US mulls overseas investment for critical materials

The Fiscal Year 2023 National Defence Authorisation Act (FY 2023 NDAA) passed by the US Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) contains provisions that look at expanding strategic and financial support for critical mineral projects to other allies.

The NDAA 2023, passed by the SASC on 16 June, includes the Hard Rock Act (Homeland Acceleration of Recovering Deposits and Renewing Onshore Critical Keystones), which targets one of the biggest obstacles to developing resilient supply chains for critical materials — how to align raw material supply with advanced processing and manufacturing capacity.

Technological advances have created highly engineered materials that go through many processing and manufacturing stages before they can deliver the end-benefit in a battery, magnet or laser.

"No single country has all the pieces of the puzzle," mining consultancy Hallgarten principal Christopher Ecclestone said. "By pooling the resources of allies, you could get an optimal combination of competitive advantages — deposits, technology and capacity," he said.

The Hard Rock Act would instruct the defence secretary to provide Congress with an assessment of the "implications of modifying the term 'domestic source' in the Defense Production Act (DPA) to 'domestic and allied source', to include businesses in the UK, Canada and Australia".

Under existing law, DPA Title III provisions only authorise the use of economic incentives to develop, modernise and expand production capacity for critical materials and components in the US and Canada.

The DPA, adopted in 1950, gives the US president a broad range of powers with which to address national security issues. It has been invoked many times for many reasons, from funding the development of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline and research into LNG in the late 1960s to accelerating development and delivery of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Rare earths and other critical minerals are among the investment priorities for DPA Title III funding and other US Department of Defense programmes. Financial awards have been made to US rare earth mining firm MP Materials and Australian integrated producer Lynas Rare Earths to develop plants that will produce rare earth oxides in the US. The many challenges of rebuilding manufacturing supply chains for rare earth magnets in North America include highly uncertain and volatile rare earth prices. Export prices for neodymium-praseodymium oxide used in electric vehicle motor magnets doubled in the past year and were assessed at $139-140/kg fob China today.

Other focus areas include fuel and energy sources, vehicle propulsion technology, munitions and ordnance, semiconductors, space, advanced materials and manufacturing.

The FY 2023 NDAA is still at a fairly early stage. In order to become law, it needs to be passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives Armed Services Committees, and on a separate track, the appropriations committees in Congress must provide the funding for the projects. But a shift towards stronger international partnerships looks inevitable. New technology and the push to decarbonise have created demand for different raw materials and large, complex ecosystems in which to use them. Last week at a conference in Canada, the US announced the establishment of a 10-nation Mineral Security Partnership (MSP). The MSP members are Canada, Australia, Finland, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the UK, the US and the European Commission. "It is a race among friends," the founder of the UK's Critical Minerals Association, Jeff Townsend, said.

By Caroline Messecar