Ann: Key Engineering Milestone Complete for Technology Demo Plant, page-154

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MTM Critical Metals has given up some of its gains from late in 2024 but is still sitting on a more than 80% 12 month lift, a vote of confidence in the former explorer’s shift into mineral processing.Its technology, developed by Rice University in Texas where it is aiming to develop a demonstration plant this year, has been described as potentially “revolutionary”.With major funds Terra Capital and Pengana Capital in its corner, MTM has taken Flash Joule Heating, a technology that superheats recycled materials for brief moments to separate and extract metals, into the scrap market.Its first significant MoU shone a spotlight on the junior after it linked up with America’s Indium Corporation to study the processing of gallium, germanium and indium from high-grade scrap.The kicker? Those metals used in the production of critical semiconductor chips were recently subject to export bans from China, putting a rocket under the prices of the lightly traded but now strategically essential AI components.But the company’s supporters, including rare earths market commentator and Terra Capital analyst Dylan Kelly, think the processing breakthrough has broader implications.It could be a applied to a range of critical minerals including rare earths and even, as per its latest MoU, Red Mud.That’s the unseemly by-product of aluminium refining stashed to the tune of over 4Bt in tailings dams worldwide.MTM is working with US$20bn Indian metals conglomerate Vedanta to see if FJH can be used to create an alternative to clinker, energy-intensive nodules of limestone and clay the form the core of cement kilns.