind of underground ramp installation, excavation, and and new drilling pro programs just for individual pipes. But the I mean, it it it's sort of nonconventional mining now because everyone looks for contiguous ore bodies. They could put resource estimates on their thing. We can't do that. We'll just we'll just keep mining this stuff until we've exhausted this mountain, but be a long time. I think we've, like, I think we've already identified something like over 200 pipes at surface. So Yeah. Interesting. Another question focused on the institutional investors that you've already got into the company, but it's talks more about bringing future institutional investors.

47:29 And with the this company where it currently is in price on the market, are you able to and the the stock market that it's in, how are you able to continue to attract institutional investors? What's your plan for getting more onboard? Typically, actually, we weren't expecting any institutional investment at this point in the program because, typically, in that institution investors aren't interested in you unless there's several there's several things that interest them. So one, obviously, is revenue generation, healthy balance sheet, things like that. But the other could be a high amount of volume in the market, which might also tempt them into an investment because no matter what happens, if you've got that kind of good market, then there's always an exit strategy for a big company like that. So things will drastically change for us, obviously, once we are the only manufacturer of floor spar in the country and we're revenue generating, then it's a very different matter. It's not even about the share price at that point.

48:34 It's about it's it's about being sort of a cornerstone industry of the of the country and and sort of the future and future industry. And that and, also, some of these institutional investors, they they buy directly into the market. They'll they'll they they don't even act through the company. So you they just want positions there, and a lot of the time, the easiest way to go about that is not going through private placements or or private investment or anything like that or or deals directly with the company just to buy in the open market. And, obviously, that's very beneficial for existing shareholders. So that's why I said that that it should be a very different market once we move to move from junior mining to manufacturing. It's just a different set of eyeballs, and it's a different set of buyers.

49:27 Excellent. And, James, I think this is, our last question. This is a little bit more of a blue sky optimistic. I I know you're very focused on what you have currently, but in the past, you've talked about Kentucky and some of the other opportunities that are out there. Has ARES already moved to secure any of these? And where kinda do you see the continued growth? So that that area that the the shareholders mentioned, Kentucky, Illinois used to be a real hub for The US floor spar industry just before China sort of undermined that industry, and it was it got shipped overseas and and shut down domestically. But that that also means effectively that it was economic at the time.

50:15 It didn't shut down for any reason other than the fact that it got the market got flooded with cheap product, which obviously you can't do much about. And it's, the, you know, it's The US isn't one of those countries that protects. Oh, no. It it can do occasionally, but in this instance, it didn't protect the industry by subsidizing it. But that means that the deposits there are are almost certainly pretty good. And the advantage we have here is that we have the technology. We've got the expertise. And, actually, to to extend that technology in those plants and those processing abilities to a new facility, especially we're revenue generating and able to bankroll ourselves, it can be done much much more expeditiously. Like, you know, if the I've always pulled this project as much as I possibly could with the resources I had.

51:06 But if I was in a position where this was producing and I was developing a new mine, I could do it way faster, like, way, way faster. And you wouldn't have to keep going as I do constantly on tour to drum up interest, to raise capital necessary, to buy certain things to do to do work. We could just go straight in there and start building and pulling stuff out the ground. It'll be a very different scenario. So the the expansion would be a lot more fast than the launching of our first product. That's great. James, Carl, thank you very much indeed. And, of course, for supplying the other questions that come in between now and the end of today's session. James, I know investor feedback is particularly important to you, and I will shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and their expectations.

51:57 But before doing so, I wonder if I may, James, just come back to you for a couple of closing comments. Oh, I mean, think I I think the things I'm excited about in the near term is that I see a lot more support now for critical minerals and industrial minerals in the country. I'm very interested to see if the government or the Department of Energy will come in or the DOD will come in and be more supportive of what we're doing. I mean, again, that would be a nondilutive form of financing and even nondebt, But that would that would certainly give us a massive acceleration. I'm very interested to see how those discussions and examinations pan out. But I think that the long term prospects are it's in a really great place. It you know, supply cannot meet all the demand, and the and the delta is becoming bigger, which means that the price is going to keep increasing, which keeps improving our economics.

52:53 And we're in a very unique position to be that sole operator, and that gives us also a a real benefit for the expansion within The US as well to actually start developing some of these other other opportunities will be will be the one of the best place to do it. That's great, James. Thank you once again for your time and for updating investors. If I could please ask investors not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you to the opportunity to provide your feedback order the company can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the, the ARES STRATEGIC MINING PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. Thank you once again.