Week of September 23, 2026
Study projects 7,000 jobs a year as 750,000-ton smelter advances. Putting numbers behind a proposed smelter expected to more than double primary aluminum production in the United States, Oklahoma Primary Aluminum has unveiled a new study projecting roughly $49 billion in cumulative economic impact for Oklahoma through 2060. Used across transportation, packaging, buildings, power systems, aerospace, defense, machinery and renewable energy, aluminum remains one of the world's...
Agreement provides material and another buyer for expanded DOE-backed Project SHIELD refinery in South Carolina. Moving closer to establishing a large-scale U.S. refinery for metals recovered from recycled lithium-ion batteries, Nth Cycle Inc. has added Glencore Ltd. to a growing lineup of government and commercial partners backing Project SHIELD. Nth Cycle entered into a binding term sheet with Glencore covering black mass supply and the offtake of nickel- and...
Government backing is building ex-China supply chains, but S&P says transparent benchmarks are needed to turn intervention into a functioning market. After decades of struggling to compete against China's dominance over rare earth mining, processing, and pricing, the United States and its allies are assembling alternative mine-to-magnet supply chains with enough government backing to withstand market forces that have repeatedly stalled Western projects. That success, however,...
USA Rare Earth partners with Pasqal, Riven Systems to test quantum machine learning and autonomous labs on one of the toughest challenges in the rare earth supply chain. USA Rare Earth Inc. is leveraging the quantum computing expertise Pasqal has built off Nobel Prize-winning research and the Department of Energy-backed advanced separation platform developed by Riven Systems to overcome the highest hurdle to building complete rare earth supply chains in the West ...
Sandvik deal backs Los Santos restart with long-term offtake. Moving to restart tungsten recovery from tailings at its Los Santos mine in Spain, Almonty Industries Inc. has entered a multi-year agreement to supply Sandvik Group subsidiary Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG with the resulting concentrate. Used across metalworking, mining, construction, aerospace, electronics and defense, tungsten is valued for its hardness, heat resistance, and density, making it difficult to...
$13.2M deal adds feedstock, logistics and lifecycle capabilities. American Resources Corporation subsidiary Electrified Materials Corporation (EMCO) has signed a binding letter of intent to acquire Blackion LLC in an all-shares deal valued at $13.2 million, adding a company that manages used batteries, recovered materials, and supply-chain logistics to its battery recycling business. Across the growing U.S. battery industry, manufacturing scrap, off-spec cells and end-of-life...
Funding targets U.S. processing and North America's only APT plant. Backing a domestic tungsten supplier already tied to more than 100 U.S. defense programs, the U.S. Department of War has committed $450 million to The Elmet Group Co. to expand processing capacity and establish North America's only independent ammonium paratungstate (APT) facility. Prized for its hardness, heat resistance, density and durability, tungsten is used across missiles, munitions, aerospace and...
American West taps GreenMet to pursue federal funding, investors, offtake for West Desert. Seeking to connect one of the world's largest undeveloped indium deposits to American manufacturing supply chains at a time when the United States remains entirely reliant on imports for this critical metal, American West Metals Ltd. has engaged Washington, DC-based strategic advisory firm GreenMet to help advance its West Desert project in Utah. The engagement is aimed at connecting...
USA Rare Earth facility targets 6,400 metric tons of magnets, 490 jobs. USA Rare Earth Inc. Sept. 9 broke ground on an 800,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Blacksburg, South Carolina, that is expected to produce 6,400 metric tons of sintered neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets and 5,000 metric tons of strip-cast metal and alloy per year. Located on 124 acres in the Bailey Industrial Park in Cherokee County, the roughly $1.2 billion facility is scheduled to begin...
Four projects form a real-world testing network to move Mine of the Future technologies from lab to field To help turn the United States' in-the-ground mineral potential into secure critical mineral supply chains, the U.S. Department of Energy has selected four projects for roughly $73 million in federal funding to establish real-world proving grounds for innovative mining technologies. "Investing in moving cutting-edge mining technologies out of the lab and into the field...
Arizona facility brings automated recovery to commercial scale. Bringing automated rare earth magnet recovery to commercial scale in the United States, Cyclic Materials Inc. Sept. 9 opened its first commercial recycling facility in Mesa, Arizona, with capacity to recover rare earths and other critical minerals from up to 25,000 metric tons of magnet-bearing products annually. With the U.S. heavily-reliant on foreign processing for the rare earth elements used in permanent...
Narva facility ships first Tier 1 EV volumes as expansion advances. Moving its European magnet expansion into commercial production, Neo Performance Materials Inc.'s new Estonia manufacturing facility is now shipping commercial volumes of rare earth permanent magnets to a tier-one supplier of electric vehicle motors. Across Europe, efforts to build a more secure rare earth supply chain have increasingly moved beyond mining and separation toward the downstream manufacturing...
UK patent protects modular trolley-assist system designed to move and expand as an open-pit mine evolves. First Quantum Minerals Ltd. has spent more than a decade developing proprietary trolley-assist technology aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of the copper increasingly vital to 21st-century energy and technology. "Mining is no longer just an extractive industry, and we need to contribute meaningfully to the environment and to the communities around us," said Gordon...
Funding adds samarium, gadolinium separation to Ucore's first commercial-scale machine. To secure domestic supplies of two rare earths highly critical to national security, the U.S. Department of War has awarded Ucore Rare Metals Inc. an additional $4.6 million to add samarium and gadolinium separation capabilities to the RapidSX technology planned for its Louisiana Strategic Metals Complex. "We are seeing heightened interest from Washington in the role Ucore can play in...
Luck Stone rollout brings autonomous Cat 775s to two more sites. Building on more than 18 months of autonomous hauling at Luck Stone's Bull Run Quarry, Caterpillar Inc. Sept. 14 reported the technology will expand to two additional Virginia operations, marking the first deployment of its autonomous haulage system on Cat 775 trucks. Long established across large mining operations, Caterpillar's MineStar Command for hauling had already moved billions of tons of material before...
Pilot puts 100% recycled nickel, cobalt and manganese into GM cells. Closing the loop between old electric vehicle batteries and new production, Cirba Solutions LLC and General Motors Company Sept. 22 reported completion of a recycling pilot that returned critical minerals from end-of-life GM battery packs to new vehicles, creating the automaker's first batteries with cathode active material (CAM) containing 100% recycled nickel, cobalt and manganese. With nearly 14 million...
Universities can receive up to $1M PROSPECT Prize to rapidly expand critical minerals education, training pathways. To help build the workforce needed to rebuild America's critical mineral supply chains, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation is inviting universities across the nation to receive up to $1 million to accelerate mining and minerals education and training. DOE's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation on Sept....
PyroDelta tech taps temperature differences when solar output falls. Extending its tellurium-based thermoelectric technology into solar power, First Tellurium Corp. subsidiary PyroDelta Energy is developing a thin film designed to generate supplemental electricity from conventional solar panels during periods of reduced or no sunlight. Even as solar has become a major source of new electricity generation, its productive window remains tied to available sunlight, creating an...
