RER faces delay — Demo plant now slated for mid-2025, overall project may gain federal financing

Rare Element Resources has pushed back the launch of operation at its Demonstration Plant in Upton by a few months, but the company has also announced that it may receive hundreds of millions of dollars in debt financing from a federal agency to support expanding the Bear Lodge Project development.

President Donald Trump on March 20 signed the executive order “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production,” directing the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and other federal agencies to fast-track permitting, mobilize funding and create strategic stockpile offtake agreements for minerals that are crucial to the nation’s defense, technology and energy.

Export-Import Bank of the United States, which is the federal government’s export credit agency, sent RER a nonbinding letter of interest for financing a portion up to $553 million to support the permitting, engineering design and construction of the Bear Lodge Critical Rare Earth Project, according to a March 25 news release.

Ken Mushinski, RER’s president and CEO, told the News Letter Journal that the potential debt financing “is based upon a portion of external capital before EXIM commits their funding.”

“There is an application process and much work to be done to progress to a binding underwriting by EXIM, and we understand this,” he told the NLJ. “At this point, we are focused on the Upton demonstration plant and how those outcomes work into the full Bear Lodge project permitting, from mine to separated rare earth oxides. Very exciting to see the Bear Lodge Project supply chain progress, especially with potential EXIM financial support, but we must do our work first on the plant.”

According to the release, the Bear Lodge Project meshes well with the Export-Import Bank’s mission of supporting jobs in the U.S. by assisting with the export of American goods and services. The agency’s Make More in America Initiative and its China and Transformational Exports Program “provide beneficial terms for U.S. companies facing competition from the People’s Republic of China to ensure the United States leads in certain critical export areas,” the release says. Those areas, which all need rare earth minerals, include quantum computing, semiconductors and renewable energy, storage and efficiency.

“EXIM’s expression of interest is one financial option to pursue as we consider funding and collaborative opportunities, especially in light of the recent Executive Order for full Project development,” Mushinski said in the release.

The release says that the agency’s financing options include working capital, buyer financing and export credit insurance. Applicants for the “Make More in America Initiative” have to seek to export about 15% to 25% of their production or shipments. Allied nations, such as Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom, might become strategic partners and off-takers of the neodymium-praseodymium oxide the project will produce.

The launch of operations at the demonstration plant in Upton have been delayed several weeks, to mid-2025, the release says. The factory acceptance testing the demonstration plant is undergoing “has provided the opportunity to complete several process upgrades to the Demonstration Plant’s original design,” according to the release.

Mushinski told the NLJ that the company is performing the changes and upgrades its technical experts recommended as it continues its final reviews of the demonstration plant and the technology. Even though the company planned for the systematic review, the changes are taking longer than they expected. RER is conducting the process methodically, considering the complexity of the design and systems.

“Being mindful that a positive outcome from operations, yielding the necessary technical and business data, are of utmost importance to RER, as we advance through these recommended changes, we will provide further updates on our progress and timeline, including the start date and duration of operations as what we anticipate to be positive outcomes from the project,” he said.

Plant shakedown and equipment commission will follow the completion of upgrades, the release says.