Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - February 23, 2022) - Canada Rare Earth Corp. (TSXV: LL) ("Canada Rare Earth" or the "Company") is actively responding to the urgent demands of international businesses and national governments for continuous, reliable supply of rare earths. The Company is enhancing its mineral supply chain capabilities with business operations and development activities in eight countries.
Although customers and governments are concerned about the uncertainty of continuous supply, the demand for rare earths is strong-and growing with the increasing use of new and leading-edge products and technologies. With assured supply, demand will grow substantially and will be supplied largely from the new stable and dependable sources.
Rare earth products are critical to many industries, including industrial, consumer, medical and military applications. High profile examples include rare earths present in components integrated into electric vehicles, wind turbines, telecommunications, computers, medical equipment, cracking of oil, and military applications such as fighter jets and submarines.
Tracy A. Moore, Chief Executive Officer, stated, "Our global footprint has been established and is continuing to expand in multiple countries with the simultaneous implementation of our three fundamental cornerstones: resource development utilizing multiple proprietary properties augmented with exceptional third party supply; development of value-add mid-stream processing facilities; and increasing essential mineral product sales to our solid and expanding customer base."
Peter Shearing, Chief Operating Officer, added, "What differentiates us is that we are in business and actively sourcing, selling, and delivering critical minerals to our customers. We are aggressively expanding our supply base through corporate owned assets and third-party supply to meet the demands of existing and prospective customers with whom we have existing relationships."
"For example," Mr. Shearing continued, "we are developing a ready-for-processing proprietary, permitted property with 70 million metric tons of tailings containing rare earths, cassiterite, zircon and ilmenite. The agreement to purchase the tailings stockpile also includes the right of first refusal to explore and exploit the minerals under 9,960 hectares where the stockpile is located. The stockpile and acreage are in a prolific mining region in South America. We are also in discussions to acquire and develop additional properties in the vicinity."
"The ability to separate rare earth elements into oxides is uncommon outside of China and providing this capability is a key part of our strategy. We are in negotiations to acquire an existing full capability refinery and in discussions with prospective joint venture partners in other regions to extend this capability and augment our existing ability to supply rare earth oxides," added Mr. Moore.
Elyse Kohyann, Head of Global Trading, remarked, "Sales and trading activities are focused on increasing sales of mineral concentrates to meet the demands of our existing customer base. As supply increases we will on-board more customers and/or direct concentrates to refineries that we acquire and/or develop. We will also extend our sales efforts for high purity and specialty rare earth products in line with our exclusive international distribution agreement. These focuses will aid in our ability to deliver concentrates to our refineries and sell oxides produced by the refineries, once up and running."
In 2021, the Company added to its global business platform:
Senior Personnel Additions
- Elyse Kohyann, Head of Global Trading, completed more than $2 billion of mineral commodity trades before joining us. Elyse will be building and expanding the Company's existing trading business to support the expanded resource base, supply the proprietary processing facilities, and to bring future rare earth oxide products to market.
- Dori Carvalho, Managing Director, Brazil, Ph.D. Mining Engineering, has managed the design, development, and operations of large-scale mineral sands and tailings projects very similar to the Company's tailings stockpile. Dori is focused on bringing the Bom Futuro stockpile into operation and continually expanding the Company's resource base for rare earth concentrates and critical minerals.
- Anthony Wong, Chief Financial Officer, has 30 years of experience as a senior executive and chief financial officer for publicly traded companies on the Singapore and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges as well as privately held companies. Anthony is focusing on expanding the Company's robust financial infrastructure to support our activities in the various geographies and supporting the funding activities to enable anticipated growth.
Resource Development
- Canada Rare Earth was appointed as operating manager to lead the development of the South American stockpile including the potential for exploration underlying the 9,960 hectares property to expand the potential. The property is permitted for mineral processing operations. The team is presently optimizing the scale and suite of products to be produced to be followed by financing and equipment purchase and commissioning.
- The Company entered agreements and held discussions to source 10 times as much mineral concentrate as in recent years.
- The Company continues to advance its strategy of sourcing concentrate from proprietary sources as the mainstay to be augmented with supply though third-party arrangements.
- The Company has extended its exclusive international distribution agreement for high purity and specialized rare earth products.
Value-add Mid-Stream Processing
- The Company is in negotiations to procure a fully capable rare earth refinery in Southeast Asia and is actively assisting in the activities required to complete the final steps to bring the processing facility into operation. This facility will be one of very few operations producing rare earth oxide products outside of China.
- The Company advanced joint venture discussions and negotiations with two national governments towards agreements to collaborate on establishing vertically integrated rare earth businesses within their countries.
- As part of the South American initiatives, the Company is considering establishing processing and refining facilities to process concentrate from our proprietary sources, our regular suppliers and from others.
Sales and Trading
- The Company increased its concentrate supply channels and confirmed the suitability of the products with the existing customer base.
- The Company has ongoing communications with numerous large potential customers for mineral concentrates with the intention of increasing and diversifying the customer pool.
- The Company has renewed its international distribution agreement for high purity and specialty rare earth products with exclusive right to market, distribute, and sell the rare earth products in Europe, the Americas, Russia, and India, and obtained the non-exclusive right in Asia. The manufacturer produces very high purity and quality products for demanding applications as well as standard products. They have the capability to adjust and modify their processes to meet stringent and unique specifications, in addition to creating proprietary customer products.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF CANADA RARE EARTH CORP:
Tracy A. Moore, CEO
Peter Shearing , COO
For more information on the Company, interested parties should review the Company's filings that are available at www.sedar.com.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Contact Information:
Tracy A. Moore
CEO
tmoore@canadarareearth.com
Peter Shearing
COO
pshearing@canadarareearth.com
(604) 638-8886
Website: www.canadarareearth.com
ABOUT CANADA RARE EARTH CORP.
Canada Rare Earth Corp. is developing an integrated business within the global rare earth industry. Our key focus is to generate revenues and positive cash flow from a variety of profit centres in the rare earth production and sales chain by sourcing, adding value and selling rare earths in all stages and forms. We are in the process of establishing our own mining, concentrating and refinery capabilities in addition to working with affiliated and third party organizations.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
This news release includes forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, "forward-looking information") with respect to the Company and within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Forward looking information is typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. This information represents predictions and actual events or results may differ materially. Forward-looking information may relate to the Company's future outlook and anticipated events or results and may include statements regarding the Company's financial results, future financial position, expected growth of cash flows, business strategy, budgets, projected costs, projected capital expenditures, taxes, plans, objectives, industry trends and growth opportunities. The reader is referred to the Company's most recent filings on SEDAR for a more complete discussion of all applicable risk factors and their potential effects, copies of which may be accessed through the Company's profile page at www.sedar.com.
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