TMR advances US heavy rare earth project

US mining firm Texas Mineral Resources (TMR) is expanding the preliminary assessment for its Round Top project beyond rare earths to more critical minerals including lithium, gallium, scandium, hafnium and beryllium.

TMR and its joint-venture partner in the project, USA Rare Earth, will release an updated preliminary economic assessment next month. Round Top, located in Hudspeth county, Texas, has been designated a high-priority infrastructure project by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and is awaiting final approval from the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council. This should expedite the approval of the project.

Round Top has an estimated mine life of 20 years based on extracting 18pc of the measured, indicated and inferred mineral resources. The project includes an on-site processing plant for the production of rare earth oxides, which is projected to have a capacity of 3,325 t/yr, with 2,569 t/yr of heavy rare earth oxide output including 198 t/yr of dysprosium oxide and 1,645 t/yr of yttrium oxide.

"For less than the cost of a single Navy F-35C fighter jet, the Round Top mine could be brought into production," USA Rare Earth operations director Dan Gorski said. "With the range of critical rare earths present at Round Top and the addition of resources for six US government-listed critical minerals, this single project could meet the Department of Defense's rare earth needs and offer a strategic reserve of key critical minerals as well."

TMR earlier this year released the results of a research project partly funded by the US Department of Energy to extract rare earth metals from coal mining waste in Pennsylvania using continuous ion exchange technology. The project successfully produced rare earth elements purified to a 99pc level, including scandium, dysprosium, neodymium, cerium and lanthanum. Other members of the research project consortium were US firms Inventure Renewables, K-Technologies and Penn State University.

Commenting on trade tensions between the US and China, TMR chairman Anthony Marchese said: "Irrespective of the outcome, this should serve as a wake-up call to the US for the urgent need to create a domestic rare earth supply chain."