Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT) Managing Director Dr Mike Jones
Lel Smits: Impact Minerals is advancing its push into the high purity aluminus sector through Aluminus, a 50% owned subsidiary. Aluminus is commercializing the proprietary HyPura solvent extraction process, a scalable and modular technology designed to produce cost competitive, specification driven HBA for global energy transition markets. Recent developments include the appointment of experienced mining leader Tim Netscher as non-executive chair, continued commissioning of a pilot plant and laboratory in Perth and growing inbound interest from customers and potential uptake partners.
Joining me today from Impact Minerals is its managing director, Dr. Mike Jones. Mike, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Mike Jones: Hi, Lel, great to be here again.
Lel Smits: Now, Aluminus has just appointed respected mining executive Tim Nietzsche as non-executive chair, bringing decades of leadership experience across global mining and processing operations. Can you outline what his appointment means for Aluminus at this stage of growth and also how his background will help guide the company from pilot operations through to commercialization?
Mike Jones: Yes, certainly. This is from our recent announcement and it’s an update on Aluminus, which is a 50% owned associated company with the largest single shareholder at 50%. I’m on the board and Aluminus owns the High Pura technology platform for the production of high purity alumina and that comprises mostly a pilot plant that is about 85, 90% through commissioning. So the appointment of Tim as chair of Aluminus is a big tick of validation given Tim’s reputation. For those people who don’t know, Tim is the current chair of Gold Road Limited, one of Australia’s top gold mining companies, which is under a $3.5 billion takeover by Goldfields currently.
And Tim has been instrumental in getting that takeover underway. He’s also been on the board of numerous mining companies and chaired them over the last few decades. And he’s also actually a chemical engineer by trade originally.
So that’s a very rare combination of board skills and also technical skills. And certainly in the high purity Aluminus space, it’s all about the chemical process. And so having Tim’s chemical background there will be a huge part of understanding where we’re going and how that fits with our business plan.
So we’re very happy with that positioning, sorry, the position of Tim being appointed as chairman and he has taken the reins already and the first meetings will be next week. So it’s a great tick for the whole project.
Lel Smits: Fantastic. Now, Aluminus has made tangible progress with its High Pura pilot plant and the commissioning of a dedicated analytical laboratory in Perth. Can you explain the importance of having both the pilot operations and high purity lab working together? Also, how these assets strengthen the pathway from process optimization to customer qualification?
Mike Jones: That’s a long question there, Lel. Let’s see what we can get out of that. So the Aluminus acquisition or the acquisition of the High Pura assets were really centred around the fact that there is a pilot plant that is 80, 90% commissioned, and there’s been incredible progress on that since we took possession at the 1st of May. So we had a full review of safety, administration, financial systems, all had to be put in place. There’s been a complete review of each of the different stages of the operation of the plant.
And currently we’re moving material to get to HPA in batches through the different parts of the process. And we should have our first HPA within the next couple of weeks, which is fantastic. So that’s a critical part of getting customer engagement.
They really won’t take you seriously, our customers, potential offtake partners, until you can demonstrate that you have a pilot plant. And anybody who walks around that facility cannot but help think that Impact is on its way to HPA production. It’s a very nice facility.
Now, as part of that whole process, it’s very important that you have your own analytical laboratory. That was another key tick for us in terms of acquiring the HyPura technology. They have a fully functional HyPura laboratory there.
There’s probably only two or three labs in Western Australia that have the same capability. The other two are commercial. And the main issue is that any assay that goes to a commercial laboratory can take two to six weeks to get the turnaround time to get the assay.
So you can imagine if we’ve got a pilot plant with lots of very delicate parts of the process that need to be constantly monitored, if you can’t get an assay back quickly from each of those parts, it’s just going to take forever to get the plant working. So it’s a key point is having their own analytical laboratory. That is now commissioned.
We had a few issues getting that up and running, but some of the equipment hadn’t come out of the box. But we’re now up and running with that. And so those two together are really going to accelerate our entry into the marketplace over the next six to 12 months.
Lel Smits: Brilliant. And now, Mike, you’ve mentioned that inbound interest from potential customers and marketing partners is already strong. What types of industries are engaging with Illuminus? And how do you see the HyPura platform fitting into markets like batteries, ceramics and really other advanced materials?
Mike Jones: Yeah, so the main uses for HPA are in batteries, but that’s sort of being overtaken now by LEDs, light emitting diodes in all sorts of equipment, as well as in every light globe that’s virtually going in globally nowadays, but also in particular in the semiconductor industry.
And there’s a massive growing demand for artificial sapphire. Now, sapphire is a form of alumina, aluminium oxide. And so basically what happens is that we produce HPA as a powder and then we have to re-melt that to form sapphire.
And that’s a big technological area that we’ll be exploring once this pilot plant is producing consistent quality of material. So huge demand growing about 20-25% per annum at the moment across all of the industries. But the first serious indication that we’ve had is actually from a battery technology manufacturer in North America.
We’ve had some very interesting discussions there and, you know, fingers crossed that we’ll be able to do something on an R&D level with them in the near term, which would be a fantastic tick, again, of validation. And what we’re hoping to do is to be able to produce serious commercial quantities of HPA by about 2027, which is when we’re going to see a bit of a tightening of supply. You can imagine growing at 20% per annum, there is a consistent growing demand.
And I can tell you that it’s not easy to make HPA. We believe that we can. And so there’s a tightening of supply going to occur in the next couple of years and hopefully our timing will be right to get into production about that time.
Lel Smits: Well, Mike, thank you for the update from Impact Minerals. A lot of progress and look forward to hearing what’s next as well.
Mike Jones: Thanks very much, Lel.