Energy Fuels mills rare earths in US that China limits

Energy Fuels (TSX: EFR; NYSE-A: UUUU) says it has successfully developed technology capable of producing six of the seven rare earths oxides at scale, that are now subject to the newly enacted Chinese export controls. Shares rose.

The company has the technical knowledge gained through its ongoing testwork to expand the existing infrastructure to produce six other rare earth oxides — samarium, gadolinium, dysprosium, terbium, lutetium and yttrium — all of which are subject to the Chinese export controls, Energy Fuels said.

“We now have the data, knowledge and much of the infrastructure in place to produce light, mid and heavy rare earth oxides at scale at the White Mesa mill,” Energy Fuels CEO Mark Chalmers said in release on Thursday.

This month, China restricted its exports of seven types of rare earth elements (REEs) in retaliation against new tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. These niche minerals are specific to technological processes or alloys and are hard to replace. The U.S. relies heavily on foreign imports, as MP Materials’ (NYSE: MP) Mountain Pass project in California is its sole producing rare earths mine.

Colorado-based Energy Fuels operates the White Mesa mill in Utah, the only fully licensed uranium mill in the U.S. which last year began producing neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxides on a commercial scale. Those two rare earths, used to build permanent magnet motors are the most common of the 17 elements, and are currently excluded from the Chinese export restrictions.

Energy Fuels shares gained 7.3% to $6.62 apiece by mid-Thursday in Toronto for a market capitalization of $1.31 billion.

Ramping up

The first stage separation circuit at White Mesa can produce between 850 to 1,000 metric tonnes of NdPr per year, Energy Fuels said. The company has been conducting lab- and pilot-scale REE separations since 2021, leveraging the high REE content in monazite — a low-cost byproduct of heavy mineral sands mines found in the U.S.

Its planned expansion is expected to increase the mill’s monazite concentrate processing capacity six-fold, from 10,000 tonnes a year to 60,000 tonnes. While the company has secured decades of monazite supply, it anticipates these U.S. mineral sands mines would only begin producing in 2028; before that, its supply would have to come from third parties.

Energy Fuels said it is now in the process of updating its 2024 prefeasibility study to a feasibility study to include the expansion.