At the beginning of the week, China’s molybdenum market continued to be strong. Although the price of molybdenum products rose significantly last week, steel companies and other buyers were afraid of high prices, resulting in a slight slowdown in the actual transaction. 

Lynas has secured a $120 million contract from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to build a heavy rare earth separation plant in the United States. Lynas wants to build the plant on the same site in Texas as the proposed light rare earth separation plant. Construction costs for the heavy rare earth plant are being covered entirely by a $120 million contract funded by the US DoD Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program.

Earlier this month, USA Rare Earth LLC (USARE) announced that it will develop a U.S. rare earths and magnets production facility in Stillwater, Oklahoma. McAfee & Taft was pleased to serve as legal counsel to USARE in its acquisition and development of the nation's first rare earth metals and sintered magnet production facility in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Luminex Resources announced the discovery of a porphyry copper-molybdenum porphyry target located 500 meters north of its El Hito property at its Condor project in southeast Ecuador. The target area is characterized by overlapping anomalies of >250 ppm copper and >10 ppm molybdenum as delineated by a recently completed soil survey.