American Resources Corp (NASDAQ:AREC) CEO Mark Jensen spoke with Proactive about a landmark $1.4 billion financing commitment involving its subsidiary ReElement Technologies and the US Department of Defense.
Mark Jensen explained that this financing—secured through a partnership with Vulcan and the U.S. Office of Strategic Capital—will support domestic magnet manufacturing and expand rare earth element processing capacity.
“It’s nice to see the urgency and also the focus on building collaborative supply chains,” Jensen said, highlighting the importance of scaling US-based operations rapidly.
ReElement’s share of the funding is around $80 million, enabling it to boost capacity for the purification of both light and heavy rare earths.
The company is expanding its Marion, Indiana facility, which Jensen described as “massive,” to support production of up to 12,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides—5,000 of which are earmarked for this partnership.
Jensen also emphasized the global momentum ReElement is experiencing, with growing interest from defense and commercial clients, and active engagements across Asia, including recent work with Posco in Korea and meetings in Laos.
The company is working on rare materials such as yttrium, gadolinium and germanium, with an eye on both defense and industrial needs.
This partnership places ReElement at the forefront of building a resilient, domestic rare earth supply chain, vital to U.S. national security and industry growth.
Proactive: Welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom. And joining me now is Mark Jensen. He's the CEO of American Resources Corp. I've talked a lot about finances and loans, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about one this size. We’re talking about $1.4 billion that your subsidiary, ReElement, has worked in with the US Defense Department. So take me into the start of this. I know it's been a long process to get here.
Mark Jensen: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve been working with our government for a while now, understanding the importance of rare earth elements, critical minerals, and domestic magnet manufacturing. It’s nice to see the urgency and the focus on building collaborative supply chains. This partnership with Vulcan — a company we’ve worked with for over a year — and now working with the U.S. Office of Strategic Capital and the Department of War, shows that they want to build out domestic supply chains quickly. And this enables that to happen.
So I mentioned $1.4 billion. How does this all work? What is Vulcan getting and doing, and what are you getting and doing?
The attractiveness of ReElement is that we don’t need a lot of capital to build capacity. Our technology is very different from solvent extraction. We're getting about $80 million of the total funding. It enables us to build out the separation and purification step for both light and heavy rare earths — which we already do. We're just building additional capacity for this particular partnership. Vulcan is building out and expanding their magnet manufacturing capacity. This fully capitalizes domestic growth — getting to 10,000 metric tons of rare earth magnets, and doing it very quickly.
We’ve talked in the past about your expansion at two different locations. Do you need to add more now, or do you have enough with what you're developing to cover it all?
Our facility in Marion, Indiana is massive. We use about a tenth of the square footage required by solvent extraction and don’t use toxic chemicals. We’re building our capacity for around 12,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides. This partnership represents about 5,000 of that. We've ordered equipment that will use about 70,000 square feet of our 400,000-square-foot facility.
Lastly, when you start being recognized like this by the Department of Defense, it really opens up doors—not only in North America, but globally. Are you feeling that already?
Yeah. I just got back from a weekend in Laos, on the border of Vietnam. I was also in Korea with our partners at Posco. This represents a percentage of our business that we’re providing to Vulcan. We're very excited about this, and we’re also working with defense contractors to expedite what we do and how we do it. It puts a spotlight on our work, and we’re engaging with multiple customers now on yttrium, gadolinium, and germanium — unique elements needed by commercial and defense industries.
It is an eye-popping number — $1.4 billion. Congratulations. Exciting to see how it all ramps up. Thanks for your time, Mark.
Thank you so much. There's going to be a lot more to come shortly. Heads down, focused on operational execution, and ready to roll.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style