President and CEO Randall Atkins sits with Global Finance to discuss the entry of the company in the sector.
When the Kentucky metallurgical coal developer, the Kentucky metallurgical coal developer, announced in 2023 that he discovered rare earth elements in his Wyoming coal mine – where they were not expected – the developer became the last participant in the rare $ 7.2 billion market. The company, which posted $ 11.2 million in net profits out of 666.3 million dollars in revenues in 2024, plans to start the production and processing of rare land metals later this year.
World Finance: It seems that Ramaco Resources had an accident of joy to discover elements of rare land in his Brook mine project in Wyoming.
Randall Atkins: It was certainly a surprise. The way in which discovery has evolved is that we did various research with the National Laboratory of Energy Technology (NETL) of the Ministry of Energy on carbon products that could be made from carbon in coal.
And part of the Netl directive, I guess it dates back to around 2017 or 2018, was that the [US] The Ministry of Defense had responsible for discovering where the rare earths and critical minerals could be found in the continental United States, as the Ministry of Defense is concerned with the lines of supply of rare earths according to the domination of China in space.
They had asked us for samples of coal nucleus of our mine in Wyoming and, of course, mines in West Virginia and Virginia. They did the same for several other mining groups, certainly not specifically.
About a year later, they returned by saying: “We analyzed these [samples] Quite carefully, and we believe that we have discovered that you, in your deposit in Wyoming, can have some of the highest concentrations of rare and heavy land that we have seen anywhere outside the west of China. »»
GF: Has the last series of prices changed the economy of development of this site?
Atkins: Well, he certainly has in the short term and will probably be in the longer term. Thus, since the prices were announced, China has imposed an embargo to sell all the rare elements of land which could have potential use of double civilian and military in the United States.
We have about seven rare elements of land and critical minerals at the top of our list, and five of these seven have now been prohibited from exporting by China. As part of this ban, their prices have increased because people cannot get their hands on them.
GF: Ramaco focuses on heavier metals than China no longer exports to the United States?
Atkins: We focus on average and heavy land. I mean, I will give you some names: neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. These are the four main rare land; The main critical minerals are gallium, germanium and scandium. These are the seven we have and on which we concentrate. However, we have about 11 additional rare land. Things like cerium, gadolinium, yttrium, and cetera, which are not as precious as the seven I have named for the first time.
GF: Can private industry develop the infrastructure necessary to treat these ores independently, or is a public-private partnership necessary?
Atkins: We were involved in Netl to find out. We had conversations with the [US] Government on other ways to get involved while we are going further in the development chain, either by associating financially with us, while we are developing treatment or getting involved in one way or another in purchases through the Ministry of Defense, which tries to establish new supply lines.
GF: Does this give you a break to see if you have thrown rare earths from other mines?
Atkins: Yeah, big point. And indeed, Netl and others have examined various seams of coal across the country, and there have been discussions on the search for rare earths in coal ashes of power plants or acid mine drainage, without having to extract new coal. Of course, the short answer to your question is no, we did not find rare earth in our other deposits in the east … And no one else, at sufficient concentration in these coal seams to make it economic.
GF: Where was Ramaco in the Moving Mine supply chain?
Atkins: Consider the supply chain as a food chain: once the ore is extracted from the ground in its raw form, it is then benefited and transformed into a concentrate. The concentrate then has all the elements mixed together. The next step is to separate the rare earths from the concentrate to make oxides, which are used to make metals.
The long answer is “yes”. We will examine the possibility of taking this from mine to magnets due to the size of the overall deposit. We could also go from mine to semiconductors because we could make semiconductor plates. In addition to rare earths, we have three critical minerals, which are now prohibited from export by China, gallium, Germanium and scandium, which can be used in the semiconductor process. So, given the size of what we have obtained for a while, certainly not the first day, we will try to do it as far in the value chain as possible.
GF: How long will it take to develop the necessary treatment capacities?
Atkins: We have been working with Fluor Corporation for about a year and a half to identify the appropriate flow sheet and the refining models that would be used. And indeed, they are in the process of designing the pilot factory.
Thus, what we will do from the point of view of development is that we will start a large -scale mine in June, and the largest material will then be used in a pilot factory, which we will start in August or September. I hope that we will ask the pilot installation to start the initial treatment by the end of the year. This will take place for a better part of the year. We plan to switch from the pilot to a large -scale commercial installation by the end of 2026. It would probably take about a year and a half to build. So we are probably examining the second half of 2028 before we are in commercial production. However, given the magnitude of what we could build, it is a reasonably fast time.