But the partnership, it’s a partnership-based model. I want to be key about that — I clear about that because we want to bring our innovations constantly. If we modify something within our process to make it — to drop our costs from sub-$5 today of lithium carbonate at 5,000 metric tons a month — a year, if we get it down to $4, we want to be able to bring that technology to the partnership to make that partnership better. So in a license, it’s harder to do that. And Purdue doesn’t necessarily want to slice out the technology, nor do we. We want to work with them as a partnership in a collaborative way.
Kyle Gallagher: Got it. And then if you could just give a little bit more color, I don’t know how many quarters back, but it was a while I had kind of asked you what some of the bottlenecks you were experiencing at that time, it was getting access to a lot of good feedstocks. It seems to me from just what your comments today and what I’m hearing is that the feedstock side of the equation is starting to get ramped up in a somewhat of a material way is how I would think of it. How are you seeing that balance with the offtake side? I think you mentioned that, hey, you do a lot of samples from a gram to a kilo to a ton. Are you seeing an equal ramp up kind of on the offtake side as you are on the feedstock side? Or can you give any commentary on how those two sides of the equation are balanced for ReElement?
Mark Jensen : Yes. I mean, listen, I don’t want anything to go slow, like I’m a pretty aggressive guy, and I’m pretty passionate, care a lot about our company. So I want to do things as fast as we possibly can. If you look back a year ago, I would say feedstock was kind of a bitch to get, pardon me the language. Our team has done a really good job at that of securing those feedstocks. Ben Wrightsman came on Board, just a passionate guy. I think him and I are about as passionate as we get. Chris Moorman has done a phenomenal job. Shane Tragethon and Ben Kincaid on the African front on the ore side has done a phenomenal job. Just — the team has done a great job of building the feedstock, but also these stocks come in when you prove that our technology works, and we’ve done that.
And so now I wouldn’t say feedstock is not a problem. Sales aren’t — I wouldn’t say sales are a problem either. I mean, one, there’s long lead items you’ve got to get to ramp up production like kilns and stuff like that, which our team is knocking down those barriers every day long. You see a barrier you run through it or you walk around it or you open the door. It’s finding a team that’s willing to go through the efforts to do that and to continue to push forward in the most economic way and the fastest growth way. Sales side, we have a great partnership that we’ve been taking material in, and now we’re getting ready to selling that back to them in a lithium carbonate form. We’re in the qualification process with over 7 companies. A few of those said, we will legitimately take everything you can produce once we get through the qualification process.
Now we don’t want to do that. We want a diversified portfolio of customers. But as we’re ramping up production, especially as the Marion facility gets closer to fruition, our customers will be in line then. What I will say, IRA. So you look at the — what is it, the Inflation Reduction Act, I forget the name because I don’t think it’s what it is. But the — we will be — and we qualify under the Inflation Reduction Act. So when we produce lithium carbonate, we’re one of the few players in the U.S. are actually and be able to achieve that for our customer base. And so we believe we’re in a really good position. And we think you’ll actually get a premium to that. Today, in the market, you don’t. You get 0 premium if you produce IRA compliant material.
Here shortly, we think you will. And that’s why we’re — as we’re ramping up production to, we can sell all the products we want on the commodity market, but we want direct customers that were — and that’s why we’re going through all these qualification processes and they’re going really, really well. And then at that point, when you start saying, not only am I through your qualification process but I’m your only IRA-compliant supplier, what is that worth? I think it’s quite a bit.
Kyle Gallagher: Yes. As always, Mark, really appreciate your patience on these calls and getting through all of our questions and the candid responses, man. Thanks a lot.
