Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Electra Second Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Joe Racanelli, Vice President, Investor Relations with Electra Battery Materials Corporation. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for joining us this morning. Before we begin, I want to point out a couple of items. We filed our materials last night, and our press release, MD&A, financial statements are available from our website as well as on SEDAR and EDGAR. We will be making use of a presentation this morning for those listening in on, on the phone. A copy of that presentation is also available from our website this morning. I do want to draw attention that we will be making forward-looking statements, and the conditions associated with those and factors associated with those are itemized on page two of our presentation material. With me on the call today are Trent Mell, Company CEO. We have Mark Trevisiol, Vice President Project Development, and for the first time, joining us is Peter Park, our Chief Financial Officer, who was appointed July 4th of this year. After our presentation is done, we will have a question-and-answer session for analysts who cover us. Anyone who would like to follow up afterwards, we will make ourselves available. With that, I'll turn it over to Trent for his opening remarks. Yes, thank you, Joe. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Before we open the call to our analysts, I want to review some of our recent developments, as Peter and Mark will be speaking as well, and share with you our strategy through the end of this year and into 2024. Since launching the strategic review process that we, that we referenced or mentioned in Q1, efforts have been particularly focused of late on strengthening the balance sheet. This culminated last week in the closing of a CAD 21.5 million in gross proceeds from two concurrent private placements. I want to emphasize, that's Canadian dollars, and unless otherwise indicated, everything in this press release will be in Canadian dollar denomination. Despite a tough market and tough and a lot of economic uncertainty that we see in the markets today, we did receive strong support. I was very pleased by the support that we saw in our book, which allowed the dealers to exercise their over-allotment option. They were encouraged with our, our, our raise and our planned use of proceeds, and I want to thank investors who participated in that, as well as the syndicate of bankers who helped us lead that raise. Other developments in the quarter, indicated here in slide four, included the completion of two major reports, one related to the completion of our cobalt refinery project, and the other relating to the potential for a continuous operation, permanent black mass recycling facility. We'll talk more about both, in a little bit. We also signed an MOU with the First Nations economic development group, named Three Fires for battery recycling in Ontario, and we extended and expanded our supply agreement with LG Energy Solution. Equally important, our first with our black mass trial, we had our first plant scale test completed in North America at our existing refinery, and we had a commercial shipment of MHP. We'll elaborate on some of these, and first, though, let's go to our new CFO. I want to welcome Peter to the team. He joined us as CFO on July 1st, so he will review our liquidity position on slide five. Thank you, Trent. Good morning, everyone. As Trent just mentioned, I became the CFO of Electra at the beginning of July after joining the company in February. I'd like to begin today's remarks with a review of our liquidity position, found on slide five. At the end of Q2, we held CAD 7.4 million in cash and marketable securities, which was a reduction from CAD 12.8 million at the end of Q1. The decrease is mainly due to capital costs related to construction of the refinery and costs related to running our black mass trial. I should point out that our cash balance at the end of Q2 did not include the remaining CAD 5.1 million of government funding, nor did it include CAD 21.5 million gross proceeds from last week's financing. Cash management remains a key priority for Electra, and we have taken steps to manage liquidity and re-reduce costs since the start of the year, and this includes staff reductions from 12 headcounts to 30 at the end of 2022. This concludes my remarks. I will turn the call back to Trent. Thanks, Peter. All right, let's go to slide... oh, it's slide six. Before I go to slide seven, it's the whole, the point of this now section is going to be to discuss the details of the rebaseline engineering report. This was a report concluded by our EPCM contractor in consultation with our management team, and then reviewed by a third-party engineering group to give us comfort around the capital for completion and the timeline for the recycling project. Slide seven gives you the context. As previously communicated in Q1, we, we faced, as did, frankly, all development projects in North America, a number of supply chain issues coming out of COVID. There were delays. We, we compounded by the receipt of a damaged vessel at site, which has since been addressed. We faced inflation, a 40-year high, and all of that created additional pressures on a project that was, you know, gearing up to be, and, and will be, the first cobalt sulfate refinery in North America to serve the EV market. Until we better understood the impact of those pressures, we did withdraw our guidance in Q1 related to both commissioning and our CapEx, and that was done on February 14th, and that's when we launched our rebaseline engineering review. That covered the scope, the scheduling, and CapEx, all as itemized here. You can see the output of that report, construction budget, about CAD 104 million. At the, sort of the low and the high, the midpoint, basically CAD 161 is with the midpoint of our estimated range in order to complete. About CAD 81.7 million has been spent and accrued to date. I should emphasize, we've also got legacy investments that we benefit from that total today over CAD 100 million, existing equipment, buildings, not to mention all the permits that are in place. Given our balance sheet and the capital required to complete, we will require additional capital in order to get this project through construction and into final commissioning. Happy to discuss this a little bit in more detail after the call with the analysts, you know, essentially, we're having done the raise last week, our focus and my focus is really on our commercial partners, government agencies, and other sources to try to address the funding shortfall. Sliding, turning over to slide eight, you know, the, I guess, the good news coming out with the parallel report around black mass. As we were updating our capital costs for the refinery, we also shared details of a scoping study that assessed the potential economics of processing black mass at our refinery. This is taking place as we speak, as a demonstration plant within the existing building, using all of the existing equipment, some new, that was fully recommissioned and is operating still today, even on a batch basis. The scoping study was launched as a result of some really good progress that we made with the trial and significant interest that we've received from stakeholders, from industry within the EV supply chain. As you can see from slide eight, the scoping study is based on processing 2,500 tons of recycled material per year, and it shows some very compelling project economics. Notably, building the black mass operation using our current footprint at a refinery, has an estimated cost of about CAD 8.1 million or $6 million, as we previously indicated in the U.S. dollar denomination. It delivers a rate of return of more than 120% and a payback of one to two years. To put that in better perspective, slide eight shows you the estimated EBITDA contributions over a four-year period, starting with the full year of production. This assumes we're buying black mass in the market and selling final product as we've been doing through our trial process. The fluctuations you see here is really a reflection of commodity prices that we and analysts are projecting over the next four years. With the strong economics, with the modest CapEx spend and, and the fact that we're running it successfully on a batch basis now, we are gonna be accelerating our black mass strategy while we put together the capital structure to complete the cobalt recycling plant. Just turning over the next slide. Progress of our black mass trial is continuing, so I'm gonna turn the call over now to our Vice President Project Development, Mark Trevisiol, who has had a great team working on this, and he'll provide you an update on the black mass process that we've been running since last December. Mark? Thank you, Trent, and good morning, everyone. Yeah, we've got a couple of slides here to highlight, you know, what we've achieved so far. Just as a quick background, you know, black mass is basically the residue that's left over from the recycling of electric vehicle batteries and other lithium, lithium-ion batteries. There's a process that separates, you know, the structure that supports the battery, takes the plastics out, and what you're left with is, you know, the nickel and the manganese and the cobalt and the lithium, which then, you know, undergoes a process to separate those out and, and, potentially, make battery-grade products. At our refinery, as, as Trent mentioned, we've got an existing refinery of over, probably CAD 100 million, maybe CAD 150 million if you had to build it today. We, utilizing the, the existing resources that we have there, the asset that we have, we developed a proprietary process, which looked at separating out these, these metals. Our, our, our objective was to go after the cobalt, the lithium, the manganese, graphite, and the nickel. Of course, in, in any manufacturing or processing facility, I mean, you're, you're, you're gauged by your effectiveness of the process or your efficiency to recover the metals, your recovery rates and, and certainly, your, your production rates as well. Going on to slide 11, talk about, a little bit about the results. Recovery rates have been very... We've been very pleased with the recovery rates. There's, there's parts of our process, especially around the MHP, where the recovery rates were at or, or superior to the results we achieved in the lab. In the MHP, that's, that's a product that, in our process, contains nickel and cobalt. MHP is, is basically a mixed hydroxide precipitate. We've also produced lithium carbonate, and, recently we, we had our first shipment of nickel cobalt MHP. We've, we've garnered some interest in this process, and this was mainly the catalyst with the joint venture with the Three Fires Group, which, which Trent will speak on shortly. We're, we're basically, the, you know, the having the asset there has put us ahead of the curve in the production of these materials from, you know, spent lithium-ion batteries. We're, we're really enthusiastic. The, the, the people and workers at the site have done an excellent job to, to get us to where we are today, and we continue to, to, to work at it and, and produce some refinements. Our next steps, you know, continue to, to optimize our, our flow sheet. You know, there's certain engineering involved in terms of material balance, process flow diagrams, and doing some early process instrumentation diagrams as well. We, we wanted to identify the long lead items, you know, update our study based on some of the results that we've seen, and look at a summary report for the site, not only looking at the process, but looking at the, you know, some of the support services, the logistics, everything involved in, in terms of how we did to make these products. That, that will certainly give us a path to further commercialization and, and building our plan to a 2,500 ton per annum facility. I will now turn the call back over to Trent for some of his closing remarks. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. Okay, I'm on slide 14. At the start of the call, I mentioned that we've completed a number of strategic initiatives in Q2 even subsequent to Q2, so I wanna touch on a couple of them now. In September of last year, we announced that we signed a 3-year supply agreement with LG Energy Solution. They are... Well, not only are they the world's 2nd-largest EV battery manufacturer, they're the largest outside of China. So the signing of that contract, our first big commercial contract, with such an important partner, was important to us, but important, I think, as a signal to the industry that North American onshoring and supply chain is happening. That contract that we had then has been extended more recently. In July, we announced the extension from 3 years to 5, and that the production or supply was going from 7,000 tons to 19,000 tons. At our initial nameplate, run rate of 5,000 tons per year of cobalt contained in our sulfate product, that's 80% of our expected output before an expected expansion, maybe in year 3 or so, to 6,500 tons per year. Working on the final contract, we do have a, a term sheet, a binding term sheet, but as we work on the final contract pieces, you know, the expectation is, is we're working really towards a, a kind of a tolling arrangement that, you know, gets rid of the peaks and valleys and, and gives us steady state margins that we would be paid for refining hydroxide feed provided to us for for LG's use. You know, looking at a margin of around, you know, kind of $2 is kind of what we have in mind as our as our as our optimized scenario. So by way of context, just, you know, the size of this contract, even at today's very depressed cobalt prices, 'cause we are, we are in a trough for that commodity, you know, we've got about $620 million worth of cobalt under contract with this. What it signals, I think, to the market is, you know, Electra is just about sold out, short of an expansion or an expansion into whether it be expansion in Ontario or into Bécancour. There are a lot of other players, not just in Canada, but in the U.S., that need our product, and I think it puts us in a very good position as we figure out our working capital, sorry, our rather, our CapEx needs to complete the facility. Flipping over to page 15, slide 15, let's talk a little bit about Three Fires. Q2, we did announce the signing of an MOU to form a JV focused on recycling waste. As Mark explained, you know, there's, there's 2 steps to battery recycling. The one, the more commonplace one across North America and Europe today is the shredding piece, where you take the batteries and you disassemble and, and make the black mass, and then the refining that we're doing is, is what makes Electra unique. That first step, is, is really the, the subject matter of the, the joint venture that we're working on. Three Fires, as I mentioned, it's a First Nations-owned economic development group, and they're, basically, they're focused on generating generational wealth for their, for their members, and they've, they've got their, they've got involvement in quite a number of projects. These are kind of long-term investments that can yield dividends or income for, for them and their First Nations for many years to come, so we're delighted to be working with them. Of note, of course, there are two major battery plants that are being constructed on the traditional land of member First Nations, namely in St. Thomas and in Windsor, in southern Ontario, which is not far from us. Encouraged with the discussions, hopefully have more to say in, in the quarter ahead as we try to get through the formalization of the relationship. Certainly the JV, as Mark alluded to, it was an important factor that's gonna contribute to our acceleration of black mass and the commercialization of our strategy. If we flip over to page 16, I think this map gives a good perspective of the, you know, the opportunity, the proximity, you know, which is important when you're looking at localizing a supply chain. That box is kind of roughly the area where Three Fires operates. We've got 2 cell plants there, and if you wanted to picture what the flow of materials look like, you have cell plants. There's two of them there, but There could be others. You also have secondary scrap, end-of-life batteries from, you know, cell phones and laptops. Material from both could be processed at a shredding facility to be located in southern Ontario through this joint venture, and we would collaborate certainly from the technical and commercial side. I, I believe they'll have, they have some ability to raise the capital to build it, so that sits outside of Electra proper. That black mass, once it's, once it's made and bagged, would, would find its way up to Electra, which, as you can see here, is just, just past Sudbury. That refined material, in turn, under an ideal world, basically goes back to the OEM or the battery maker that supplied you the feed. You've got a, a true closed loop, closed-loop supply chain. For now, really, it's just about making sure that material gets recycled and returned to an ecosystem, whether it's a battery market or the metals market. You know, the longer-term strategy as you grow is to try to create that, that circle, that sustainability circle that the OEMs are chasing. I think I'm gonna end it there on the JV and just go to our outlook on page 18. On our last call, I mentioned that, you know, we were anticipating 2023 was gonna be a challenging year, and, and I think market indicators have supported that. Lots of economic uncertainty, lots of commodity price volatility that, that we're witnessing, and we've tried to respond to that in kind. To mitigate the... all those uncertainty and effect- its effects on our business plan, we took, took steps to strengthen our balance sheet, most recently. We've also been reducing our costs. Mark and I and others have, you know, reduced our salaries, we've reduced headcount, we've, you know, reduced procurement activities, until we have a firmer outlook on the cobalt sulfate funding solution. We're focusing on a lower cost path to cash flow that, that could get us there fairly quickly, at a pace that we believe we can afford. With the priority of our black mass, I think that's gonna be really the momentum heading into the balance of the year. That will really be, be the, the timeline to watch as we transition from developer to cash flowing entity. In the near term, we're gonna focus on a number of milestones. You can see them here. It's gonna help create value for the company. It includes the completion of a summary report that Mark referred to, you know, so the findings, recommendations, opportunities that we've, I guess, garnered from eight months of operating a demo plant from the black mass trial. We're gonna continue to receive a number of key pieces of equipment for the cobalt sulfate plant. You know, recall, these things are being shipped from all over the world. We've got our last batch at SX tanks that will be arriving at site shortly. That supply chain, you know, a lot of the long lead items are now either, either here or, or about to show up, you know, tanks, E-House equipment, and so forth. We could talk more on that if you'd like. Then lastly, we're, you know, we're, we're anticipating funding decisions. I won't say too much, but there's a number of government agencies, whether it be Canada, U.S., federal, provincial, that, that we're working with. You know, we're, we're encouraged by the talks and hopeful, looking at the acceleration of downstream investments, that there'll be a, there'll be a, I guess, a, an in-kind reflection of that on the upstream in the coming months. I think I'll, I'll stop there, and with that, we will turn it back to you, operator, for any questions. Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. You'll hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Our first question is from Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead. Hello, Trent, Peter, and team. How are you? Hey, good morning, Heiko Ihle. Very well, thank you. Nice to hear. With the black mass plant scale, recycling trial, can you provide some color, or at least as much as you can and are willing to, in a public forum like this, as to what parameters get adjusted? Also, how many adjustments or, rather, you know, like, trials or however you wanna call it, can be done in a given week? Does this mostly just depend on what actually gets changed? I guess I'll, I'll start, and then I'll turn it to Mark for a little more detail, because I think I'm hearing two things there. One is the continuous improvement and, you know, any met plant or even a gold mill, you're never done, right? You're always trying to improve and increase your recovery... Yeah ... and quality of product. That, that is something that, that can continue. I think our, our demo plant, while we're declaring it a success, we're still, you know, we, we still have a number of initiatives that we're running to try to improve it. Now, in tandem with that, that, that transition to a, from a batch demo to a continuous operation, it's gonna involve more tanks, right? To have that continuous flow. This refinery historically was making a, a lithium... Sorry, no, a, a nickel and a cobalt carbonate. The lithium circuit would be an area where we would expect to see additional investments to try to grow that, because it is, it is kind of at the bottleneck right now because it was part of a trial. Beyond that, Mark, do you wanna add anything? Yeah, again, good question. you know, I've, I've run a number of process plants in, in my experience, and, you know, walking into process facilities that could be 30 and 40 years old, you're, you're still, as Trent mentioned, you're still, continuously improving the process to recover metals or to increase production rates. you know, there's, there's a number of things that are continue to be ongoing. It's like, it's not a tap that you just turn on and off and everything works fine. you know, we're really excited about the results that we got, and we continue... It's mainly a focus on recovery, right? Because that extra 1%, 0.5%, that you can rationalize and recover, that's, that's margin. That goes directly into your, into your pocket, and, and that's, you know, that's where the niche is, and, and that's, and that's what we're focusing on. Did that answer your question, Heiko Ihle? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, it, it, it, it did. Completely, completely different question. Obviously, Canada is the focus of the phone. Nonetheless, in your written earnings presentation, the word Iron Creek was not mentioned once. In the press release, the only time besides the company description at the- Hello? Hi, Heiko, we can hear you. Go ahead. In the press release, the only time besides the company description at the very bottom that Iron Creek is mentioned, is a single sentence where it actually states that you're having lower exploration expenses for the site. I'm gonna just assume that this is more of a coincidence, or is there a shift of focus that I maybe haven't really picked up on? Again, I, I understand that Canada always was and likely always will be the number 1 priority of the company. Thanks for that. Look, I, I think the border between Canada and the U.S. is, you might as well consider it nonexistent for purposes of what we do, right? Our supply chain is about moving away from China and into North America. I think there are things that can be done better in Canada, well, faster, permitting, just given the nature of our, of our laws. Our, our market, as much as we might talk about the VW plant or LG in Canada, our market addressable is, is, is much larger than that. To break, break through it, you know, six, well, more. It's eight states in the U.S. That aside, Iron Creek, I, I'm, and I'm glad you asked. I, I mean, I, I think it's a great asset. I love the asset. Cobalt's gone from CAD 30 a pound down to wherever we are now, CAD 15. At a time where, you know, the markets are, are choppy, we just can't be seen as spreading ourselves too thin. Holding costs there are less than CAD 100,000 per annum. We did put that new resource out, right? Early in this year, 4.5 million tons of indicated, another 1.2 of inferred, in, you know, right next to Iron Creek, an offset fault, we believe is Ruby, which at least from a geophysics perspective, seems to be equally present an equal opportunity in terms of its potential. We know Iron Creek's open strike and at depth. I'm extremely enthusiastic with that asset. It's gonna take more money. I would note Jervois, to the north of us, recently received DoD funding for drilling of their resource, actually of a satellite resource, which I, I find extremely encouraging, because typically in America, policy hasn't favored supporting any subsurface activity. I view that as an opportunity. Now, having said all of that, are we vertically integrating? Are we gonna do mining and refining? I, I think not. I'd like to keep advancing this. It, it may find a better home somewhere else, either as a JV, an earn-in, or, or monetize it to favor our, our refining operations. I, I don't think this is the time to make that move, although, you know, we're, we're keeping an open mind on how we might create value for shareholders on that asset, 'cause we're not-- I don't see that reflected in our share price today. Sounds good. I'll get back in queue. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from Gordon Lawson with Paradigm Capital. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, everyone. Looking at your CapEx estimates, the CAD 155-CAD 167, can you clarify how much of that is needed for the black mass recycling versus the cobalt hydroxide or, even the expansion, if that's still on the table? Sure, sure. Thanks. Thanks, Gordon. Good morning. What we put out in the, in the rebaseline, we actually put out two, the two different numbers, right? That, call it average of 161 to complete, that would refer really to the cobalt sulfate plant, and the, the CAD 8 million for the, for the black mass or $6 million, is, is a separate spend. Now, I, I, I'm gonna-- I don't want to further confuse things, but those are the numbers we put out. The reality is a lot of the CapEx that we spent on the cobalt sulfate plant, it- they're complementary, right? I mean, you've got... We, we, we twinned the waterline, for instance. We, we got a world-class lab up there. You know, we refurbished the warehouse and did a ring, a ring road around the refinery and drainage. When it comes to infrastructure and then some of the other parts of the facility, the bigger CapEx numbers that you're seeing on the cobalt refinery is really what's allowing us to execute on a, what is a fairly low cost, a low-cost operation on the black mass side. Cobalt's gonna yield EBITDA that's probably 4x or 5x larger than, than recycling, but then the CapEx is currently about 10x. You know, we're gonna sequence it accordingly. Good question. Yeah, we should be clear that that CAD 155-CAD 167 is the cobalt sulfate refinery, and that's what we're going to sort of pause or slow down on until we get the rest of the capital lined up. Okay. Yeah, that's, that's certainly, more clear. In terms of the cobalt hydroxide versus black mass, what are the current plans? It was previously stated that they're looking at a rotating production schedule, or are these now two completely separate processes? Yeah. So, so I would say, you know, from the, the cobalt hydroxide, obviously, by prioritizing black mass, that, that the plant's gonna solely, solely treat black mass feed in. Yet, you know, the, the extension and expansion of our relationship with LG shows that it doesn't matter, if I can put it that way. 2025 onward is really where the battery market in North America starts to take hold. A delay in our cobalt plant certainly didn't dissuade LG or others from concluding or trying to conclude offtake contracts with us. So, you know, for, for the next while, I think you should assume that it'll be 100% black mass feed. You raise an interesting point. I don't know if you want to speak to this, Mark, but, but the opportunities-... at different parts of the circuit to blend a black mass and, and some of the cobalt hydroxide into a, a common stream. Yeah. Okay. I'll add a little bit to that, Trent. Our cobalt hydroxide process produce battery-grade cobalt sulfate, and, and, and it will produce it once all the capital's in place. With, with the current black mass process, we're producing an MHP, which is an intermediate product, intermediate nickel cobalt product. As Trent says, the, the hydroxide process to sulfate allows us to extract, with a little bit, you know, some small process changes in our b lack mass circuit, allows us to pick out the, the cobalt and have that cobalt report to, the cobalt hydroxide, the cobalt sulfate plant. There's an opportunity there, with, you know, combining both of the processes, where we can get a final product, to market and, you know, and realize the margins of, you know, full margins of a battery-grade cobalt sulfate. Hope that answers your question. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for that, Mark. you know, essentially, the, you know, stage one of our black mass is not final stage. We would expect that circuit could grow, and we would expect that the beneficiation from MHP to higher value products will also evolve through time. The point is to get the cash flow and to demonstrate, be the first to demonstrate that we can do this on a continual basis and then build from there. The same strategy, right, the same we've reprioritized the sequencing, but the strategy and the vision is to supply battery-grade materials to PCAM and CAM producers in North America. This is a gaping hole in our supply chain on this side of the world. We've got a lot of Korean and Japanese investors and some startups that are kind of working from PCAM and CAM onward, but you go further upstream, you can't connect Canadian and North American mines to our, our domestic battery supply chain without this refining infrastructure that's just not happening anywhere else. Okay, understood. Thank you very much for the question. Thanks, Gordon. I would say, we've said this in the past, right? Recall we did a nickel study at one point in time. I mean, that's the... This is down the line. This is not the current strategy, but it's part of the vision. It's black mass, it's cobalt, and then you need nickel refining, and then you've got everything co-located. You capture the operational, the CapEx efficiencies, it makes sense for PCAM. You know, it's a multiyear strategy. I'd say we're in the second inning of a much larger vision and strategy. Electra was early to the game, and now that other players are coming, I'm hopeful that the capital strategy gets a little bit easier as there's a heightened competition for our production. The next question is from Jake Sekelsky with A.G.P./Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead. Hi, Trent and team. Thanks for taking my questions. Morning, Jake. Just on the, the black mass recycling, can you provide any color on what that ramp to the 2,500 ton a day rate might look like and, and touch on sources of, of feedstock? I'll start with you. I'm gonna let Mark talk to the ramp-up schedule. Yeah, feedstock, frankly, is not, is not proving to be hard. 90%, my understanding, 90% of black mass that gets produced today ends up in Sudbury, at the smelter that, that Glencore operates. You know, by and large, the rest of it goes overseas, whether it's Chinese tra- Chinese buyers or Japanese trading houses. You know, getting it, it, it's just fluctuation of terms and expectations. As the Asian buyers come into the market, it, it kind of disrupts pricing mechanisms, but we got a pretty good handle on what Glencore is offering. Sourcing a black mass, which is managed by our commercial team, Michael Insulan, we've got 20-some relationships, I think, with black mass producers. I'd say half in the U.S., which is more than sufficient for our needs today. The other half would be kind of around the world. This is where black, this is where the Three Fires relationship gets interesting, right? If we can lock in that part of the supply chain ourselves, the margins get better and, and the, and the, the earnings are, are more steady and predictable. The black mass, you know, in looking into it, there's, you know, it, it's, it's not hard, if I can put it that way. It's not, it's not hard to do the shredding piece. There's three widely known technologies, kind of wet and dry. There are a handful of known vendors, it, it doesn't... It's not like building a refinery, where we've got, you know, probably CAD 200 million invested up there. This would be a fraction of the cost. Three Fires would lead that, and that, I think, will just enhance the business model. Okay, that's helpful. And then just on the cobalt refinery, I mean, you, you spent about half of, or a little bit more than half of the updated CapEx figure to date. What options are on the table for the balance here? I mean, I, I know you mentioned that Iron Creek, you might be looking for, for a partner. Does the, does the same go for the refinery, or is that something that, you know, you'd like to keep fully owned, over the longer term? Yeah. Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, I think the refinery view that as sort of wholly owned. I mean, the non-core assets, if you want to put it that way, we do have a small royalty package on some former mineral projects in Canada, that could easily be monetized. Well, easily, that could be monetized, I guess. Then Iron Creek, kind of a, a TBD. Again, we got to wait till we see a little life in cobalt or see a, see a, a satisfactory structure that preserves our upside for our, our shareholders. When I, I, I think we got to look to other sources, right? We've got the most valuable currency we have right now is our production, because nobody else is gonna do what we're doing in the near term. I will be looking to our partners. There's a lot of money that's been deployed under the Inflation Reduction Act and, on this side of the border as well, through programs that have invested heavily in the downstream. You know, the way forward is, I think those recipients need to work with us on a capital solution. Likewise, the government, I'm, I'm sensing, a bit of a catch-up trade with policy on this side of the border that's catching up to the needs of people in our, in our sector. Commercial and government would be, my focus over the next kinda three to six months. Does it get 100% of the funding gap? Not sure. You know, kind of 80 million CAD or 60 USD. You know, we'll, we'll have to wait and see. The next question is from Sorry, Surya Sankarasubramanian with Red Cloud Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. This is Surya Sankarasubramanian from Red Cloud Securities. We read the news about Ford's investment in a new plant in Bécancour yesterday, valued at around CAD 1.2 billion. We're just wondering what it-- how it impacts your plans in terms of whether you're prioritizing your PFS, maybe changing timelines. We also saw that half the government funding was, I mean, half the funding was from gov- from loans from the government. That is any implications for your plans as well? Yeah, great. Yeah, over to you. Thank Yeah, great question, Surya. Thank you. Yeah, so Bécancour is very much on the radar for us. And, and just for, for those not familiar, Bécancour is located north of Montreal, south of Quebec City, right on the St. Lawrence. And so What we're seeing there, this, for us at least, has been widely anticipated. The Ford EcoPro relationship is one that we are very familiar with, both on Korea and, and in the U.S. And so it's, it's been anticipated. Glad to see it land. What it means now, in Bécancour Industrial Park, you've got three different projects underway. The, the better known is probably GM and POSCO building a cathode plant, and that is well underway. BASF has, has their tract of land as well. They've already cleared the trees, now we've got the third one that's in place. That, that park is now full. When you look at what they're doing, the, the plans today, build the cathode plant. The plans for tomorrow are to build the precursor cathode active materials plant, that's what connects us directly. Then, then alongside of that, now you need... These are NCM batteries, right? We're not talking iron phosphate batteries, you need your nickel, cobalt, manganese. Vale has already announced that they're building a nickel dissolution plant. Euro Manganese just finished a study, I can't remember if it was a pre-feas or a feas, on a manganese dissolution circuit. Electra has been invited in by Investissement Québec and the Government of Canada to be the cobalt solution provider there. We've got the luxury of borrowing from Ontario in the interim or increasing the size of the Ontario plant. The pre-feas is taking into account the staging of our 5,000 ton plant in Ontario, expansion to 6,500, the needs of this camp. We stand to have the first and the second cobalt sulfate refineries in the con- on the continent. I think it's important to underline that that's our ambition is not to be a cobalt play, which is why we changed our name a couple years back. We plan to be a refiner, so black mass is there, nickel, and so forth. The announcement by Ford, it just shows the increase, you know, the continuing momentum to onshore and just further validation of our strategy. Thanks. Thank you. In this context, is there also, considering you also mentioned that you don't want to spread yourself thin, will you be pursuing the Three Fires plant parallelly just as seriously or, you know, can you comment on that? Yeah, I mean, the Three Fires relationship, you know, for Canadians in the mining industry will understand the importance of engagement and consultation with Indigenous communities, First Nations communities. It's a Crown duty that we execute corporately. You know, I think if I'm building a big battery plant on a traditional territory, I think it behooves you to have meaningful engagement and to try to find opportunities. We've done it in our neck of the woods. We've signed one. There's no demonstrated impact, so we're not doing IBAs, but we've got a benefits agreement with one group. We've got four others that we talk to and that we support. As we get the cash flow, that will increase. The Three Fires relationship has some strategic value because they've got levers and skills and relationships that we don't have. It's Phase 1. I mean, that one I would view it as being tied to recycling. They, they were at one point, we are discussing a strategic investment corporately at Electra. We completed our financing last week without them. They weren't ready. That's still on the table. That really is separate and apart from the joint venture, which we're pursuing. Three Fires, I think, will enable and strengthen the black mass strategy. The cobalt sulfate in Ontario will then resume once the capital solution is in place. Bécancour, where that sits in the sequencing is really a function of the three parties that I named and some, some talks around funding and the, the, the scheduling of their needs. We'll have more to say on that soon. We've got to get a couple more ducks in a row before we're, we're ready for, for prime time on that. The next question- Trent, Trent, Trent, if I can just add to your comments on, on this is, you know, anything like the announcement by, by Ford and EcoPro on, on putting the plant in Bécancour, I mean, that's another Canadian asset to be built. You know, what we're trying to do with, with Three Fires, again, that's, that's another Canadian chain of supply for the electric vehicle market. That in itself, with, with governments involved, federal and provincial governments involved, that in itself is significant, significant momentum for a player like us, who, you know, our plant is in Canada, and, and, you know, we would have leverage because of that. Because, you know, the federal government is supplying money to both of those facilities. I mean, that's, that's a good news story as, as well for, for, for Electra and, and moving forward and, and supplying, you know, certainly supplying, you know, not only the Canadian market, but you know, going into the, into the U.S. as well. That. I think that that's really positive. The more plants that get built in Canada, the, you know, I think it's, it, it waves our flag even higher. Sorry, Trent, I just wanted to add that. No, good. Thank you. Thanks for that, Mark. Yeah, look, CAD 600 million of, of funds going into that latest announcement. It just, it, you know, the, it just continues. The next question is from Matthew O'Keefe with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead. Thanks, operator. Good morning. Sounds like you've made some good progress during the quarter. Congrats on that. Just a couple of questions, one on black mass and one on the cobalt refinery. First, on the black mass. I don't know if you actually answered the ramp-up question. When, when do you think you'll start construction or not construction, but development of that? When will you actually start seeing the cash flow? Because you've got sort of a guidance of years one, two, three, four, with averaging about CAD 10 million a year. When, when would year 1 be? What's your current thinking on when year one is? Also, it sounds like you're gonna be revising that study to some updated numbers later this year, I think later this year. Like, what, what will, what will be the main changes there? Okay. So the ramp, I'm gonna let Mark talk, talk to ramp up. In our, in our, in the release, the scoping study we put out, it was, you know, 12 months from being fully funded. So we've got a stub that we've got to fill on the black mass. I would call it, you know, 12, 12 + months from today, may be the best I can do. Mark, on the, on the ramp proper, once we do start, a ramp up, say it's, I don't know, say it's October of next year, what does that look like? Yeah, I, I, I think that, you know. You know, it's been a great, it's been a great way for us to start to experiment with the existing plant, so it, it leads into my answer. You know, we could see that the first, you know, six to eight weeks, maybe as much as 10 weeks, you know, there was a pretty steep learning, learning curve on running the circuits. I, I would imagine that, you know, you're looking at, you know, after, after commissioning is all done, you're probably looking at three, you know, three to four months of the ramp-up to the, to the 2,500 ton per annum target. The, you know, the rates, you know, the, the processing rates, you know, just comparing to what we have with the cobalt hydroxide. You know, the cobalt hydroxide, we're, we're putting through almost 50 tons, dry tons a day of, of feed. You know, this, this feed rate will probably be, you know, a fraction of that, you know, maybe around 7 tons a day of, of feed. We don't, we don't see a lot of... You know, having, having weathered the storm and, and, and somewhat, you know, rode our bicycle already in, in the trial, you know, a, a lot of these, a lot of these, items have, have been dealt with. We, we know the strengths, we know the weak spots, and, you know, once we get going, I, I think within three or four months, we should be at 100% capacity. Maybe I just add to that, if I may, if I may, Mark, Matt, Matt's been through the facility a couple of times. For those who haven't, you know, we, we do have, we do have an existing plant that has operated in the past and is operating today. The short ramp is, yeah, a function of what we learned, a function of the fact that it's, that it's small tonnage. You know, all of the Lego pieces, of the bricks are already assembled. There are gonna be changes, but, but it's not like you're commissioning everything, everything brand new. Yeah, I guess in the summary report piece, then, Matt, that you, you mentioned, I think we'll, we'll have a little bit more detail. Look, we got a... This was scoping study, or desktop level, right? We gotta, we gotta drill down, down on that a little bit. Certainly timelines will be a little clearer once we've done that and looked at equipment lead times. Mark, what, what might we see that's new in the summary report of our findings that perhaps wasn't in our press release on the scoping study? Without, without giving away all our secrets, I think, I think, what we, what we definitely will be putting into our process is a, is a sodium crystallizer. That, that wasn't initially in, in our, in our plan, but it's, it's fairly evident that we will need that. I, I think, Trent, you know, we've talked few times a week on, on some of the, some of the significant developments around reagent uses. You know, the strategic use of reagent, and sometimes even a combination of reagents, has really put us ahead of the curve on the processing side. Yeah, yeah, we've, we've got some changes coming and, and exciting because it, it just means more, more margin to our bottom line. Hope that answers your question there, Matt. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Well, that, that's helpful. Appreciate that. Then with, I mean, part of the funding here is supposed to be coming from Three Fires, I think. We, what's, what's the timing from them, or, or what have they suggested when they'll actually come forward with the, I think it was CAD 10 million that they were, they were committing? Yeah, yeah. Initially, we had announced, it was gonna be co-funded, right? That we were gonna do a raise, CAD 10 million Three Fires, CAD 10 million Electra would source. On the heels of the, the LG announcement, we had, we had a very positive market reaction, and then we ended up raising CAD 21.5 million. Three Fires, they just weren't ready to go, so, you know, timing and the decision ultimately will rest with them. So there's, you know, we have two con... In fact, some of our relationships there are taking summer holidays, so, you know, that'll, that will resume probably late summer or early fall. So there's, yeah, there's two conversations, funding, so the, the-their thoughts around timing for that. To me, the, the more exciting piece really is the, the joint venture, because of what it could represent to our business plan. You know, the... I mean, if I look at the two plants that are in their backyard, that are in their yard, those are still a few years out, but that, that shredding plant could provide great optionality for a lot of different feedstocks. Do they already have the shredding plant plans in place, and, and are those funded? I mean, I think that probably Electra would be more of the technical partner, if you will, with Three Fires as the financial partner. Maybe that's, that's kind of one way to look at it. We're, we're still working through the terms of the JV, but in terms of the shredding plant, the sizing, sourcing of equipment, engineering, all of that rests with our team. Whereas Three Fires has spent the last little while working on the funding of that JV, as well as the land acquisition. Hopefully more to say throughout the quarter as we progress our, our, our two streams. Yeah, no, that, that'll be good. Okay, and then if I could ask one more then on the refinery. So you did the, you had that extended and expanded contract with LG or modified it with LG, which is great. But what, what about, I mean, they're obviously interested in the product, but, I mean, we've seen other, other, sort of, customers come up with some financing to help construct some of these operations. We've seen it in the battery plants, we've seen it in, some, some other, some other types in, in the battery supply chain. Is there any discussion around LG coming up with some funding to get, to get the refinery construction complete? I, I, I'd say kind of writ large, there's discussion with all of our stakeholders on how do we fund to complete. I mean, some of these players that are not named are, you know, go back 3-plus years, and so the IRA and some of the recent announcements is putting pressure on everybody to find a dance partner. I, I will say the discussions that Michael was leading on strategic, whether they be investments or prepays or loans or what have you, we've seen all kinds of templates out in the market. There was a bit of a chill heading into 2023. Rising yield environment, concerns over the economy. As a general statement, I would say that those conversations took a little bit of a pause, but I, I sense they're coming back. From our perspective, given that we're now prioritizing black mass, I don't think we need to finalize any contract, and nor should we, until we've figured out how we're gonna get that funding in place. There's, as you know, Matt, there's a lot of money that's being thrown at the industry from governments. There's a lot of investments that then make their way from the recipients to their partners, and there's no reason Electra shouldn't be a part of that equation as well. That leads into sort of the question as to, the, all the equipment that you've ordered and that's coming, those are some costs. Those. When I was on site, it was all very well secured and stored, anything that's outside is stainless. Is there much of a cost? Like, what are your kind of costs in, in delay as far as just holding costs for keeping everything clean and tidy on site? Mark? Well, we do have the facilities to keep the equipment indoors. The equipment that has to be put indoors will be indoors. I mean, structural steel, for example, that doesn't have to stay indoors, it'll stay outside and as well as some of our tanks. But yeah, I mean, as far as, as far as keeping it in proper shape, you know, we've, you know, they're out of the elements. The equipment that has to be out of the elements is out of the elements. So we're pretty confident that, you know, the funding will come here. And, you know, it might not come in the next few months, but it'll come. As, as Trent says, you know, there's, there's, there's a real need to produce this product on this continent, and it's, it's gonna come. We, we're hoping that within the next few years, everything is being utilized because it's, it's, you know, we're, we're producing cobalt sulfate. I, I'm not too concerned about the, the, the equipment and, and, you know, the, the places where we. It's all in our property, right, Mark? I mean, it's all sitting on Electra property, so it's not third-party storage. It's under our control and supervision, and we've got our team there. Yeah. Yeah, correct. Yeah. Okay. When that funding does eventually come, I think you might have said on a previous call, about a 12-month schedule to complete the construction? That's correct, yes. Okay. Okay, very good. Well, we'll look forward to some, some more, some more, progress in the balance of the year. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. That's all the time we have for questions today. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Joe Racanelli for any closing remarks. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Our next call is slated in the mid-November, but as you heard, we have a number of activities on the go, and we'll certainly provide updates once we get some material developments to report on. I should point out as well that we did file a notice of our AGM that's slated for, for October, and we look forward to meeting our shareholders then. If anyone has any follow-up questions, we would encourage you to, to reach out to me. Happy to, to answer them. Thank you, everyone, for, for today. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant rest of your day.