Ann: Breakthrough in Gallium & Germanium Recovery, page-57

I posed a question to MTM’s Investor Hub.

In short I asked what the scale up is from the present Prototype to the Demonstration Plant, the reason for my question is that the “prototype” they call Bench top has already been scaled up considerably from the Rice Uni Lab tests. I’m just an investor, have no technical or scientific knowledge, however IMO the biggest risk to MTM is the scale up from present testing to Commercial scale as outlined in the 2 Broker reports.

Must admit I didn’t expect much of an answer to my question, however I was pleasantly surprised at the detail they gave.

In short,

Their “prototype” would appear to be a work in progress, continually enhanced & expanded as they learn from their testing.

They have already scaled up 1,000x compared to the original Rice Uni Lab testing.

Having already scaled up 1,000x, to go to the Demo plant is only another 10x

That 10x is further derisked because the Demo Plant will “incorporate multiple reaction chambers, each replicating the existing prototype”

So really nothing new to what they are already doing.

I have pasted my Q and their answer below, but it is for all to see on their Investor Hub.

I can see now how in the Oct Webinar Michael thought getting an offtake was a greater risk than the scale up. With yesterday’s announcement I don’t think we have to worry about offtakes, the Gallium scrap can either end up in landfill or be very profitably processed by FJH.

ImperionX had it’s biggest rerating when the commercial scale furnaces were scaled up successfully, it seems to me most of our scale up is already done, it’s a very modest step up from present to Commercial scale.

My Q to Investor hub 12/2/25

A question about scale up which I see as the biggest risk.

Your prototype was initially using 50x the Lab testing batches which later increased to 100x and in the November REE announcement you said you had gone to 2,000x scale up, which is surprisingly high. Given your early presentations on FJH said “Lab scale has demonstrated 1kg per day” Whilst I realise the 2000x probably isn’t referring to the Lab tests that did 1kg/day, it seems to me scale up from Benchtop or Prototype to the Demonstration size machine would not be that much more than the quantity you are presently flashing. Are you able to say what the scale up is from the batch size you are presently doing to get to 1 tonne per day and/or is it more to do with the engineering to get continuous flow and/or a higher rate.

Answer

Thank you for your question. The 1 TPD Demo Plant is significantly de-risked as it is essentially a scaled-up version of our current operational prototype. The plan is for the Demo Plant to incorporate multiple reaction chambers, each replicating the existing prototype. While the final configuration will be determined during the detailed design phase, it is expected to be around 10x the current prototype - a relatively modest increase compared to the substantial scale-up already achieved from the original university lab work.

Regarding the scale-up figures you mentioned, I’m not sure of their source, but to clarify: since the early work at Rice University, we have already scaled up the process by well over 1,000x, with our latest prototype unit demonstrating this advancement. Hope this helps, and again, thanks for your interest.