Two projects in western Canada have broken through decades of industry deadlock to develop a hub for processing rare earths for the growing electric vehicle and offshore wind sector.

 

A first for the region, after a lengthy hiatus, the projects are at the vanguard of a wave of new capacity. Mid-stream processing projects are advancing rapidly in the US as industry braces to develop the supply to capture the technological shift to electric vehicles and renewable energy.

 

The hub, located on an industrial complex in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, contains two plants — one owned and developed by Australian rare earth miner Vital Metals and the other funded by the Saskatchewan government and owned and operated by the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC). The two projects are very different from one another, but both share an unwavering commitment to environmental and social governance.

 

"Our plant uses a lot of water and chemicals but unlike other jurisdictions will not produce a single litre of liquid waste," SRC president Mike Crabtree said.

 

The facility built by Vital Metals is processing bastnaesite rare earth concentrate from its Nechalacho deposit in Canada's Northwest Territories into a mixed rare earth carbonate for sale to customers in Europe and the US. Vital is among a select few mining companies to have reached production outside China, the world's largest rare earth supplier. The project has advanced extremely rapidly from mine construction to an intermediate rare earth product. Vital expects to produce a 2.5t carbonate sample in the coming months for offtake partner Norway's REEtec as the next step of product qualification and reach phase I capacity of 474 t/yr of neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide contained in a mixed rare earth carbonate by late 2024, and phase II capacity of 948 t/yr NdPr in 2025. Finalising construction, commissioning and the ramp up is fully financed by a A$45mn ($29mn) share placement completed in August which will also be used to develop the larger Tardiff deposit at Nechalacho. And in April, Vital received a funding agreement for C$5mn ($3.7mn) from Canada's Jobs and Growth Fund for the Saskatoon processing plant.

 

Government intervention

The SRC facility was built to provide midstream processing capacity for Canadian mining firms to process monazite, a rare earth-rich mineral which is particularly difficult to process.

 

"We were working with the government on strategic reserves in 2019, and realised that if nothing is done then as our resources are turned into reserves and production, mining companies would have no option but to supply the concentrate overseas if there was no midstream processing capacity in the country," Crabtree said.

 

Monazite is a valuable source of the light and heavy rare earths needed for magnets but processing it requires the ability to handle radioactive materials. The only other monazite producer in the western hemisphere is uranium producer Energy Fuels (EF) in the US which began cracking monazite in Utah to produced a mixed rare earth carbonate in 2020. EF sells the carbonate to Canadian firm Neo Performance Materials, which separates it into NdPr and other products at its light rare earth plant in Estonia for sale to customers.

 

The SRC plant will complete commissioning at the end of 2024 and have capacity for 3,000 t/yr of monazite concentrate with a 60pc rare earth oxide content to produce 1,500 t/yr of separated rare earth oxides, including 300 t/yr of NdPr. The solvent extraction unit to separate the mixed rare earth carbonates into oxides was developed independently and is not reliant on overseas equipment so is not subject to any existing or future export restrictions.

 

The plant is fully vertically integrated from monazite concentrate to rare earth metal and has just produced the first 100kg of metal in the pilot batch. After commissioning it will have capacity for 300 t/yr of metal, enough for magnet motors for 500,000 electric vehicles. The next step for the project is likely to be moving further downstream into magnet alloys and magnetic powders, which could be adapted to different magnet formulations and sold directly to magnet makers.

 

Industry observers agree that development of regional magnet-making capacity is critical because it is the ultimate rare earth consumer and creates demand down the entire value chain.