Alkane Resources managing director Ian Chalmers said he had recently held face-to-face meetings in Australia and overseas with those and other companies as Alkane sought funding and offtake agreements to progress the $1 billion processing facility at its Toongi site.

Of particular interest to those companies was a rare earth element known as hafnium, which Mr Chalmers described as a "very strategic metal" whose uses included its addition to jet engines to make them more heat resistant.

"For instance, adding 1 to 2 per cent of it to an alloy can raise the operating temperature from 1400 to 2000 degrees Celsius," he said.

"So for the same amount of the fuel they can get more energy and speed and burn that fuel more efficiently.

"It helps minimise emissions, and that in itself is a real driver for hafnium.

"Our metals are essential for modern air travel, in defence and passenger applications.

"Hafnium in particular is in very limited supply around the world but there are many applications for it.

"What we would supply is a very small but very important part of (aerospace companies') business.

"The other really interesting application for it is in industrial gas turbines that generate electricity."

There were myriad uses for it in security and defence that were so secret the companies would not generally talk about them, Mr Chalmers said.

It was hoped that when funding was secured, Alkane Resources could eventually supply half of the world's supply of hafnium from the Dubbo Zirconia project.

"Hafnium's always been there as a by-product of zirconium production and for some time we couldn't see a big enough market for it," Mr Chalmers said.

"But then we were approached by an interested aerospace company so we thought, why not have a look at getting it out?

"It won't happen overnight, it takes a long time to put these deals together.

"It's very early days and the numbers are a bit vague but we certainly believe we can sell all of our output into what's a developing demand."