Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT), Managing Director Dr Mike Jones
Lel Smits: Impact Minerals has raised $2 million in an oversubscribed placement to advance its key projects. The focus is the Lake Hope High Purity Alumina project, targeting growing demand from batteries, semiconductors and advanced technology. At the same time, the company is progressing the high-pure process and pilot plant development.
Importantly, new work in the Lake Hope Salmon Gums region suggests potential to also produce fertilizer and hydrochloric acid, opening up a broader multi-product opportunity. Ahead of TIP Group’s Emerging World Winners Conference, I’m joined by Managing Director, Dr. Mike Jones, to discuss how Impact is positioning itself to supply critical materials locally while expanding beyond a single project. Mike, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Mike Jones: Thanks, Lel, always great to be here.
Now, what does this $2 million raise allow you to achieve in the near term? So, including the money that we have in the bank, we are now really well-positioned to push forward with work in developing a high-purity alumina project here in Western Australia and also our investment in aluminous, which is a groundbreaking technology to produce high-purity alumina from lake clays. So, a very exciting time for us and we’ve also had an emerging opportunity in the potash and fertilizer space.
So, plenty of action going on here at Impact.
Lel Smits: And Mike, why is high-purity alumina important and also how is Impact positioned to compete?
Mike Jones: So, high-purity alumina is a little-known but important niche mineral in many modern technologies and I’ll pick two in particular. First one is the semiconductor industry, which is obviously all the rage right now with AI and the building of data centres.
So, HPA is used as a thermal filler around the semiconductors and it helps heat dissipate. So, it keeps the semiconductor cool and you can imagine with the massive growth that we’re seeing in data centres that the growth in semiconductor industry is going exponential. It’s also used to help polish the particles that go into many semiconductors, in particular silicon carbide and gallium arsenide.
And that’s because HPA is the second-hardest substance known to mankind, natural substance, and it’s used to help polish those particles to a higher degree of precision to put into the semiconductors. And we believe that a combination of our Lake Hope project and also our investment in the luminous technology to produce HPA will allow us to be one of, if not the lowest cost producer of HPA globally, and that’s going to be an important entry for us into the marketplace over the next couple of years.
Lel Smits: Fantastic. And finally, Mike, how meaningful is the potential to really produce fertiliser and acid alongside HPA?
Mike Jones: So, out of these magic lakes, as we like to call them, we’ve got two separate mineral processes. We’ve got the HPA and we’ve recently announced we’ve discovered another method to produce potash fertiliser, sulphate of potash and hydrochloric acid from the same clays by a different process. And we believe we’re on the verge of a major potash discovery and we have identified lakes that are close to rail and infrastructure and also markets, both in the wheat belt of Western Australia and the mining industry in WA as well, which is very short of acid.
So we’re hoping that our timing is right. And again, unfortunately, due to global geopolitical events, we are approaching rapid shortages of both of those materials, fertilisers and acid. And so, you know, we look forward to developing those projects as we move forward now.
Lel Smits: Well, Mike, I appreciate the update from Impact and look forward to hearing more at TIP Group’s Emerging Wealth Winners Conference in Sydney.
Mike Jones: Thanks very much and we’re looking forward to presenting there.
Ends