ICYMI: US Set to Open First Rare Earth Mine in Decades

Ramaco Resources, Inc. and Ramaco Rare Earth, LLC are hosting a landmark ribbon cutting and groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, July 11, to commemorate the opening of the Brook Mine Carbon Ore Rare Earth project. It will be the first new rare earth mine in the United States in more than 70 years and first new coal mine in Wyoming in over 50 years.

Randall Atkins, Chairman and CEO of Ramaco Resources, details the importance of the project to America's pursuit of reclaiming its leadership in critical minerals and energy independence. Sam speaks with Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec and Joe Deaux on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek
with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well shares of Ramico Resources surging today up twenty nine
percent right now, surging as much as thirty six percent
earlier in the session, reaching their highest in more than
two years. This after the engineering and construction firm Floor
Corp completed a preliminary economic assessment of the company's new
Brook Mine in Wyoming. The brookmine has rare earth elements

(00:35):
like scandium and neodymium. It's also the first new rare
earth mine in the US in more than seventy years.
We've got with us Randall Atkins, the founder, chairman, and
CEO of Ramico Resources. It's the eight hundred and forty
five million dollar market cat miner of the metallurgical coal
and rare earth. He joins us from Rochester, Wyoming, where
tomorrow the ribbon will be cut at the official opening

(00:56):
of the new Brookmine Carbon Ore rare earth project. Also
so back with us is a Joe Dough, formerly metals
and mining reporter. He knows a ton about rare earths.
Now his focus is on economic Statecraft. He joins us
here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Randall, I want
to start where we left off with Jim Litinski over
at MP Materials. We just had a long conversation with
him just a few minutes ago about the Department of

(01:19):
Defense investment in his company. Help our viewers and listeners
understand where you play in the rare earth's market versus
where MP Materials plays and is there any overlap there,
like are you a competitor?

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, I think you know. MP Materials has been around
in one form or another for seventy years. It got
started in nineteen fifty two, as I said, or you said,
we're going to be the first new mine since then
seventy odd years forward. They produce sort of the lighter
rare earth elements. We produce the heavier and medium magnetics.

(01:57):
And we also produce or will produce a number of
critical materials and metals that will be very significant, like
gallium and germanium and scandium. So we have sort of
a different product slate. Most importantly, though, you know, our
stuff has been found in coal. Somewhat remarkably, coal is

(02:19):
not radioactive. The material that MP minds unfortunately is radioactive
and has been shipped to China to be processed, refined,
and then frankly mostly sold over there. So we will
be kind of a team USA proposition. We will mine
this coal in Wyoming, we will process it here into

(02:40):
rorosts and critical minerals, and we will sell to domestic customers.
So we're looking forward to getting started, and you know,
ground zero is tomorrow morning.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
Hey, Randy, jo do here, Thanks for coming on. I
want to bring up a question that I've gotten from
some of the investors in the space related to your
new project, and the question that keeps coming up is
how are they actually going to separate the rrerors and
process them. You, I know, have been explaining that it
is possible, but I think there's still a lot of

(03:10):
questions in the market because it's going to be a
bit of a first of its kind, which always leaves
a lot of question marks.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Sure, you bet. And what we have done is we
have designed, as you know, Joe, they call it an
engineering a flow sheet, which is kind of a critical
path as to how you will in essence process an engineer,
essentially an extraction and separation technique. So we will be
basically be taking our call out. We will be doing

(03:39):
a mild benefaction of that to kind of size it,
and then we will use a processing which is conventional
where we will use certain leaching technologies, certain separation technologies,
including physical and magnetic, and what we are doing is
pretty conventional. The beauty, as I said, is because the

(04:01):
coal is much softer than the material that most rarers
are found in, which is hard minerals. And of course
it is also not radioactive, so we don't have turbium,
we don't have uranium, we don't have to deal with
those issues. That we will have a much less complex
form of processing and flour. Who knows a lot about it,

(04:23):
certainly more than we do, has confirmed it's both commercially
and most importantly technically feasible to use and process the
way that is set forth in their document. The interesting thing, though,
that I'll point out is we have been involved in
exploring a host of technology that could be applied to

(04:46):
coal for probably over ten years now, so we are
in parallel working with the National Labs of the Department
of Energy on a number of novel technologies that might
be deployed to even enhance the that coal can be
processed them as things as laser technologies, even some ability

(05:07):
to take microbes and proteins train them to actually eat
rare earth for lack of a better description. So there's
a lot of exciting things going on in the space
and this is kind of a ground zero proposition.

Speaker 4 (05:21):
So rindy to pull us back into rare earth though,
I mean, this announcement from the DoD and from MP
Materials seems huge for them, but it also seems like
the knock on effect for you guys would be significant.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Well, I think if the stock market is any indicator,
I think the answer to that is yes. So again,
we have been kind of tied with the hip with
the government for a long time. They're the ones that
found this, frankly about eight years ago, and so we
will certainly be involved in exploring with the government, the

(05:57):
Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and other you
know how we can mutually be helpful to trying to
advance the America's cause here because you know, we're in
a mineral war of course with China, which we all know,
and this mine is frankly large enough. You know, we
are at one point seven million tons and climbing north

(06:18):
of total rare earth oxides. You know, the US uses
about ten thousand tons a year, so you know this
mine could supply a rather ample portion of that requirement
for decades and decades to come. So we'll look forward
to exploring further how we can be how we can
do business with the government.

Speaker 4 (06:37):
Randy, Can we assume that you're in similar talks with
the Defense Department that we just saw with MP.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
We have not entered into direct talks with the Defense Department,
but we certainly have had indirect outreaches in both directions.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Are you going to be more direct now that you
see what the DD has done within its investment in
MP materials.

Speaker 5 (07:02):
Would you be open to an investment?

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Oh? Sure, we will be open to considering whatever it
seems to make sense, of course, firstly for our shareholders,
but also of course for the nation and to the
extent that this mine, which is frankly a potential national treasure,
you know, it certainly is something that we want to
make sure that the Defense Department and other arms of
the government can utilize its opportunity. So we will be

(07:29):
certainly open to exploring things with the Defense Department.

Speaker 5 (07:32):
Not to be Debbie Downer. But we all know the
impact that coal can have on the environment. So I'm
just curious, how do you make sure whether it's coal
mining that we know can lead to acid mind drainage, Like,
there are lots of things that we have learned over
the last fifty one hundred years in terms of coal's impact.

(07:52):
How do you prevent that?

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Well, I tell you the mark of the last time
I was on your program. If you remember one of
my one liners is coal is too valuable to burn,
And I think this is certainly an apt point of
exclamation on that thesis. So we have been really working
for alternative uses of coal to make things like precursors

(08:18):
for carbon fibers, synthetic graphites, graphenes, a number of different
types of uses that people, you know, frankly wouldn't have
thought coal could be used for. Candidly, the Chinese are
using a lot of coal to do just this. They
frankly use about close to five hundred million tons a

(08:39):
year for various types of coal to products. So you know,
we are basically using this coal primarily for rare earth.
There will be some use we can make of it
for traditional thermal purposes. But you know, as a practical matter,
the main economic driver for this is rare Earth.

Speaker 5 (09:00):
Come back soon, Randall. Thank you so much, Randall Atkins, Founder, chairman,
CEO Ramico Resources joining us, and of course homage to
our Jodo who is unbelievable in the space and so
much more. We are better because of it.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Thank you. This is Bloomberg