Energy Fuels says it can produce six rare earths subject to Chinese export control

Energy Fuels (NYSE American: UUUU) (TSX: EFR) says it has successfully developed the technology capable of producing six of the seven rare earths oxides, at scale, that are now subject to the newly enacted Chinese export controls.

Shares of Energy Fuels were up 5.2% by midday Thursday in Toronto on this update, trading at C$6.49 apiece for a market capitalization of C$1.37 billion.

Earlier this month, China restricted its exports of seven types of rare earth elements (REEs) in retaliation against new tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump. These minerals are niche materials specific to technological processes or alloys and are hard to replace. The US relies heavily on foreign imports, as it has only one producing rare earth mine, Mountain Pass in California.

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Colorado-based Energy Fuels operates the White Mesa mill in Utah, the only fully licensed uranium mill in the US and last year began producing neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxides on a commercial scale.

Neodymium and praseodymium, which are used to build permanent magnet motors, are the most common rare earths, and are excluded from the Chinese export restrictions, for now.

The Phase 1 separation circuit at White Mesa, according Energy Fuels, has the capacity to produce between 850 to 1,000 metric tonnes of NdPr per year.

The company has been conducting lab- and pilot-scale REE separations since 2021, leveraging the high REE content in monazite — a low-cost byproduct of heavy mineral sands mines found in the US.

The company believes that, through its ongoing testwork, it has the technical know-how to expand the existing infrastructure to produce six other rare earth oxides — samarium, gadolinium, dysprosium, terbium, lutetium and yttrium — all of which are subject to the Chinese export controls

“We now have the data, knowledge and much of the infrastructure in place to produce ‘light’, ‘mid’ and ‘heavy’ rare earth oxides at scale at the White Mesa mill,” Energy Fuels CEO Mark Chalmers said in a press release Thursday.

The expansion is expected to increase the mill’s monazite concentrate processing capacity sixfold, from 10,000 tonnes a year to 60,000 tonnes. While the company has secured decades of monazite supply, it anticipates these US mineral sands mines would only begin producing in 2028; before that, its supply would have to come from third parties.

Energy Fuels said it is now in the process of updating its 2024 prefeasibility study to a feasibility study to include the planned expansion.