Medallion Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:MDL, OTCQB:MLLOF) said it is strengthening its position in the rare earth element (REE) supply chain and has struck a three-month exclusivity agreement with a research firm on emerging technologies.
The North American private firm exclusively owns an innovative REE metallization technology, which sees the conversion of REE compounds into REE metal - a key step in making permanent REE magnets.
Notably, there are few entities outside China that have this metallization capacity, said Medallion.
The research firm is also the exclusive owner of technology and knowhow on a process to efficiently pre-process, extract, recover and separate rare earth elements from end-of-life recycled REE permanent magnets.
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"Medallion has been actively reviewing opportunities within the REE supply chain, with a focus on the industry bottlenecks where breakthrough technologies are required," said Mark Saxon, the company's CEO in a statement.
"In this process, we have identified a research group with a portfolio of technologies based on low environmental impact design principles. These technologies are complementary to our existing LAD technology platform providing exposure to REE magnet recycling as well as REE metallization, and we are excited to be launching an exclusive due diligence process to learn more and plan future investment and partnership," he added.
The agreement gives Medallion three months to carry out additional due diligence on the group's proprietary rare earth element metallization and rare earth magnet recycling technologies.
If successful, Medallion will seek to "negotiate investment terms to acquire or partner on all or part of the underlying technologies", it told investors.
REE permanent magnets, comprised of neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, play a fundamental role in the efficient generation of renewable energy and its use in electric vehicles (EVs) but are currently recycled at a very low rate due to technology barriers.
Medallion is actively identifying key emerging technologies that can unlock bottlenecks within the supply of raw materials critical for the clean energy transition.
It also aims to produce REE by exploiting monazite, which is widely available as a by-product from mining mineral sands.
Notably, the Medallion process does not need mining to produce the rare earths and uses a high-grade by-product that typically goes to waste (monazite) and a design practice that maximizes energy and reagent re-use and produces zero liquid waste output.
Contact the writer at giles@proactiveinvestors.com