Mr. Colin Randall reports

CHATHAM CONFIRMS PROPOSED SALE OF AVENIR MAKATEA PTY

Chatham Rock Phosphate Ltd., further to its news release dated Nov. 12, 2025, has signed an agreement with Melbourne-based Australian company Austure Industries Pty. Ltd. for the sale of Chatham's wholly owned Australian subsidiary Avenir Makatea Pty. Ltd. for consideration of $1.4-million (Australian). The consideration is to be composed of $900,000 (Australian) in cash over a 24-month period, and the company receiving a 20-per-cent shareholding in Austure Phosphate AU Pty. Ltd., a newly formed subsidiary of Austure, to establish a DCP/MCP manufacturing plant in Cloncurry.

Colin Randall, Chatham executive director, has been appointed a director of Austure Phosphate AU Pty. Ltd.

This agreement provides the Korella North mine with a local market for its mined rock phosphate which will be supplied to the revolutionary DCP/MCP manufacturing plant.

Austure Industries Pty. Ltd. has developed a technology that enables a manufacturing plant to produce both dicalcium phosphate (DCP) and monocalcium phosphate (MCP).

This unique DCP/MCP technology was developed in Melbourne by Monash alumni chemists, of which one is a principal of Austure Industries Pty. Ltd.

Both DCP and MCP are utilized in lick blocks that provide cattle with supplemental phosphorus, essential for healthy cattle in the phosphorus-deficient north Queensland, Northern Territory and northern part of Western Australia.

Currently Australia imports all the estimated 100,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of DCP/MCP/MDCP utilized as supplements and in feed rations for cattle, pigs and broiler chickens.

MCP has been very difficult to purchase out of China in recent months, with the CIF price passing $1,400 per metric tonne. The establishment of a DCP/MCP plant in Cloncurry will provide Australian sovereign capability for an essential ingredient in the welfare and productivity required in Australian animal husbandry.

The technology utilizes a novel green process where electricity is used to generate phosphoric acid from rock phosphate. The phosphoric acid is then used to manufacture downstream products such as fertilizer and feed phosphate. The electricity can be generated from renewable resources in a private off-grid plant.

The technology utilizes tailings-grade rock phosphate in P2O5 concentration as low as 16 per cent. The tailings of rock phosphate, dry-sorted from the Korella North mine fits with the supply criteria for the proposed plant, whilst the beneficiated (higher) grade rock phosphate is kept for export. Instead of a toxic phospho-gypsum biproduct, a high silica content byproduct is produced which can be used as a sand replacement in roads and civil works.

Background

CRP's wholly owned Australian subsidiary, Avenir Makatea Pty. Ltd., through its subsidiary Korella MCP Pty. Ltd, has been investigating since 2021 the establishment of a 30,000-tonne-per-annum (tpa) DCP/MCP plant in Cloncurry to utilize phosphate from its Korella deposits.

Cloncurry-based Chatham executive director, Mr. Randall, led these feasibility studies.

In these plant feasibility studies, Chatham always faced two significant issues:

• First, the matter of scale. At 30,000 tpa the proposed plant was too small for economical production. Most plants had to be 100,000 tpa and based near a seaport.

• Second was the dependence on the availability of sulphuric acid to be utilized in the manufacturing process.

With the supply of sulphuric acid in the Northwest mineral province a major unknown, this posed an unacceptable risk to a Cloncurry located conventional DCP/MCP manufacturing plant. As a local supply of sulphuric acid is not a prerequisite for this new DCP/MCP manufacturing technology, it is now feasible for the plant to be in Cloncurry, with closer proximity to the DCP/MCP market.

This is expected to undercut the imported DCP/MCP product due to the saving in transport costs.

This new manufacturing system can be established in modules of 5,000 tpa of DCP equivalent calcium phosphate which allows rapid commencement of the plant with a low capital-expenditure hurdle yet permits gradual expansion at our own determined pace.

The new jointly owned company Austure Phosphate AU Pty. Ltd. (APAU) has been licensed to utilize the technology (currently being patented).

At the same time, APAU will establish its competitive position in the lick block market by offering imported high-quality DCP/MCP/MDCP sourced from affiliated plants of the Melbourne-based technology partner.