Medallion's problems are three-fold. Biggest problem is...

Medallion's problems are three-fold. Biggest problem is permitting for production of U&Th waste and/or nuclear products from monazite processing. Almost nobody in the west is willing to accept radioactive waste, it's the big bottleneck stopping beach sand monazite solving the west's RE supply problem. Otherwise, it suffers new tech risk perception and typical funding dilemma of any developer. RE plants are not cheap, even if Medallion's process is simpler and cheaper to operate.

Funding requires off-take agreements and permits first, but without permits and a demonstrable path to production new min sand developers who could supply the monazite can't risk locking in off-take agreements with Medallion because that will stymie the chance of funding their own new mine development. How to get permitted and funded? Sensibly, they have come to the Murray Basin which is the world's premiere source of potential new monazite supply. Secondly, by controlling an ASX listed company they can fund testing and rolling out the new tech (maybe some pilot plant) funded by local investors and sell themselves as an 'Australian tech developer'. This is critical because everyone in critical minerals is chasing lolly from governments in the form of large development grants and cheap loans.

ILU, HAS, NTU and the list goes on across numerous commodities. Without government handouts, how can new companies or new tech compete with subsidised developments. Medallion's, and thus ADC's, great hope is that governments get behind Medallion's new tech and the idea of downstream processing of RE's in Oz and push through permits and funding subsidies for a new player who can provide third party monazite processing solutions for the new min sand mine developments. Either a third-party plant taking production share from multiple mines, or licensing the tech for each miner to build their own cracking plant. ADC is a trojan horse for Medallion to get local support for local monazite processing imo, the exploration plays are hail mary stocking fillers to help keep the company relevant over the journey...

Why did ILU not take up Medallion's tech process? ILU chose to go with old but tried and true tech. It might be more expensive to build and run, but there is no licensing fees to pay as Medallion would receive, and less risk being proven tech. If ADC ever gets to license the tech in Australia for real, my concern is that ADC would only get a small part of the royalty revenue stream, while Medallion Nth America who controls the tech would get the lion's share. Why would Medallion give all the licensing fees to it's ASX subsidiary it might only own say 20% of, when they can structure the deal so a majority of fees go back to themselves directly?

AIMHO