More than just a mining company, we have top tier R&D partnerships that are pursuing a sustainable and secure rare earths supply chain for North America.
Our partners, via our wholly owned subsidiary Western Rare Earths, include:
- Critical Minerals Institute - established by industry leaders to provide education and collaboration opportunities in alternative energy production and Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) technologies and practices.
- Critical Materials Institute - a US Department of Energy (DOE) Innovation Hub investigating clean processing and refining solutions. Fellow organisations include the world's second-largest metals producer Rio Tinto (the only other company with rare earths mining deposits involved with the CMI)
- Leading universities
- National laboratories and private companies.
- The US Defense Department Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Rare Earth Elements (REE) bioengineering research program. This encourages US scientists to engineer a new REE supply chain using 'bio-mining' approaches through the Environmental Microbes as a Bio-Engineering Resource (EMBER) program.
- A research consortium including Virginia Tech University funded by the DOE Advanced Manufacturing Office program known as Critical Materials: Next‐Generation Technologies and Field Validation. The program aims to develop clean technologies to process the elements essential to clean energy.
Across our R&D projects, we have partnered with global top 100 universities and American national laboratories. These include:
