Factbox: Projects transforming waste, by-products to rare earths

Rainbow Rare Earths

04/04/2023 11:00

April 4 (Reuters) - Six projects outside China, which
dominates global rare earth production, plan to extract the
critical minerals from waste or byproducts.
    The projects will produce rare earths that are needed to
fuel a green revolution of electric cars and wind turbines while
trying to avert the shortages expected in coming years.
    
    Below are details of the companies and their projects, in
order of output of neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) oxide, the
rare earths most in demand.
    
    ILUKA RESOURCES LTD  ILU.AX 
    The core business of Australia's Iluka has been extracting
zircon and titanium from mineral sands, but it is building
processing plants to also remove rare earths.
    It has completed two processing plants and aims to launch
the final one, a refinery, in 2025, which will be Australia's
first rare earth separation plant. 
    The refinery is expected to produce an average of 2,700
tonnes a year of NdPr oxides.
    Iluka is initially treating a massive stockpile at Eneabba
in Western Australia that has been building up since the 1990s,
but will later also use feedstock from other operations.

    PHOENIX TAILINGS
    Privately held U.S. company Phoenix Tailings has developed
technology to process rare earths from old mine tailings, and
plans to launch operations with waste material from a former
iron ore mine in New York.
    Phoenix is also arranging to feed its production plant with
material from other stockpiles and is expected to produce 2,200
tonnes a year of NdPr metals by 2026, equivalent to about 2,589
tonnes of NdPr oxides, according to Adamas Intelligence.

    ENERGY FUELS INC  UUUU.A 
    The main business of U.S. Energy Fuels is producing uranium,
but it has moved into rare earths. 
    It started by buying monazite, a byproduct of mineral sands,
from chemicals company Chemours  CC.N  to extract rare earths,
and has also lined up other sources of the material.
    Energy Fuels removes uranium from the monazite and sends
mixed rare earth carbonate to be separated by a plant owned by
Neo Performance Materials  NEO.TO  in Estonia.
    Energy Fuels plans to open its own separation plant by 2024
and aims to produce 1,500 to 3,000 tonnes a year of NdPr oxides
by 2026.  

    RAINBOW RARE EARTHS LTD  RBWR.L 
    Rainbow plans to reprocess stockpiles left over from
phosphate mining since the 1950s at Phalaborwa, in northeast
South Africa.
    It has teamed up with U.S. firm K-Technologies, whose new
system will produce separated rare earth oxides.
    Rainbow expects to produce about 1,850 tonnes a year of NdPr
oxides by 2026.  
    
    VHM LTD  VHM.AX 
    Australia's VHM Ltd is working on the Goschen mineral sands
project, which will also produce rare earths.
    The company has agreed an offtake agreement with China's
Shenghe, which has agreed to purchase 6,400 tonnes a year of
rare earth mineral concentrate, but VHM plans to build its own
refinery in the long term.
    Adamas Intelligence has estimated that VHM will produce
about 850 tonnes of NdPr oxides in 2027.  
         
    LKAB
    State-owned Swedish iron ore producer LKAB plans to extract
rare earths from waste material from two existing mines that is
currently dumped into tailings dams. 
    The material will be processed at new plants both at the
mines and at an industrial park before it is shipped to a
refinery at Norway's REEtec, where rare earths will be
separated.
    LKAB plans to produce 2,000 tonnes a year of TREOs from
2027, which Adamas Intelligence estimates contains about 400
tonnes of NdPr oxides.

 (Reporting by Eric Onstad; Editing by Jan Harvey and Barbara
Lewis)
 ((eric.onstad@thomsonreuters.com; +44 20 7542 7093; Twitter https://twitter.com/reutersEricO;
 Reuters Messaging: eric.onstad.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))