During the second stage — which MP Materials will soon begin doing — the concentrate is run through a process of “roasting,” “leaching” and chemical separation that purifies the high-value minerals. The final product is individual oxides in the form of a fine powder.
MP prioritizes the production of a compound made up of neodymium and praseodymium, called NdPr, which makes up roughly 99 percent of the rare earths in a rare earth magnet. But in MP’s planned heavy rare earths separation project, it will also produce dysprosium, terbium and other heavy rare earths essential to magnetics and military equipment.
The third stage of the process converts the oxides to the metals, alloys and finished magnets used in advanced technology. No U.S. facilities do this work. China accounts for 92 percent of metal, alloy and magnetics conversion, while Japan accounts for 6 percent.
But that, too, may be about to change. In September, MP completed the building shell for the company’s future magnetics manufacturing facility in Fort Worth. The company expects to be able to start producing metal and alloy next year and magnets around 2025.
Currently, China’s Shenghe Resources Holding Co. Ltd — a minority investor in Mountain Pass, holding a 7.7 percent share — is responsible for distributing the mine’s concentrate product to Chinese buyers. Ultimately, the finished magnets are sold to users around the world.
Mountain Pass alone will be able to fill all of DoD’s rare earth needs, Litinsky predicted, which is a very small piece of an overall market that Fortune estimated would grow to $5.5 billion in 2028.
Najieb-Locke did not rule out additional Defense Production Act investments in Mountain Pass or other mines in the future. DoD recently invested in Lynas, an Australian rare earths mining company that has operations in Australia and Malaysia. The Pentagon has invested almost $200 million over the last two years in rare earths, specifically targeting neodymium and lanthanum, Najieb-Locke noted.
But she said the commercial market is lucrative, and the Pentagon’s goal is to incentivize companies to invest their own money. “We already gave a DPA investment, so now we’re in the patient mode of seeing where they are going, because these things take time,” she said.
Other companies have been trying to start up rare earth mining and processing operations in other states — including Lynas and Utah-based Energy Fuels Inc. — but so far none have even broken ground. MP is the only one currently operating — and will be the only one for some time, given it can take years for a new mine to come online.
MP officials agree that the effort must be led by the private sector if it is to survive market forces. “What both the Trump and Biden administrations have done is use the power of the bully pulpit to signal that this is very meaningful,” Sloustcher said. But “we believe this has to be private sector led if it’s to be resilient.”
On Capitol Hill, the effort to strengthen the United States’ supply chain now has bipartisan backing, Najieb-Locke said. “Supply chain risk is something that’s been talked about for years, but it became acute in the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine just compounded it,” she said.