MP Materials Awarded DoD Heavy Rare Earth Processing Contract

MP Materials announced that it has been awarded a $35 million contract through the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program to support the construction of a commercial-scale heavy rare earth elements (HREE) processing facility at Mountain Pass.

Rare earth elements (REEs) have high atomic weights and are typically less abundant than light rare earth elements (LREEs). They are essential inputs to many critical defense and commercial technologies, particularly permanent magnets that play a role in the performance of electric vehicles, wind turbines, drones, and missile systems.

In a separate contract awarded in December 2020, DoD committed $9.6 million for Phase II optimization at MP Materials, an ongoing project to restore LREE processing capabilities at Mountain Pass. While processing rare earth elements, MP will be able to extract and refine all the rare earth elements needed to make high-performance permanent magnets. It will also enable the company to recover all recoverable rare earths from end-of-life magnets and magnet production waste, increasing the resilience and environmental sustainability of the domestic supply base.

"The ability to mine, process, and refine rare earths at Mountain Pass is a foundation for securing the U.S. rare earth supply chain," said James Litinsky, chairman and chief executive officer of MP Materials. "We appreciate the trust and support of the Department of Defense."

In addition to its mining and processing operations in Mountain Pass, MP is developing a rare earth metals, alloys, and magnets production facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Materials sourced from Mountain Pass will be converted into manufactured products at this new facility, restoring a fully domestic and vertically integrated U.S. magnetics supply chain.

In December 2021, MP entered into a long-term agreement with General Motors to supply U.S. sourced and manufactured heavy rare earth materials, alloys, and finished magnets for the electric motors used in the GMC HUMMER EV, Cadillac LYRIQ, Chevrolet Silverado EV, and more than a dozen models using GM's Ultium platform.

"The United States needs to continue to advance the science to develop safe, reliable and affordable domestically sourced critical minerals for use in defense and commercial manufacturing in order to reduce dependence on foreign sources in a time of global economic competition," said Deborah Rosenblum, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy.

To meet the growing demand for magnets and to promote supply chain resiliency, MP's processing facility at Mountain Pass will accept qualified third-party feedstock and scrap magnets in addition to processing ore mined and beneficiated from Mountain Pass.

MP's operations provide certainty of source and sustainability in the U.S. Mountain Pass is a closed-cycle, zero-discharge rare earth production facility that uses a dry tailings process to recover more than 1 billion liters of water annually.

MP Materials is the largest producer of rare earth materials in the Western Hemisphere. The company owns and operates the Mountain Pass rare earth mine and processing plant in California, the only active, large-scale rare earth production site in North America. Separated heavy rare earth elements are key inputs to the world's most powerful and effective magnets found in electric vehicles, drones, defense systems, wind turbines, and a variety of advanced technologies.