American Resources Corp (NASDAQ:AREC) CEO Mark Jenses outlined progress earlier this week in its rare earth refining operations and expansion plans.
The company owns a 19% stake in ReElement Technologies Corporation, which is refining critical and rare earth elements at costs it described as comparable to Chinese producers. Jensen highlighted that ReElement is using technology first developed in the 1960s but now enhanced with modern computing power.
Proactive: For those who aren’t familiar, maybe give me a bit of a background on the company itself and the technology you’re trying to move forward.
Mark Jensen: American Resources is a company we took public a number of years ago. During that process, we built a division called ReElement Technologies Corporation, which we own roughly 19% of today. But it’s a game changer within the industry. You read about it every day nowadays in the news. The government just supported MP Materials when they needed capital.
But the attractiveness of what we do at ReElement is we can refine critical and rare earth elements at Chinese cost today and are doing that for the defense supply chain as well as commercial markets. Ultimately, American Resources is a supplier to ReElement of these raw materials from our own mines and ore bodies.
Talk about the cost, because that’s probably one of the most significant things. A lot of people say it can be done cheaper in China. And you’re saying, not so much—not so fast—you can do it as well.
Yeah. If you’re using a really toxic process like solvent extraction, then it’s tough to do that here in the United States. We don’t do that. We use technology that was actually utilized in the 1960s for critical minerals and rare earth elements, but we didn’t have the computing power to do it back then. Our technology is able to produce products at some Chinese cost today.
The government supported MP at $110 a kilogram because they needed that with solvent extraction. That’s the cost to produce those materials. With us, we’re refining rare earth elements between $25 to $35 a kilogram today. Those products are selling from between $65 to $500 a kilogram. Some of the higher-purity materials are north of $5,000 a kilogram.
Your most recent news is that you launched this rare magnet supply chain with ReElement. Explain this news release and why it’s significant.
Oh, 100%. The magnet supply chain, defense supply chain, high-heat reactors, optics lenses—these are products you can’t find in the United States. No other company in the United States or outside China can produce these elements the way we can. Not only can we do it, but we’re doing it today. We’re shipping product through qualification standards with our defense prime contractors. Some of the largest defense contractors in the United States. I can’t use their names yet, but probably will in the next few months.
We’re breaking the reliance on China. Right now, our government relies 100% on China for the defense supply chain. We can do that here in the United States at Chinese cost, which is important. People don’t want to pay premiums. We recycle this material. We process SAG and heavy rare earth concentrate you read about in the news every day. We can do that at a fraction of the cost.
And your recovery is incredible as far as the purity. That’s another big part of this, as your technology is quite good.
100%. Not only can it produce a lot of volume, but it can produce very high purity. We just shipped 99.999% pure gallium and 99.999% pure terbium—probably two of the hardest heavy rare earth elements to separate and purify. We’re able to do that at five nines purity, which is a massive deal.
Those elements are priced between $3,000 and $7,000 a kilogram. We can either recycle that material or produce it from virgin ores. We’re working with some of the largest players in the critical minerals space that need help refining these elements. That’s what we’re focused on—breaking reliance.
We won’t just be doing it domestically. We have a $100 million commitment for our Africa facility. We’re working with an Australian company and have signed a partnership on direct lithium extraction, which we’ll announce shortly. There’s a lot of cool stuff we’ll be able to roll out over the next few months showcasing our capabilities and scale.
Quotes have been lightly edited for style and clarity