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MP Minerals got their magnet plant going. Good. MP Minerals operates the Mountain Pass, CA rare earths mine. This was the largest rare earths mine in the world
by Animats 2y ago
MP Minerals got their magnet plant going. Good.
MP Minerals operates the Mountain Pass, CA rare earths mine. This was the largest rare earths mine in the world at one time. After several shutdowns and two bankruptcies due to low rare earth prices, MP Minerals bought the mine in 2017 and had it producing ore in 2020. The mine already had a "beneficiation" plant, where raw ore goes in and a mix of rare earth elements, plus lots of unwanted tailings, come out. Unlike the plants in China, they have a process that doesn't require huge settlement ponds and vast amounts of water, so it doesn't create too much of a mess. It's mostly a mechanical process, and processes huge volumes of ore, yielding a much smaller volume of concentrate.
What comes out of the benficiation plant needs more separation. That had to be sent to China to be refined, because there were no plants to do the separation in the US. So MP Minerals got the US Department of Defense to fund a separation plant at Mountain Pass. This separates the different rare earths. It's mostly a chemical process. Again, what comes out is a lot less volume than goes in. The Mountain Pass separation plant has been working for a few years now.
What comes out of the separation plant needs more purification and alloying. That's what the new plant in Texas does. That's a modest sized facility in an industrial park. What comes out is metal ready to be formed into magnets. That completes the supply chain.
Owning the whole supply chain insulates MP Minerals from trouble in the middle stages. Such as China's 2024 ban on export of rare earth processing technology.[1] Now that they have the whole supply chain working, they can increase production if desired. It's much easier to duplicate a plant than make a new one for a new process.
[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-chinas-ban-rare-earths-processing-technology-exports-means https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-chinas-ban-rare-earths-pr...
- roenxi 2y ago> After several shutdowns and two bankruptcies due to low rare earth prices... It's important to contextualise this, it is probably the most important part of the entire story. Rare earths aren't all that rare, they generally have a crustal abundance comparable to copper. The question of where rare earth mining & processing happens is mainly one of price. Or, accounting for second order effects, a question of environmental regulations.
- bombcar 2y agoAnd bankruptcies due to price are a common occurrence in the mining industry. I’ve done consulting work at a giant open pit copper mine the size of which cannot be described, sitting idle waiting for the price of cooper to climb above a benchmark.
- corimaith 2y agoWhich is where tariffs come in to offset low price dumping. Inefficient, but it's better thought of as insurance premium on future geopolitical risk.
- bushbaba 2y agoOr schemes similar to agriculture where the government buys excess production for price stability. Which is good for consumers and businesses alike.
- lesuorac 2y agoTo be clear, "price stability" in this case means a higher price compared to absence of government intervention. I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason. We are also well beyond sufficient domestic production. Our population has doubled in the past 50 years [1] while food production has tripled. We do not need agriculture subsides for sufficient domestic production. [1]: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange-data-text.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange... [2]: https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/look-agricultural-productivity-growth-united-states-1948-2017 https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/look-agricultural-...
- mschuster91 2y ago> I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason. Price stability itself is a valid goal. Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread, but the price of the good can be relied upon which is very important for low-income households and their financial planning.
- modo_mario 2y ago> So MP Minerals got the US Department of Defense to fund a separation plant at Mountain Pass. Are there any other contenders or did this come with any guarantees of this yet another example of oneside public-private partnerships?
- Animats 2y agoThere are other rare-earth deposits in the US, at least two in Wyoming and one in Arizona.[1] A different group claims to have a big find in Colorado. The Wyoming people claim to have found a deposit so big that if they built a large mine, they'd crash the rare earths market. Those are all in exploration stage, with no production. MP Minerals was mining ore and shipping beneficiated ore to China for further refining. So it made sense from a DoD national security perspective to fund on site refining in California. DoD only funded one of the four steps from mine to magnets. [1] https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/02/07/rare-earths-discovery-near-wheatland-so-big-it-could-be-world-leader/ https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/02/07/rare-earths-discover...