OSLO, April 22 (Reuters) – Norway will take over planning for the Fen rare earth deposit – Europe’s largest – to speed up development after a resource upgrade nearly doubled its estimated size, the government said on Wednesday.
Fen was estimated last month to hold 15.9 million metric tons of rare earth oxide in indicated and inferred resources, 81% more than a 2024 estimate, the project’s developer said at the time.
Europe has no operating rare earth mines, and development of the southern Norway project would support the region’s push to reduce reliance on dominant producer China.
“The Fen field could be of major significance for Telemark, Norway and Europe’s supply security and competitiveness,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said in a statement. Telemark is the region where Fen is located.
“To ensure future access to critical minerals, it is important to increase production both in Norway and in other countries with which we cooperate in terms of security.”
About 19% of the oxides are neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr), key materials used in permanent magnets for electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics and defence applications.
The government said it had stepped in at the request of the local authority, citing the risk of land-use disputes and the need to balance competing national interests.
As elsewhere in Europe, infrastructure projects in Norway – including onshore wind farms – have faced opposition from environmental and agricultural interests, delaying development.
Rare Earths Norway, which is developing the project, has said it expects production to start in late 2031, with output of 800 tons of NdPr by 2032, equivalent to about 5% of European Union demand.
Two enormous sandlike dunes at an old chemical processing plant in South Africa are at the center of an exploratory U.S.-backed project to extract highly sought-after rare earth elements from industrial mining waste.
The Phalaborwa Rare Earths Project has U.S. support through a $50 million equity investment by the government’s International Development Finance Corporation and is part of accelerated U.S. efforts to reduce reliance on economic rival China for the minerals crucial for making electronic devices, robotics, defense systems, electric vehicles and other high-tech products.
Countries have identified dozens of minerals, including copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel, as critical because they are essential for new technologies. The 17 rare earth elements are a subset of them.
Project continues despite a diplomatic rift
The DFC was created during the first Trump administration and committed its investment in the Phalaborwa project in 2023 under former U.S. President Joe Biden.
The current Trump administration has moved forward with the project despite a major diplomatic rift with South Africa, which began when Trump returned to office and issued an executive order last February to halt all financial assistance to the country.
But the administration has shown that certain economic concerns come first. The DFC has promoted its involvement in the Phalaborwa project as part of a push to unlock Africa’s mineral potential “while advancing U.S. strategic interests.”
The Phalaborwa project is being developed by Rainbow Rare Earths. The DFC’s investment is through partner TechMet, a company that says it is focused on securing critical mineral supplies for the West. South Africa’s government does not have a direct stake in the project.
Rainbow Rare Earths CEO George Bennett told The Associated Press they hope to supply predominantly the U.S., saying its interest in the project was largely related to defense systems.
The company says it aims to supply the rare earth elements neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium and others from its South African project. They are used in high-performance magnets in wind turbines, electric vehicles, defense and emerging applications, including robotics.
The Phalaborwa project aims to start extracting rare earths from the two huge dunes in 2028. The dunes are 35 million tons of phosphogypsum, a byproduct of mining waste and the processing of phosphate rock for acid and fertilizer production.
The project is expected to operate for 16 years, Rainbow Rare Earths said. The $50 million injection from the DFC will be used only once Rainbow Rare Earths starts construction of its processing factory in Phalaborwa, anticipated in early 2027.
Rare earths are relatively common but usually occur at low concentrations and are difficult to separate, making their mining costly.
Neha Mukherjee, research manager at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said that while the Phalaborwa project was unique, with its experimental above-ground mineral extraction process, its potential remains unknown.
“It looks like a fairly low-cost asset in terms of operational cost,” she said. “Even the capital requirement is not very high … which is a good sign.”
Mukherjee added that the project is important because “we do not have enough projects to meet the entire demand outside of China.”
US is ‘trying to catch up’
Rainbow Rare Earths says mineral extraction from the dunes will use up to 90% renewable energy and be significantly less expensive than typical rare earth mining.
Bennett said Phalaborwa would be a low-cost producer comparable to Chinese producers.
“(Former owners) crushed it, they milled it, they put energy into it, put heat into it, all that to make the phosphogypsum, which is what’s needed to make rare earths,” said Rainbow Rare Earths project director Alberto Bruttomesso, referring to the processes the waste previously underwent. “Heating is the most expensive part of the process. It’s what costs the most money.”
Brazil will require foreign partners to process rare earth minerals domestically as a condition for access to its reserves, a senior government official said this week, setting terms that could reshape how Chinese and Western firms compete for resources the country has long exported raw.
“Our doors of Brazil to foreign investment are open, but our position has matured,” Leonardo Durans, a senior official at Brazil’s industry ministry, said at a press conference with international media.
“The commitment we will demand from everyone is domestic technological development and job creation.”
The US drive to reduce reliance on China for rare earths and critical minerals will take more than fixing resource and processing gaps, experts say, noting that the decisive factor would be talent.
Eroding industrial know-how, a weak education pipeline, and the lack of a consistent long-term strategy could complicate US ambitions to become a mining powerhouse and rival or even surpass China, they warned.
Rare earths are a critical component in many advanced weapons systems. Observers said China’s dominance in rare earths stemmed not only from its industrial scale but also from decades of accumulated engineering expertise, which the United States was struggling to rebuild after decades of decline
The critical materials in discarded rocks, e-waste and other sources don’t degrade over time and can be recovered. However, the U.S. lacks the infrastructure to recycle them.
Recycling facilities could tap into these largely untouched sources, helping meet U.S. demand. These facilities could be built far more quickly than new mines, which can take over a decade due to permitting, costs and infrastructure needs.
“The U.S. doesn’t recycle well,” said Bob Fox, a senior manager at INL. “There’s a willingness to recover critical materials from recycled sources, but there’s no infrastructure or market for it. Right now, critical materials recycling doesn’t have the economic incentives to drive infrastructure development.”
INL is working to change that by making recycling more efficient, less energy-intensive and economically viable.
“Recycling represents a crucial pathway for the U.S. to obtain critical materials, including rare earth elements like dysprosium,” said Arindam Mukhopadhyay, a staff scientist at INL. “Even critical materials we mine domestically, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese, can be recovered through recycling.”
Datavault AI (DVLT) said Thursday it has partnered with American Strategic Minerals to develop and monetize one of the latter’s resource extraction projects in Arizona through a $78.2 million digital tokenization initiative.
Under the agreement, American Strategic will receive up to $68.8 million, while Datavault AI may earn up to a 20% equity stake in the company upon meeting performance milestones under the tokenization program.
Datavault AI said antimony will be the first element tokenized, followed by gold, copper and silver. The initial phase will cover about 5% of the project’s antimony resource through the ASMI Antimony 1 Token.
The partnership sets the stage for the launch of an International Elements Exchange, the company added.
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