Uranium producer Energy Fuels is rapidly building momentum to become a significant supplier of processed magnetic rare earths in the U.S. Headquartered in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, Colorado, it has notched important progress on several fronts in recent months:
- Processing capabilities at its White Mesa Mill in Utah are on upswing and production capacities are being expanded.
- Collaboration with Korean steel company Posco, intent on building a new “China-excluded” rare earth magnet supply chain.
- Likely, more such deals will follow as it seeks to line up top magnet manufacturers as customers especially those with ties to the electric vehicle industry.
- More expansion, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, is envisioned depending upon government and market support.
- Agreement with Chemours to supply feedstock from its monazite mines in Florida and Georgia, adding to other feedstock deals elsewhere in the world.
Posco Collaboration
The deal with Posco involves a memorandum of understanding with Posco International which aims to create a new non-China REE supply chain for EV and hybrid EV drivetrains for automakers in America, Europe, Japan and South Korea. A producer of traction motor cores, Posco is a top-tier supplier to the automotive industry with its drivetrains already qualified by U.S., South Korean, European and Japanese customers. Energy Fuels says that its U.S.-processed rare earth oxide (REE) could be used in vehicles for U.S. and European markets as soon as this year.
“Today’s agreement between Energy Fuels and POSCO International brings the U.S. and our allies in Europe, South Korea and Japan one step closer to seeing vehicles powered by American-made rare earth oxides with no ties to China, unlocking a scalable, high-quality allied REE magnet processing and manufacturing route that does not currently exist in the U.S.” said Energy Fuels’ President and CEO Mark Chalmers on March 17 when the deal was announced.
Initial qualification samples of Energy Fuels’ neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide, produced at its White Mesa Mill in Utah, have already met Posco’s specifications. Under the MOU, Energy Fuels will supply a larger scale sample of NdPr oxide to POSCO, which will be processed into NdPr metal, alloy and finished high-performance permanent REE magnets to qualify the company’s oxide for use in Posco’s traction motor cores. In addition, Energy Fuels will receive final magnet and sintered block samples to demonstrate successful production of high-performance magnets from its NdPr oxide.
Upon successful validation of the initial sample supply of NdPr Oxide, Energy Fuels and Posco will discuss the potential delivery of additional mass production supply volumes of NdPr oxide later this year for permanent REE magnet production, which will be enough to power 30,000+ EVs, which could be available to consumers later this year.
In addition, the companies intend to explore the potential for Energy Fuels to supply U.S.-produced REE oxides to Posco on a long-term basis, while leaving significant volumes available for other customers, including commercial-scale REE metallization, alloying, and magnet production initiatives, currently being constructed in the U.S.
“Energy Fuels and Posco are working together to create a traceable, competitively priced and sustainably produced rare earth supply chain for allied magnet-makers and U.S. and allied automotive partners,” noted Chalmers. “We are proud to work with Posco, as they have deep expertise, a strong network, and an existing customer base in permanent magnets, traction drive units, and other motor systems, making our business relationship with Posco highly valuable for Energy Fuels. If a definitive agreement with Posco is completed this year, we could see Energy Fuels’ American-made rare earths powering vehicles in the U.S. in 2025.”
More such deals are likely. NdPr produced at White Pass is in the process of being qualified with permanent magnet manufacturers and other potential customers which, upon successful qualification, would set the stage for potential offtake in the future.
Posco a well-connected, integrated partner with big ambitions in magnetics & drivetrains
Energy Fuels has a market-savvy and well-connected partner in Posco. Its companies make electrical steel as well as the powertrains and transformers that use it, functioning as a leading materials and component supplier globally. As previously reported in Magnetics Magazine, Posco is holding big new orders from automakers in North America and Germany for permanent magnets and planning to build a globally integrated enterprise for magnet and motor component manufacturing fully independent of rare earths and magnet processing or products from China.
Posco produces over 1 million tons of electrical steel sheets every year. The non-grain oriented electrical steel has a non-uniform crystal orientation making it suitable for products containing rotating parts such as motors and generators. Grain oriented electrical steel has a uniform crystal orientation, featuring a much higher magnetic performance. Its main applications include products that have a stationary phase, such as transformers.
White Pass Mill Capabilities Expand in Utah
Energy Fuels recently commissioned its Phase 1 rare earth separation circuit at the White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah, capable of producing up to 1,000 metric tons of separated NdPr per year. The company is currently designing and licensing Phase 2 and Phase 3 to be able to increase NdPr production to 4,000 then to 6,000 metric tons per year, while also adding Dy, Tb, and perhaps other separated rare earth production. It also plans to design and license a separate monazite processing circuit to enable the simultaneous production of both uranium and rare earths.
In mid-April, Energy Fuels announced that it has successfully developed the technology it believes is required to produce six of the seven rare earth oxides, at scale, that are now subject to newly enacted Chinese export controls, amid increasing trade tensions between the U.S. and China. “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,” said Chalmers.
Monazite from Chemours and the Southern Hemisphere
Energy Fuels focuses on monazite, a mineral the company says has a superior REE content and other benefits. First, monazite has excellent distributions of light, mid and heavy REE oxides versus other REE minerals. Monazite also has advantages over other REE minerals, as it is currently produced as a low-cost byproduct of heavy mineral sands (HMS) mines located in the U.S. and allied nations. Typical monazite concentrates from HMS mines can be very high-grade with 50-60% total REE oxides including 20-24% NdPr and 14% concentrations of heavy REE oxides including dysprosium (Dy) and terbium (Tb).
Currently, Energy Fuels has the capacity to process up to 10,000 tons of monazite concentrate and produce up to 1,000 tons of NdPr oxide per year in Utah and expects to increase this six-fold in the future.
Since 2021, it has purchased monazite concentrates from HMS mines owned by The Chemours Company in Florida and Georgia. The new deal with Chemours was announced March 18 as a strategic alliance that would extend their relationship for long-term supply.
In the past two years, Energy Fuels secured its own low-cost, future supply of monazite by acquiring three large-scale HMS mines in the Southern Hemisphere where it is developing new projects in Madagascar, Brazil and Austria that have the potential to supply large quantities of monazite concentrates to the White Mesa Mill for decades.
“With appropriate government and/or market support, Energy Fuels is prepared to make hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in U.S. critical mineral processing and mines in allied nations, while maintaining our position as the leading U.S. producer of uranium, as one of the leading U.S. producers of advanced rare earth materials, and as an emerging world-significant producer of HMS minerals, says Chalmers.” For more info, see www.energyfuels.com and this previous article in Magnetics Magazine.
