ICYMI: US Set to Open First Rare Earth Mine in Decades

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1:41Carol Massar:This is Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, shares of Ramico Resources surging today, up 30%, 29 % right now, surging as much as 36 % earlier in the session, reaching their highest in more than two years. This after the engineering and construction firm FloorCorp completed a preliminary economic assessment of the company's new Brook Mine in Wyoming. The Brook Mine has rare earth elements like scandium and neodymium. It's also the first new rare earth mine in the U.S. in more than 70 years. We've got with us Randall Atkins, the founder, chairman and CEO of Ramico Resources.

2:20It's the$845 million market cap miner of metallurgical coal and rare earth. He joins us from Rochester, Wyoming, where tomorrow the ribbon will be cut at the official opening of the new Brookmine Carbon Ore Rare Earth Project. Also back with us is Joe Doe, formerly metals and mining reporter. He knows a ton about rare earths. Now his focus is on economic statecraft. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Randall, I want to start where we left off with Jim Latinsky over at MP Materials. We just had a long conversation with him just a few minutes ago about the Department of Defense investment in his company.

2:55Help our viewers and listeners understand where you play in the rare earths market versus where MP Materials plays. And is there any overlap there? Like, are you a competitor? Well, I think, you know, MP Materials has been around in one form or another for 70 years. It got started in 1952. As I said, or you said, we're going to be the first new mine since then, 70 odd years forward. They produce sort of the lighter rare earth elements. We produce the heavier and medium magnetics. And we also produce or will produce a number of critical materials and metals that will be very significant like gallium and germanium and scandium.

3:41So we have sort of a different product slate. Most importantly, though, our stuff has been found in coal, somewhat remarkably. Coal is not radioactive. The material that MP mines, unfortunately, is radioactive and has been shipped to China to be processed, refined, and then, frankly, mostly sold over there. So we will be kind of a Team USA proposition. We will mine this coal in Wyoming. We will process it here. into rare earths and critical minerals and we will sell to domestic customers so we're looking forward to getting started and uh you know ground zero is tomorrow morning hey randy joe doe here uh thanks for coming on i i want to bring up a question that i've gotten from some of the investors in this space related to your new project and the question that keeps coming up is how are they actually going to separate the rare earths and process them uh you i know have been explaining that it is possible, but I think there's still a lot of questions in the market because it's going to be a bit of a first of its kind, which always leaves a lot of question marks.

4:50Sure, you bet. And what we have done is we have designed, you know, as you know, Joe, they call it in engineering a flow sheet, which is kind of a critical path as to how you will, in essence, process and engineer essentially an extraction and separation technique. So we will be basically be taking our coal out. We will be doing a mild benefaction of that to kind of size it. And then we will use a processing, which is conventional, where we will use certain leaching technologies, certain separation technologies, including physical and magnetic. And what we are doing is pretty conventional. The beauty, as I said, is because the coal is much softer than the material that most rare earths are found in, which is hard minerals.

5:40And of course, it is also not radioactive. So we don't have terbium. We don't have uranium. We don't have to deal with those issues that we will have a much less complex form of processing. And Fleur, who knows a lot about it, certainly more than we do, has confirmed it's both commercially and most importantly, technically feasible to use and process the way that is set forth in their document. The interesting thing, though, that I'll point out is, you know, we have been involved in exploring a host of technology that could be applied to coal for probably over 10 years now. So we are in parallel working with the national labs of the Department of Energy on a number of novel technologies that might be deployed to even enhance the ways that coal can be processed.

6:35As things as laser technologies, even some ability to take microbes and proteins, train them to actually eat rare earth, for lack of a better description. So there's a lot of exciting things going on in the space. And this is kind of a ground zero proposition. So Randy, to pull us back into rare earth, though, I mean, this announcement from the DOD and from MP Materials seems huge for them. But it also seems like the knock-on effect for you guys would be significant. Well, I think if the stock market is any indicator, I think the answer to that is yes. So, again, we have been kind of tied with the hip with the government for a long time.

7:20They're the ones that found this, frankly, about eight years ago. And so we will certainly be involved in exploring with the government, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and others, you know, how we can mutually be helpful to try and advance America's cause here. because we're in a mineral war, of course, with China, which we all know. And this mine is, frankly, large enough. We are at 1.7 million tons and climbing north of total rare earth oxides. The U.S. uses about 10 ,000 tons a year. So this mine could supply a rather ample portion of that requirement for decades and decades to come.

8:05So we'll look forward to exploring further how we can do business with the government. Randy, can we assume that you're in similar talks with the Defense Department that we just saw with MP? We have not entered into direct talks with the Defense Department, but we certainly have had indirect outreaches in both directions. Are you going to be more direct now that you see what the DOD has done and within its investment in MP materials? Would you be open to an investment? Oh, sure. We will be open to considering whatever seems to make sense, of course, firstly for our shareholders, but also, of course, for the nation.

8:46And to the extent that this mine, which is, frankly, a potential national treasure, you know, it certainly is something that we want to make sure that the Defense Department and other arms of the government can can utilize its its opportunity. So we will be certainly open to exploring things with the Defense Department.

9:05Carol Massar:Not to be Debbie Downer, but we all know the impact that coal can have on the environment. So I'm just curious, how do you make sure whether it's coal mining that we know can lead to acid mine drainage? Like there are lots of things that we have learned over the last 50, 100 years in terms of coal's impact. How do you prevent that? Well, I tell you, Martha, the last time I was on your program, if you remember, one of my one liners is coal is too valuable to burn. And I think this is certainly an apt point of exclamation on that thesis. So we have been really working for alternative uses of coal to make things like precursors for carbon fibers, synthetic graphites, graphenes, a number of different types of uses that people, frankly, wouldn't have thought coal could be used for.

10:03Candidly, the Chinese are using a lot of coal to do just this. They frankly use about close to 500 million tons a year for various types of coal to products. So, you know, we are basically using this coal primarily for rare earths. There will be some use we can make of it for traditional thermal purposes. But, you know, as a practical matter, the main economic driver for this is rare earths.

10:33Carol Massar:Come back soon. Randall, thank you so much. Randall Atkins, founder, chairman, and CEO of Ramaco Resources, joining us. And, of course, homage to our Joe Doe, who is unbelievable on this space and so much more. We are better because of it. Thank you. This is Bloomberg.

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