[ExI] not that rare earth (part 2 of at least 2)

[Keith Henson]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2025 at 7:19 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> ...
> >>... Keith, I cannot imagine it would take years to figure out how to refine an element out of ore, given modern chemistry technology... spike
>
> >...We know how.  There was a mine that sorted the REE out in the US.  One of the problems is the long lead time on industrial machines.  For a while, I installed electronic equipment in a copper mill.  They had 30 ball mills that made fine beach sand out of 3/4 inch crushed rock at
> 100 tons per hour per ball mill.  Each one was driven by a 1200 hp motor.
>
> >...If you have any doubts about how long such equipment takes to be delivered and installed, talk to one of the companies that makes them.  Keith
>
> Ja to all, no objection.  Sufficient piles of money have a magic way of accelerating such investments.

Who is going to invest when the Chinese can turn their supply off and
on to kill your profit?

>From Wikipedia

In 2008, Chevron sold the mine to privately held Molycorp Minerals
LLC, a company formed to revive the Mountain Pass mine. Molycorp
announced plans to spend $500 million to reopen and expand the mine,
and on July 29, 2010, it raised about $400 million through an initial
public offering, selling 28,125,000 shares at $14 under the ticker
symbol MCP on the New York Stock Exchange.[18]

In December 2010, Molycorp announced that it had secured all the
environmental permits needed to build a new ore processing plant at
the mine; construction would begin in January 2011, and was expected
to be completed by the end of 2012. On August 27, 2012, the company
announced that mining had restarted.[19]

The processing plant was in full production on June 25, 2015, when
Molycorp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with outstanding bonds in the
amount of $US 1.4 billion. The company's shares were removed from the
NYSE.

In August 2015, it was reported that the mine was to be shut down.

On August 31, 2016, Molycorp Inc. emerged from bankruptcy as Neo
Performance Materials, leaving behind the mine as Molycorp Minerals
LLC in its own separate Chapter 11 bankruptcy. As of January 2016, its
shares were traded OTC under the symbol MCPIQ.

Mountain Pass was acquired out of bankruptcy in July 2017 with the
goal of reviving America's rare-earth industry.[20][21][22][23] MP
Materials resumed mining and refining operations in January 2018.[2]

Current ownership

MP Materials is 51.8%-owned by US hedge funds JHL Capital Group (and
its CEO James Litinsky) and QVT Financial LP, while Shenghe Resources,
a partially state-owned enterprise of the Government of China, holds
an 8.0% stake. Apart from institutions, the public owns 18%.[24][25]
**********'
If you want stock, I am sure you can get some.
The whole article is very much worth reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_Rare_Earth_Mine

Keith



  If the demand is high enough, driving the price high enough,
investors will come stampeding, the plants will be built on an
accelerated schedule.  It might still take years, but investors race
with each other, to get that metal on the market while the spot price
is high enough to pay for all that expensive equipment.
>
> This you can bet on: the world will not let China get a monopoly on anything.  Their aggressive posture towards Taiwan makes them an unreliable trade partner.  The military has anticipated this for decades and they have their own strategic stockpiles of anything that comes out of China.
>
> This you can also bet on: manufacturers who need those materials anticipated China's aggressive Taiwan stance and stockpiled materials well ahead of time, betting on huge profits when the spot price went up, as it has on some of the magnet stuff.  The electronics stuff didn't go up much, but the magnet stuff did, so those investors are making out bigtime.
>
> If one wants to invest in elements, most people think of gold and silver.  I would say that is a bad idea, for it makes one a target and requires a big clunky safe and all that.  Buy niobium, ytterbium, praseodymium, those other elements which surprise you when you hear about them for the first time after having spent your adult life around chemistry.  Investment is always a guess: perhaps someone will discover a use for it.  Buy a few ingots of some rare earth, stack it in the back of your garage, no security heroics needed.  Then if the hoozisium or wotzatium spot price goes way up, it makes you a hero, a rich one (the best kind of hero (it also provides a buffer against China leveraging its earth metal near-monopoly (giving non-Chinese world a few years' supply of materials (during which we greedy speculators can invest in mining and refining equipment.))))
>
> spike
>