Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Speaker 1: with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Well shares of Ramico Resources surging today up twenty nine
Speaker 2: percent right now, surging as much as thirty six percent
Speaker 2: earlier in the session, reaching their highest in more than
Speaker 2: two years. This after the engineering and construction firm Floor
Speaker 2: Corp completed a preliminary economic assessment of the company's new
Speaker 2: Brook Mine in Wyoming. The brookmine has rare earth elements
Speaker 2: like scandium and neodymium. It's also the first new rare
Speaker 2: earth mine in the US in more than seventy years.
Speaker 2: We've got with us Randall Atkins, the founder, chairman, and
Speaker 2: CEO of Ramico Resources. It's the eight hundred and forty
Speaker 2: five million dollar market cat miner of the metallurgical coal
Speaker 2: and rare earth. He joins us from Rochester, Wyoming, where
Speaker 2: tomorrow the ribbon will be cut at the official opening
Speaker 2: of the new Brookmine Carbon Ore rare earth project. Also
Speaker 2: so back with us is a Joe Dough, formerly metals
Speaker 2: and mining reporter. He knows a ton about rare earths.
Speaker 2: Now his focus is on economic Statecraft. He joins us
Speaker 2: here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Randall, I want
Speaker 2: to start where we left off with Jim Litinski over
Speaker 2: at MP Materials. We just had a long conversation with
Speaker 2: him just a few minutes ago about the Department of
Speaker 2: Defense investment in his company. Help our viewers and listeners
Speaker 2: understand where you play in the rare earth's market versus
Speaker 2: where MP Materials plays and is there any overlap there,
Speaker 2: like are you a competitor?
Speaker 3: Well, I think you know. MP Materials has been around
Speaker 3: in one form or another for seventy years. It got
Speaker 3: started in nineteen fifty two, as I said, or you said,
Speaker 3: we're going to be the first new mine since then
Speaker 3: seventy odd years forward. They produce sort of the lighter
Speaker 3: rare earth elements. We produce the heavier and medium magnetics.
Speaker 3: And we also produce or will produce a number of
Speaker 3: critical materials and metals that will be very significant, like
Speaker 3: gallium and germanium and scandium. So we have sort of
Speaker 3: a different product slate. Most importantly, though, you know, our
Speaker 3: stuff has been found in coal. Somewhat remarkably, coal is
Speaker 3: not radioactive. The material that MP minds unfortunately is radioactive
Speaker 3: and has been shipped to China to be processed, refined,
Speaker 3: and then frankly mostly sold over there. So we will
Speaker 3: be kind of a team USA proposition. We will mine
Speaker 3: this coal in Wyoming, we will process it here into
Speaker 3: rorosts and critical minerals, and we will sell to domestic customers.
Speaker 3: So we're looking forward to getting started, and you know,
Speaker 3: ground zero is tomorrow morning.
Speaker 4: Hey, Randy, jo do here, Thanks for coming on. I
Speaker 4: want to bring up a question that I've gotten from
Speaker 4: some of the investors in the space related to your
Speaker 4: new project, and the question that keeps coming up is
Speaker 4: how are they actually going to separate the rrerors and
Speaker 4: process them. You, I know, have been explaining that it
Speaker 4: is possible, but I think there's still a lot of
Speaker 4: questions in the market because it's going to be a
Speaker 4: bit of a first of its kind, which always leaves
Speaker 4: a lot of question marks.
Speaker 3: Sure, you bet. And what we have done is we
Speaker 3: have designed, as you know, Joe, they call it an
Speaker 3: engineering a flow sheet, which is kind of a critical
Speaker 3: path as to how you will in essence process an engineer,
Speaker 3: essentially an extraction and separation technique. So we will be
Speaker 3: basically be taking our call out. We will be doing
Speaker 3: a mild benefaction of that to kind of size it,
Speaker 3: and then we will use a processing which is conventional
Speaker 3: where we will use certain leaching technologies, certain separation technologies,
Speaker 3: including physical and magnetic, and what we are doing is
Speaker 3: pretty conventional. The beauty, as I said, is because the
Speaker 3: coal is much softer than the material that most rarers
Speaker 3: are found in, which is hard minerals. And of course
Speaker 3: it is also not radioactive, so we don't have turbium,
Speaker 3: we don't have uranium, we don't have to deal with
Speaker 3: those issues. That we will have a much less complex
Speaker 3: form of processing and flour. Who knows a lot about it,
Speaker 3: certainly more than we do, has confirmed it's both commercially
Speaker 3: and most importantly technically feasible to use and process the
Speaker 3: way that is set forth in their document. The interesting thing, though,
Speaker 3: that I'll point out is we have been involved in
Speaker 3: exploring a host of technology that could be applied to
Speaker 3: coal for probably over ten years now, so we are
Speaker 3: in parallel working with the National Labs of the Department
Speaker 3: of Energy on a number of novel technologies that might
Speaker 3: be deployed to even enhance the that coal can be
Speaker 3: processed them as things as laser technologies, even some ability
Speaker 3: to take microbes and proteins train them to actually eat
Speaker 3: rare earth for lack of a better description. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of exciting things going on in the space
Speaker 3: and this is kind of a ground zero proposition.
Speaker 4: So rindy to pull us back into rare earth though,
Speaker 4: I mean, this announcement from the DoD and from MP
Speaker 4: Materials seems huge for them, but it also seems like
Speaker 4: the knock on effect for you guys would be significant.
Speaker 3: Well, I think if the stock market is any indicator,
Speaker 3: I think the answer to that is yes. So again,
Speaker 3: we have been kind of tied with the hip with
Speaker 3: the government for a long time. They're the ones that
Speaker 3: found this, frankly about eight years ago, and so we
Speaker 3: will certainly be involved in exploring with the government, the
Speaker 3: Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and other you
Speaker 3: know how we can mutually be helpful to trying to
Speaker 3: advance the America's cause here because you know, we're in
Speaker 3: a mineral war of course with China, which we all know,
Speaker 3: and this mine is frankly large enough. You know, we
Speaker 3: are at one point seven million tons and climbing north
Speaker 3: of total rare earth oxides. You know, the US uses
Speaker 3: about ten thousand tons a year, so you know this
Speaker 3: mine could supply a rather ample portion of that requirement
Speaker 3: for decades and decades to come. So we'll look forward
Speaker 3: to exploring further how we can be how we can
Speaker 3: do business with the government.
Speaker 4: Randy, Can we assume that you're in similar talks with
Speaker 4: the Defense Department that we just saw with MP.
Speaker 3: We have not entered into direct talks with the Defense Department,
Speaker 3: but we certainly have had indirect outreaches in both directions.
Speaker 2: Are you going to be more direct now that you
Speaker 2: see what the DD has done within its investment in
Speaker 2: MP materials.
Speaker 5: Would you be open to an investment?
Speaker 3: Oh? Sure, we will be open to considering whatever it
Speaker 3: seems to make sense, of course, firstly for our shareholders,
Speaker 3: but also of course for the nation and to the
Speaker 3: extent that this mine, which is frankly a potential national treasure,
Speaker 3: you know, it certainly is something that we want to
Speaker 3: make sure that the Defense Department and other arms of
Speaker 3: the government can utilize its opportunity. So we will be
Speaker 3: certainly open to exploring things with the Defense Department.
Speaker 5: Not to be Debbie Downer. But we all know the
Speaker 5: impact that coal can have on the environment. So I'm
Speaker 5: just curious, how do you make sure whether it's coal
Speaker 5: mining that we know can lead to acid mind drainage, Like,
Speaker 5: there are lots of things that we have learned over
Speaker 5: the last fifty one hundred years in terms of coal's impact.
Speaker 5: How do you prevent that?
Speaker 3: Well, I tell you the mark of the last time
Speaker 3: I was on your program. If you remember one of
Speaker 3: my one liners is coal is too valuable to burn,
Speaker 3: And I think this is certainly an apt point of
Speaker 3: exclamation on that thesis. So we have been really working
Speaker 3: for alternative uses of coal to make things like precursors
Speaker 3: for carbon fibers, synthetic graphites, graphenes, a number of different
Speaker 3: types of uses that people, you know, frankly wouldn't have
Speaker 3: thought coal could be used for. Candidly, the Chinese are
Speaker 3: using a lot of coal to do just this. They
Speaker 3: frankly use about close to five hundred million tons a
Speaker 3: year for various types of coal to products. So you know,
Speaker 3: we are basically using this coal primarily for rare earth.
Speaker 3: There will be some use we can make of it
Speaker 3: for traditional thermal purposes. But you know, as a practical matter,
Speaker 3: the main economic driver for this is rare Earth.
Speaker 5: Come back soon, Randall. Thank you so much, Randall Atkins, Founder, chairman,
Speaker 5: CEO Ramico Resources joining us, and of course homage to
Speaker 5: our Jodo who is unbelievable in the space and so
Speaker 5: much more. We are better because of it.
Speaker 1: Thank you. This is Bloomberg