Rare earth minerals, used in everything from spaceships to missiles, car phones and electronics have for some time been dominated by China.
The communist power entered the rare earth minerals market in the mid 80’s and has worked since then to corner the market.
“These rare earth elements used to be produced in parts of the world,” says John Habisreitinger, COO of New Day Aluminum, a DADA Holdings company which also owns the Noranda Alumina refinery in Gramercy and the Noranda Bauxite operation in Jamaica. “But now they’re primarily produced in China. And this was what they were kind of holding the U.S. and some other countries hostage under threat of a trade war.”
But that is about to change.
ElementUS, a joint venture of DADA Holdings and Canadian based green technology company Enervoxa, is proposing to develop an $800-million dollar high tech refining center aimed at extracting rare earth minerals from over 35-million tons of residual bauxite stored at their sprawling facility along the boundary between St. James and St. John the Baptist parishes.
Aside from investing nearly a billion dollars on the new plant, 2,000 construction jobs will be created to build the facility.
When it goes into operation, 200 full time, high paying jobs will be added to New Day/Noranda Alumina plant along with nearly 600 indirect jobs created by the company.
The proposed development represents an economic boon for both parishes.
New Day Alumina COO, John Habisreitinger calls the plant: “An opportunity to be able to domestically produce these rare earth elements that go into a lot of green earth technologies that we’re looking to attack here to the U.S.”
By recycling the residual bauxite, and being a net carbon consumer, the extraction plant will help the New Day/Noranda operation on its path to being carbon neutral and a zero-residue business.
“Our bauxite is very rich in the elements and minerals. So the combination of being very rich in these, and having the separation technology to be able to extract it in and then beneficiate it is what’s coming together in this venture.”
ElementUS will locate near on the Noranda Alumina refinery and build a separation and extraction plant with an annual capacity in excess of 1 million tons. The residual bauxite has been confirmed to contain high concentrations of 10 of the 17 rare earth elements targeted by the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency, along with titanium, iron and other minerals and metals valuable to U.S. industry and consumer demand. Separation and extraction of the minerals will occur primarily through proprietary residual bauxite processing technology developed by Toronto-based Enervoxa.
“This residual bauxite, for years, has just never really had an application,” Habisreitinger says. “What this business will do is it will allow for the environmentally friendly separation of the remaining residual bauxite into a number of minerals and rare earth elements valuable to the U.S. and worldwide.”