Long suffering reader has accompanied us down this road a few times. Here are a couple of the more recent jumbo finds and brief comments on what to look for:
This one January 14, 2023:
"Huge rare earth metals discovery in Arctic Sweden"
They aren't that rare. Just hard to find in the right proportions of the different rare earth elements. And in concentrations high enough to make extraction a paying proposition.
And requiring some technical expertise to fabricate into end products. It's not as if there are neodymium magnets just laying around...
And in 2022's "Huge rare earth reserve discovered in Turkey, but experts caution that ‘grade is king’"
Not just grade. The composition of a deposit, the amounts of the 17 rare earth elements is critical. As one example, the Mountain Pass mine in the U.S. despite its relatively high grade (8% REEs) is actually not as valuable as some lower grade mines with a more profitable mix.
Additionally, exploitation of a REE resource is highly dependent on processing and supply chain factors that can not quickly be brought into being, it's one thing to have the deposit, quite another to have, for example, the end product, a neodymium magnet.
And from the Daily Mail, February 8:
'Beyond our wildest dreams': 2.34 BILLION metric tons of rare earth minerals discovered in Wyoming that could make US 'world leader'
- America is poised to become the leading producer of rare earth minerals
- Rare earth minerals are crucial for smartphones, hybrid cars and military tech
- READ MORE: Another Wyoming mine could contain $37 billion worth
The US could soon surpass China as the world leader in rare earth minerals after more than 2.34 billion metric tons were discovered in Wyoming.
American Rare Earths Inc announced that the reserves near Wheatland dramatically surpass the Asian nation’s 44 million metric tons, saying it 'exceeded our wildest dreams’ after drilling only about 25 percent of the property.
The company has a stake in 367 mining claims across 6,320 acres of land in the Halleck Creek Project, along with four Wyoming mineral leases on 1,844 acres on the same project now called Cowboy State Mine....
....MUCH MORE
We wish them well and will write about refining and fabrication plays if the mines can get into production.
There's a reason China leads the world in that value chain infrastructure, in no small part because a) most rare earth deposits come out of the ground slightly radioactive—because they are usually found in proximity to uranium and thorium, that's the reason Greenland won't even allow exploration and b) we've been tracking the doings of the big dog since 2009's "With a Name Like Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co., it has to be good (600111:Shanghai)". Unfortunately in Inner Mongolia they actually named this muck Baotou Toxic Lake:
