The momentum around building resilient and secure rare earth supply chains is accelerating in the United States.
Chief Operating Officer Chris Jordaan and Chief Legal & External Affairs Officer Annaliese Eames undertook the US site tour in July.
ASM has been at the heart of discussions in Washington DC and is proud to be part of the evolving solution by being an active supplier of rare earth metals and alloys to the US Defense Industrial Base.
As we progress plans to expand our existing rare earth metallisation capability into the US, members of the ASM team recently travelled to North America to continue engagement with the Trump Administration, federal agencies, and state governments – exploring options for building commercial-scale domestic capability.
Meetings with the National Security Council (NSC), National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC), Department of Commerce, SelectUSA, Export-Import Bank of the United States (US EXIM), and others all verified the continued and growing urgency for diversifying existing supply chains and building allied mine to magnet capabilities.
Further travels to Oklahoma and South Carolina were highly productive. ASM met with both states’ commerce departments, economic development agencies, power providers, and permitting and workforce development authorities. We completed site due diligence on a number of brownfield sites in Oklahoma and South Carolina and have now identified a short list for potential selection.
Private sector engagement in both states, with existing downstream customers and financial firms, equally showed the high level of support that is growing for ASM’s mine to metals strategy.
With plans to build a second metallisation plant in the US and the results of our recent Heap Leach Scoping Study at the Dubbo Project indicating significant capital cost improvements and an accelerated pathway to heavy and light rare earth production, ASM is ready to be a near-term solution for securing allied rare earth supply chains – particularly those in the United States.