There are a few pointers about these issues in earlier...

There are a few pointers about these issues in earlier documents. We have to read what has been said to see what this means.

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28/2/23 - Prelim AR
"... During EarthMountain’s (EM) visit in September 2022 we mutually concluded that the defined objectives for MEMS GEN-I were achieved, and that sufficient knowledge, experience and investment were made by EM to ensure success in production and packaging of MEMS GEN- II to spec. Consequently, as reflected in our Appendix 4C, the company has paid a prepayment of A$586K and issued a purchase order for 10’s of thousands of fully packaged MEMS GEN- II pre-production chips that will be fully tested for compliance to spec prior to shipment. ..."

"... Commitments
The subsidiary company, Audio Pixels Limited of Israel has entered into various purchase orders and commitments of $521,141 (2021: $258,841) with various strategic partners which will become payable once qualified products are delivered to the company.

On 17 December 2021, the Consolidated entity announced to the Australian Stock Exchange Limited that it had entered into an agreement with Earth Mountain (Shanghai) Intelligent Technology Co., Limited to mass produce Audio Pixels’ transformational digital loudspeaker products.

On 29 December 2022, the parent entity entered into a pre-production packaged chip purchase order with Earth Mountain (Shanghai) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd for US$400,000 which is shown as a prepayment in the financial statements as at 31 December 2022.

On the basis that these initial pre-production packaged chips meet all the design specifications by 30 June 2023, the parent company has committed a further US$9,600,000 for fully tested packaged production chips at a unit price to be finalised based on actual yields. ..."

28/2/23 - 4C
"... We have now been permitted to reveal that EarthMountain has been producing our wafers in three independent fabrication facilities; 2 of which are 8” fabs. EarthMountain’s rather massive investment and extensive collaboration with the company to employ 3 concurrent fabrication facilities is designed for expansion of production capacity, to create fabrication redundancy as well as to reduce production costs.

EarthMountain recently advised that while there are certain unknowns in MEMS fabrication, their pace of progress should permit them to commence delivery of assembled and fully tested chips prior to the end of June 2023 (previously May 2023).

In preparation of delivery of the production version of the chips, the Company has been heavily focused on improving its test and inspection systems, all functional electronics, algorithms, and software, the creation of customer reference designs, as well as a number of improvements to the existing demonstration systems. ..."

30/5/23
"... Our current MEMS and packaging vendor EarthMountain, permited us to reveal that over the past year or so our ongoing collaboration activities included expanding their production capabilities and capacity. EarthMountain has been able to securetwo additional MEMS fabrication facilities, both of which utilize an 8” wafer platform which as reported provides a substantial increase in production capacity while deriving considerable benefit from utilizing newer and higher precision equipment. Additionally, and of significant importance is the redundancy gained by having our wafers produced at multiple and independent facilities. ..."

"... We will address some of those tales in more detail during the Q&A session, but in an effort to move things along let me quickly address some of the strategies and actions we are employing to minimize challenges involved in transitioning from 6” to 8” wafers.
First and foremost, we continue production at the 6” facility, at least until such time that AP approves EarthMountain’s wafer production at its 8” facilities. ..."

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I believe that these comments, taken together, indicate that while the 8" FABs are working towards full scale production their output has not yet been approved by AP. That is to come as soon as all needed confirmations are in hand. But the 10's of thousands of initial pre-production Gen-II chips that will presumably be approved as production versions and will be available even sooner, i.e. this/next month, and after testing will be available for all purposes including customer evaluation / demo's, and for purchase. They will then presumably begin to deliver production version chips as stock. The 8" production will presumably form the bulk of the $9.6M order that will follow once both 6" pre-production chips are tested and approved and certified as to yield, and followed by the 8" versions.

Of course we have to allow for some unexpected delays as each of the necessary steps are progressed through carefully, but this is all very promising.