Rare earths junior says sell to China or ‘twiddle your thumbs’
afr.comFormer Fortescue Metals executive Russell Scrimshaw says his rare earths company will get into production several years sooner because of Wednesday’s decision to partner with China’s biggest rare earths importer.
Speaking after Peak Rare Earths cemented a deal with China’s Shenghe Resources, Mr Scrimshaw said the alternative would have been to “wait and twiddle our thumbs” until developed nations established the sort of rare earths processing infrastructure that China dominates.
“The only foreseeable way in the short term for us to get going, we believe, is this way,” he said. “This is going to be a worldwide industry; the West is just not, at the moment, moving along fast enough.”
Perth-based Peak had originally planned to pair its Ngualla rare earths deposit in Tanzania with construction of a new refinery near Middlesbrough in the UK. The plan to build the mine and a British refinery was projected to cost $US365 million ($559 million) according to a 2017 study. The plan was to create a non-Chinese producer of separated rare earths at a time when governments in the UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea and the US were becoming worried about China’s dominance of the sector.
The Australian government has since loaned more than $1 billion to Iluka Resources for the construction of the nation’s first rare earths separation facility at Eneabba. Resources Minister Madeleine King this year suggested only “like-minded” foreign investors were welcome to back Australia’s critical minerals, widely interpreted as a warning about China.
Peak’s strategy changed last year, around the same time that Shenghe bought a 19 per cent stake, and as it was negotiating final permits with a Tanzanian government that was keen for more domestic
Read more on afr.com
