alt Hacker NewsThe current bottleneck is separation, not mining. There are at least ten startups claiming new separation technologies. They're flaky. A few:
- Rare Earth Technologies. [1] PitchBook says they have about $1 million in investment. LinkedIn says they have 7 employees. Their site says they are going to have a pilot plant running in 2025. Right.
- Northern Minerals (Australia) [2] "Progressing the completion of a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) for a commercial-scale mining and processing operation". Australian penny stock, current AU$0.02, way down from peak of 2021. Five years in, and they're still at a feasibility study?
- Ucore Rare Metals [3] They got far enough to make some samples at lab scale. They have a demo plant. More real than the two above. But moving too slowly.
There are others; see [2]. Maybe one of them will get their act together.
A big problem with this industry, which the original article should have mentioned, is that there was a rare earth glut in 2015, when China flooded the market. Many of the US players went out of business. Mountain Pass mine shut down. The article's proposed investment vehicle should be stress-tested against the historical data from the last glut to see if it holds up.
[2] https://rare-earth-mining.com/top-10-rare-earth-mineral-proc...
Replies
How can ‘seperation’ possibly be of bigger concern than the ‘mining’ if you consider the real-life impact?
It’s the mining that people don’t want in their backyard because of the inherent environmental devastation. Especially considering the low density at which they occur. And the radioactive pollution!
Also, the same old chemical seperation process used with other minerals also works with the rare earth ones. If you’re talking about that being a challenge, it’s not even rare earth specific. So why market it as such!
Furthermore, in what world is mining a start-up friendly industry? Wouldn’t this naturally be done by the giant mining conglomerates that, in fact, are doing so right now?
Northern Minerals is an interesting case. (Disclaimer: I'm a shareholder and keep a close eye what is going one)
It is under enormous pressure to the point where the Australia Treasury made the unprecedented move to demand some Singapore-based PRC-linked entities to divest ~500m shares. They instead passed them onto other PRC-linked entities. There's been two failed board takeovers, and the annual general meeting postponed while Treasury continues to investigate who owns what and has set them back a year or so. What they have is a potential resource (lots of heavy REE) and an offtake deal with Iluka.
Iluka (Australia) is the one with the processing coming on sooner, and unlike Lynas, on Australian soil and have an existing stockpile ready to go from their mineral sands business.
The other to watch is Arafura (Australia) - fully funded, construction just started and offtake agreements (mostly Europe) in place.
Energy Fuels (UUUU) is one to watch in the US. They purchased Australian miner ASM and plan you use their Uranium processing infrastructure and knowhow to pivot to REE.
Lynas is in the process of purchasing Meteoric Resources (Australia) for the largest ionic clay mine in Brazil.
I hold positions in all the above, and what is really interesting is that despite all the progress their share prices have recently tanked as China wrings concessions from the US, rather than the market viewing the long-term disconnect from PRC reliance as valuable or inevitable. Even Lynas is down having peaked around AUD$21 when they started processing separated Dysprosium and Terbium and renewed their Malaysian licence and Japanese offtake agreements.