Can North America catch up on rare earths? Kiril Mugerman

“How does my company, Geomega Resources, fit into the rare earths recycling cycle? Geomega uses chemical processing to extract and produce purified rare earth oxides that are otherwise trapped in magnets. The magnet cannot be directly reused, because often the shape, size, coating and magnetic specifications will be hard to match to a specific application. Geomega’s process allows us to recover the rare earths and to ship them to metal and magnet manufacturers that will be able to make new products to the specifications of the end users.”

Where does your phone come from? The Economist

The Economist, “Many of the elements used in smartphones are finite resources and have no functional substitutes. Rather than digging in the ground for the elements needed for new handsets it makes sense to extract them from old phones – but only about 10% of handsets are recycled now. So recycle your phone if you get a new one this year. Why? It is you might say, Elementary.”

“Tokyo aims to reduce China dependency to 50% or less” Nikkei

“Japan will conduct the financing through a government-owned resource investment company: the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp., or Jogmec. Legislation will be revised to allow it to take stakes in rare-earths smelting projects. Processing facilities, which have a large environmental impact, are now primarily concentrated in China. And Beijing has employed its dominance in rare earths to exert pressure before. In 2010, it quietly cut exports to Japan amid a dust-up over a territorial issue. Jogmec will also take steps to ensure Japan’s stable access to cobalt, a mineral used in lithium-ion batteries, to counter Chinese enterprises securing rights in Congo. The resource company could spend up to around 20 billion yen ($182 million) in all on both efforts.”

Rare Earth Element (REE) Recycling for the Permanent Magnet Industry 永磁行业的稀土元素(REE)回收

Developed proprietary, environmentally friendly, “ISR Technology” that recycles waste from the permanent magnet industry and produces four high demand, high priced rare earth elements (HHREE – Nd, Pr, Tb, Dy)
研发专有、环保的ISR技术,通过回收永磁行业的废料生产出四种高需求、高价格的稀土元素(HHREE –钕、镨、铽、镝)

Why GeoMegA? Excerpt from Thomas Krümmer 2019 article

While there are already a couple of rare earth recycling enterprises in China with large capacities, albeit not environmentally benign, there is only one commercial magnet recycling company in the rest of the world with a competitive, environmentally benign concept.

That company is Geomega in Canada.

From all the rare earth companies I know, this is the only one who has a chance to turn out rare earths oxides in North America from 2020.

@GITI_SG Tweets on news from China

#China: Ganzhou deputy mayor, deputy directors of Mining Bureau, of Natural Resources Bureau and of Soil & Water Conservation Bureau punishedhttps://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2020-01-09/doc-iihnzahk3037739.shtml …
Collusion, false reports, fake data, waste dumping in supposed environmental cleanup of closed #RareEarths mines.

Canada and U.S. Finalize Joint Action Plan on Critical Minerals Collaboration

Today, Canada and the U.S. announced they have finalized the Canada–U.S. Joint Action Plan on Critical Minerals Collaboration, advancing our mutual interest in securing supply chains for the critical minerals needed for important manufacturing sectors, including communication technology, aerospace and defence, and clean technology. This announcement delivers on the June 2019 commitment by the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United States.

“Montviel” Rare Earth Deposit in Quebec

The neodymium metal goes into magnet, and the magnet goes into motors — that’s the main driver of this entire sector. If we go about what GeoMegA is today, then we have a rare-earth processing technology developed by our private subsidiary INNORD and we also have Montviel, which is a 43-101 large resource of a carbonatite-bastnasite. It is the largest in Canada.

Kiril Mugerman, GeoMegA Resources: The Time to Invest in Rare Earths is Now. October, 2018.

“We started developing the technology from very small scale. You need to be careful — it’s a difficult task. Separating earth elements is one of the most complex chemical processes in the world. Our idea was that we will have our own technology and that will help us to build a mine. The leverage really came when we started developing this technology. We decided that we didn’t want to have a black box where nobody knows how it works and we need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to build a mine. Instead, we started going towards proving that our technology works by processing existing feeds. The best existing feed is an industrial residue, which is coming from the main application of rare earths — permanent magnets.