City will soon be home to a first-of-its-kind rare earth minerals processing facility in North America
Saskatoon will soon be home to a first-of-its-kind rare earth minerals processing facility in North America, one that can take on China’s dominance in a key part of the energy transition.
Mike Crabtree, chief executive of the SRC, said more than 90 per cent of the world’s critical mineral development is currently done in China, which gives it control over the market.
SRC is developing a three-stage vertically integrated facility, which means that when fully operational, it will be able to transform raw minerals into actual metals like companies in China are doing. Crabtree said a facility that is integrated in such a fashion will not be as vulnerable to dips in the market.
“That’s what we’re demonstrating here, the benefit of that vertical integration,” he said speaking to media after a tour of the SRC site.
The plant is currently ahead of schedule, with one part already producing 10 tonnes of neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) per month, and there are plans to upscale to 40 tonnes per month by December. Once it becomes fully operational, it could produce 400 tonnes of NdPr per year.
Crabtree said having critical mineral processing capacity in Canada makes sense because the country is rich in raw critical minerals. He said a processing facility such as SRC’s could multiply the value of the raw materials by 20 times to 30 times before they make their way to market.
“One of the things that we want to do rather than just export the ore for a certain value is to add value to that through the processing,” he said.
In developing its facility, the SRC has had to do a large amount of innovating, which has resulted in it filing patents on 16 different technologies that have been developed during the process.
Crabtree said much of the innovation was driven by the reality that the facility could not operate in the same fashion as similar ones overseas. One example is the electric furnaces that SRC developed in order to melt the minerals down. He said the furnaces in China are manned 24 hours a day by people who manually stir the minerals until the process is complete, something the SRC was not prepared to do.
“From a health and safety standpoint, it was just completely unacceptable,” he said.
This led to the development of automated technologies that allow the SRC to operate its furnaces in a much safer manner while needing far fewer workers in order to do so.
“In China, the four furnaces that you saw would need about 20 people to operate; (ours) will be operated by three people and artificial intelligence, where they don’t have to actually engage with the furnace,” Crabtree said.
Along with health and safety considerations, Muhammad I, vice-president of SRC’s rare earth element division, said the automated furnaces will give the facility a competitive advantage since they require fewer consumables than non-automated machines.
“The way we have designed our automation, it is directly impacting and reducing those consumables, which make it competitive with Southeast Asian pricing,” he said.
SRC said it is also making the processing facility one that operates in a more environmentally sustainable manner compared to those in Asia. Crabtree said it has been designed to reuse water along with other chemicals that are used in the process, an approach that is very different than what is done in a number of other countries.
“In other jurisdictions, like Southeast Asia, that is single use; they use large amounts of water, contaminate that water, then pass it to the water courses, similar for air and similar for chemistry,” he said.
In addition to the environmental benefits, Crabtree said the process makes business sense in the long term since he believes sustainability will be something that buyers will take into consideration.
“We made a very conscious decision that what is going to be important for end users, for you and I in the future, is to be able to understand that these materials have been produced at the highest environmental standards,” he said.
In the big picture, Crabtree said SRC is hoping to blaze a trail so that the rare earth mineral processing industry can grow in North America. He said the SRC originally set out to show the technology can work on a commercial scale while also proving there are viable markets that can ensure the industry can be profitable.
“Success for us at the SRC is being able to show private investment that this is a viable de-risked sector to make those large-scale investments in,” he said.
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