GWMG will be the first ever junior rare-earth miner outside of China to become a profitable producer of commercial quantities of heavy rare earth forms, beyond separated purified HREOs.
I note that GWMG's new partner is an experienced processor, which has been providing GWMG's Less Common Metals (LCM) subsidiary with pure rare-earth metals for manufacturing into rare-earth permanent magnet alloys, and other compounds, for LCM's customers. I further note that among those customers is now to be Japan's Aichi Steel, a manufacturer of rare-earth permanent magnets so large, as to be able to take all of GWMG's projected production of relevant rare earths from Steenkampskraal.
GWMG will be the target for discussion of a joint venture or even an acquisition, by many good juniors with HREOs in their ore bodies. They will all basically propose that the GWMG rare-earth separation plant be expanded, to accommodate their ores on a partnership basis. This is because the most added values available to rare earths that can be added by a mining company are done by moving downstream towards the production of pure metals. Up to that point in the value chain, we are speaking of mining engineering and chemical metallurgical engineering. When one reaches the next stage, that of producing magnet alloys and magnets, one has reached the provenance of skilled specialists in materials and physics. Such skill sets are not bought; they are earned with Darwinian ruthlessness, in the real world of high-tech product development and manufacturing.
This will start very soon and they already have the customer base.
Permanent Magnets Nd, Pr, Dy, Tb, Sm
NiMH Batteries, metallurgical
La, Ce, Pr, Nd
