Australian mining company Lynas Rare Earths signs $US120m contract to construct a plant in Texas

Australian mining company Lynas Rare Earths has been awarded an agreement by the United States Department of Defense worth $US120 million to construct a processing commercial weighty uncommon earth division facility in Texas, US.

Lynas is the world’s just processor of uncommon earth outside China, and the contract with its U.S. subsidiary builds on ‘Phase 1’ subsidizing for a facility announced in July 2020.

The undertaking, for which the Pentagon gave starting subsidizing, is supposed to be created an industrial area on the Texas Gulf Coast and be functional in the monetary year 2025, the company said.

Lynas expects to consolidate the weighty uncommon earth division plant with a light intriguing earth partition facility, which is half-supported by the Defense Production Act office of the U.S. Department of Defense.

The plant would be the principal outside China that can isolate weighty uncommon earth, Chief Executive Amanda Lacaze told in an interview.

Lynas mines uncommon earth in Western Australia and ships the material to Malaysia in Southeast Asia, where it produces uncommon earth oxides.

The company goal to boost output by 50% by 2025 wouldn’t be adequate to fulfill a rising needs, Lacaze said, in any case.

It will lessen America’s dependence on China for strategic minerals used to make missiles and other high-tech equipment.

Lynas works the Mt Weld uncommon earth mine in Western Australia’s northern Goldfields and is building a $500m processing plant in Kalgoorlie-Boulder that is because to start production one year from now.

The ASX-listed company, which considers the Japanese government as a part of its greatest backers, ships uncommon earth to its handling facility in Malaysia, yet the new deal implies WA minerals will likewise be set out toward the US.

Lynas initially knocked out a deal with the Pentagon in July 2020 to progress plans for the facility.

Lynas managing director Amanda Lacaze says the demonstration shows the need that the US is putting on “ensuring that supply chains for these critical materials are resilient and environmentally responsible”.

“The development of a US heavy rare earths separation facility is an important part of our accelerated growth plan,” she said in a statement.

“We look forward to not only meeting the rare earth needs of the US government but also reinvigorating the local rare earths market.”

It is indistinct whether the Texas plant will influence Lynas’ previous inventory concurrences with Japan, which has needed supply freedoms until 2038, as indicated by the company’s last yearly report.

Lynas has a funding facility set up with a group known as Japan Australia Rare Earths (JARE), a joint endeavor that is part-owned by the Japanese government.

The principal amount of the JARE loan facility was US$145 million on June 30 last year, as indicated by Lynas’ yearly report, with a loan cost of 2.5 percent and a development date of June 30, 2030.

Australia has the absolute biggest deposits in the world of basic minerals required in electronic devices and the energy change, including nickel, lithium, cobalt, and uncommon earth.

The Australian government under previous prime minister Scott Morrison developed a basic minerals system that endeavored to arrive at managing non-Chinese trading partners including the US, UK, EU, Japan, India, and South Korea while likewise giving government financing to neighborhood mines and handling plants.

In March, delegates from Lynas and various other uncommon earth and cobalt miners traveled to Washington, DC, as a part of a delegation with Australia’s trade minister to examine building stronger trading relationships in these critical minerals.

Powerful backers

Kalgoorlie-Boulder Mayor John Bowler, previous WA resources minister, invited the deal with the US as the construction of Lynas’ new Kalgoorlie refinery continued at pace.

“I’m not surprised,” Mr. Bowler told ABC Goldfields.

“When we were first talking to Lynas about coming to Kalgoorlie, the deal hadn’t been done at that stage and no one was mentioning money.

“Things were obviously dependant on funding, and I said to Amanda Lacaze, ‘You haven’t mentioned money … do you have the funds?’

“She said, ‘John … when you’re backed by the Japanese government and the White House … I don’t think we’ll have any problems there.’

“They’ve been right behind them all the way.”

Australia’s new Resources Minister Madeleine King and the US Consul General’s office in Perth have been reached out for comment.

Plant progressing

In the meantime, construction work at the new Kalgoorlie refinery in recent days has focused on the establishment of the last section of a 110-meter-long kiln, one of the greatest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Talking at the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Commodities Forum, Lynas Kalgoorlie general manager Grant McAuliffe expressed that recruitment for 128 functional jobs was well in progress.

“We are employing from the top down first,” he said.

“We’ve got most of our leadership team in place and their job is now to employ their workers.

“In terms of attracting people, we’re never to going to pay iron ore-type salaries.

“But we concentrate on being a socially responsible company that’s going to be here for the very long term so that people can join us and have a good career.”