Canada Rare Earth Corp (TSX-V:LL) has said it is actively responding to the urgent demands of international businesses and national governments for continuous, reliable supply of rare earths.
The company noted that it is enhancing its mineral supply chain capabilities with business operations and development activities in eight countries.
Although customers and governments are concerned about the uncertainty of continuous supply, the demand for rare earths is strong and growing with the increasing use of new and leading-edge products and technologies, the company noted, and with assured supply, demand will grow substantially and will be supplied largely from the new stable and dependable sources.
In a statement, Tracy A. Moore, the company's chief executive officer, said: "Our global footprint has been established and is continuing to expand in multiple countries with the simultaneous implementation of our three fundamental cornerstones: resource development utilizing multiple proprietary properties augmented with exceptional third party supply; development of value-add mid-stream processing facilities; and increasing essential mineral product sales to our solid and expanding customer base."
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"The ability to separate rare earth elements into oxides is uncommon outside of China and providing this capability is a key part of our strategy. We are in negotiations to acquire an existing full capability refinery and in discussions with prospective joint venture partners in other regions to extend this capability and augment our existing ability to supply rare earth oxides," added Moore.
Rare earth products are critical to many industries, including industrial, consumer, medical and military applications. High-profile examples include rare earths present in components integrated into electric vehicles, wind turbines, telecommunications, computers, medical equipment, cracking of oil, and military applications such as fighter jets and submarines.
Peter Shearing, Canada Rare Earth chief operating officer, added: "What differentiates us is that we are in business and actively sourcing, selling, and delivering critical minerals to our customers. We are aggressively expanding our supply base through corporate-owned assets and third-party supply to meet the demands of existing and prospective customers with whom we have existing relationships."
"For example," Shearing continued, "we are developing a ready-for-processing proprietary, permitted property with 70 million metric tons of tailings containing rare earths, cassiterite, zircon and ilmenite. The agreement to purchase the tailings stockpile also includes the right of first refusal to explore and exploit the minerals under 9,960 hectares where the stockpile is located. The stockpile and acreage are in a prolific mining region in South America. We are also in discussions to acquire and develop additional properties in the vicinity."
Elyse Kohyann, the company's head of Global Trading, remarked: "Sales and trading activities are focused on increasing sales of mineral concentrates to meet the demands of our existing customer base. As supply increases we will on-board more customers and/or direct concentrates to refineries that we acquire and/or develop."
"We will also extend our sales efforts for high purity and specialty rare earth products in line with our exclusive international distribution agreement. These focuses will aid in our ability to deliver concentrates to our refineries and sell oxides produced by the refineries, once up and running," Kohyann added.
Canada Rare Earth Corp is developing an integrated business within the global rare earth industry. Its key focus is to generate revenues and positive cash flow from a variety of profit centres in the rare earth production and sales chain by sourcing, adding value and selling rare earths in all stages and forms.
The company is in the process of establishing our own mining, concentrating and refinery capabilities in addition to working with affiliated and third-party organizations.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com