From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   The Rare Earths Mine That Won’t Need a Single Shovel   
   By Yusuf Khan, Jan. 17, 2024, Wall St. Journal   
   Just before the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, South African mining veteran   
   George Bennett was offered the opportunity to bid for two waste piles of   
   gypsum, left over from decades of phosphate mining in a small town near the   
   Mozambique border.   
      
   Bennett built more than 20 mining projects over his career, but this one   
   really caught his attention. Analysis of samples he took showed that those   
   waste stacks held a treasure trove—high concentrations of the rare-earth   
   minerals needed to make the    
   permanent magnets used to power offshore wind turbines and electric vehicles.    
      
   Rare-earth minerals aren’t actually that rare, but it is unusual to find   
   them in sufficiently high concentrations that would make mining them   
   economical. Having a massive pile of them above ground is even rarer. And new   
   sources are highly valuable    
   because China currently controls most of the extraction and refining of rare   
   earths—a dominance that it is looking to maintain through a ban on the   
   export of rare-earth processing technologies, which it introduced in December.   
      
   Rainbow Rare Earths could be a significant non-Chinese source of crucial   
   energy-transition materials, according to Bennett, the company’s chief   
   executive. The company, which was listed in London in 2017, expects to   
   generate a net present value of more    
   than $1 billion from those two South African waste piles, he said.   
      
   “There are a lot of rare earth projects…[but] Rainbow is unique in the   
   economics and the environment and carbon footprint associated with the [South   
   African] project. We feel it can be one of the biggest, lowest cost, producers   
   of rare earth oxides    
   in the world,” said Brian Menell, CEO of Techmet, a U.S. government-backed   
   critical-minerals investment company that recently invested $50 million in   
   Rainbow.   
      
   Mining is hugely expensive, highly political and can take years to get off the   
   ground, particularly as governments change their policy on mining across   
   election cycles.   
      
   Rainbow has been through those struggles. Its mining project in Burundi had   
   been producing rare earths and it had been selling them to Chinese buyers   
   since 2017. Those operations were suspended in 2021 when the local government   
   halted all mining activity    
   in the country to renegotiate the mining code and royalties, according to   
   Bennett.    
      
   Fortunately for Rainbow, its Phalaborwa project in South Africa won’t   
   actually involve any digging. The two waste piles of phosphogypsum are above   
   ground and have already been “cracked”—a process where the mined   
   material is crushed and further    
   processed with heat and acid—increasing the rare-earth concentration and   
   thereby reducing the processing that Rainbow needs to do.   
      
   “We’ve got no mining cost, no crushing, no milling, no flotation. I saw   
   the advantages to lead to a low capital intensity and low operating cost   
   environment project,” Bennett said. The aim is to start processing from   
   2026, he said, with an    
   expectation that the project will have about 14 years of productive life.    
      
   “Their costs should be competitive in theory as they do not have to do   
   mining,” said Yuen Low, mining analyst at Liberum. He added that Rainbow   
   could create additional value by processing its products further.    
      
   Currently, Rainbow’s pilot trials have produced a low value mix of rare   
   earths—known as a rare-earth carbonate—that has to be separated further   
   into the individual minerals used in the making of permanent magnets.    
      
   However, Rainbow is now working with K-Tech, a Lakeland, Fla.-based chemical   
   technology firm, on a novel approach to processing the rare earths further   
   into more valuable rare-earth oxides. It is testing out a faster, more   
   environmentally friendly way,    
   known as continuous-ion chromatography, which has been used in photography.   
   Bennett hopes to start producing rare-earth oxides with K-Tech on a trial   
   basis by the end of March.    
      
   Rainbow is also developing another, larger site in Brazil. In July, it signed   
   a deal with Tampa, Fla.-fertilizer producer The Mosaic Company for an almost   
   identical phosphogypsum stack in the Uberaba area of Minas Gerais. “Uberaba   
   could be    
   significantly bigger and have a much longer life,” Liberum’s Low said.   
   Rainbow is also working with Morocco’s OCP, the world’s largest phosphate   
   miner, to see if its waste residue could also be viable.   
      
   According to analysts, there are very few phosphogypsum sites in the world   
   because it is essentially a waste product of some large-scale phosphate mines.   
   Rainbow is “entirely unique” as a listed company making efforts to recover   
   significant rare    
   earths from gypsum waste sites, according to Christopher Ecclestone, mining   
   strategist at Hallgarten & Co.    
      
   Rainbow’s relatively low production costs could give it a competitive   
   advantage over western rivals, according to Bennett.     
      
   Shares in competitors MP Materials and Lynas Rare Earths are down 40% and 26%,   
   respectively, over the past year, as rare-earth prices have been hit by   
   falling demand and rising Chinese output. For example, rare earth neodymium   
   oxide—used in permanent    
   magnets—is down 70% since February 2022. There is debate about whether   
   prices have bottomed out, but there is broad consensus that demand for   
   rare-earth oxides will rise. Commodity data firm Argus Media forecasts a 40%   
   rise from current levels over the    
   next decade.    
      
   “In the long-term, we would expect prices to recover and go up because   
   global demand will climb amid the energy transition, but in the near-term the   
   mood is still bearish,” said Ellie Saklatvala, head of nonferrous metal   
   pricing at Argus Media.   
      
   “Price volatility is by far one of the biggest risk factors for any emerging   
   rare earths supplier—they have very little visibility on their future   
   earnings and margins, which also then deters funding.”   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rare-earths-mine-that-wont-need   
   a-single-shovel-b962c661   
      
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