The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday
said it has awarded $30.4 million to Australia s Lynas Rare
Earths Ltd to build a Texas facility for processing
specialized minerals used to make weapons,. | February 7, 2021
By Reuters Staff
Slideshow ( 2 images )
(Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday said it has awarded $30.4 million to Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths Ltd to build a Texas facility for processing specialized minerals used to make weapons, electronics and other goods.
China is the world’s largest producer of rare earth minerals and has threatened to stop their export to the United States, fueling a push inside the U.S. government to boost domestic production.
The Pentagon’s award will fund construction of a facility to process so-called light rare earths, the most-common type of rare earths, commonly found in consumer goods such as cellular phones.
Pentagon Commits $30 Million to Texas Rare Earth Plant, Aims to Reduce Reliance on China
The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded $30 million in funding to Australia’s Lynas Corp to build a rare earth processing plant in Texas, as the nation continues to seek to break its reliance on Chinese imports of the critical minerals.
The facility will be able to process light rare earth elements (LREE), which are not only widely used in consumer goods such as cellphones and electric car motors, but also critical to the production of next-generation fighter jets and precision-guided missiles.
It’s not the first time Lynas, one of the few major non-Chinese rare earth miners, received federal funding for a U.S.-based project. Last year, the company teamed up with Texas’s Blue Line Corp to land a deal with the Pentagon to build a separation plant for heavy rare earth elements (HREE), which are used in the manufacturing of specialized military weapon systems.
Richard (Rick) Mills
Ahead of the Herd
As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
Copper, the most critical metal
[Note: all dollar amounts in USD]
In 2018, before the trade war between the US and China put the boot into to copper demand, and covid-19 mine closures/abandoned expansion plans crimped supply, we made a bold prediction: that copper supply is NOT going to be able to keep up with demand in the long-term. Here’s what we wrote, in The Coming Copper Crunch:
Even with expansions at existing mines and the ramp-up of the relatively few new copper mines like Cobre Panama, Radomiro Tomic and Toquepalain, it will not be enough to meet the onslaught of demand that is coming from China as it continues to modernize and urbanize, and electric vehicles, which use three times as much copper as regular ones. In 2016 Chinese automakers sold 28m cars. If China follows through on its promise to go 100% electric, that would mean 2,380,0
Share:
PALM BEACH, Fla., Dec. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ The rise of the rare earth metals market continues to move upward as it parallels the recent and future upticks of the Electric Vehicle (EV) market. EV s need magnets and they are majorly made from rare earth metals. According to a report
from Grand View research the rising demand for electric vehicles to reduce CO
2emissions is expected to propel the use of permanent magnets in the production of batteries. It said that the global rare earth elements market size was valued at USD 2.80 billion in 2018 and is estimated to witness a CAGR of 10.4% to 2025. A report from Brand Essence Research added to that projection saying that the market size will reach $20.6 billion in 2025. It said that: Growing demand for magnets in automobiles, and energy generation will majorly contribute to the growth of global rare earth metals market over the forecast period. The demand for rare earth magnets is majorly increasing by their consumptio