General Chat / Discussion, page-11637

Happy NY ladies & gents,
Yesterday I had the pleasure of a meeting with Thomas Kelly (Director of Operations at Ionic Technologies) and a tour of the demo plant in Belfast. We had a wide-ranging discussion on everything from Geo-politics to the future plans for the company and while I don't want to go into too much detail on what was discussed (Signed an NDA and also want to show Tom the respect he showed me y'day), I can say that the team is pushing hard on a number of fronts and there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes to set-up IXR for a big couple of years.
Just a few thoughts that I took from the day, that I don't think Tom would mind me saying (and really stuff that has already been discussed on these pages) :
- The UK gov has been very supportive of what Ionic is trying to achieve and seem determined to give Ionic every opportunity to succeed. The company seems very confident that they will get the corner stone grant for the commercial plant funding, but of course there are no guarantees with these things.
- The demonstration plant has been a very successful endeavor in terms of showing prospective partners, and interested parties, that the tech works and scalability to commercial size should prove to be relatively simple. They've had a stream of interested parties through the door over the past year from all parts of the world. The plant has also allowed them to tweak things to make the process more efficient which will allow them to save on both opex and capex costs for the commercial plant.
- Work is going on behind the scenes to allow a fast pathway to building the commercial plant once funding is sorted. The site has been chosen, and the titanic quarter and Belfast harbour are extremely keen to have Ionic as part of a modern, industrial hub
- While there are other magnetic recycling companies out there, they cannot do what Ionic can in terms of extracting 99.95% purity rare earths into separate elements. Not just in the UK, but basically anywhere outside of China.
- The interest from potential partners far oustrips the capacity of the proposed Commercial plant. I'm confident that if/when finance is sorted that off-takes will quickly follow.
- While the feasibility study showed the Belfast plant can make money even at today's prices, the real game changer in terms of revenue will most likely come from having a plant in Brazil (and maybe even the US) where costs are much lower.

Must say that Tom couldn't have been more accommodating, and I was surprised to be given so much time and information. Hopefully, I'll be able to view an operating commercial plant the next time I'm back in Ireland.