June 25, 2015. San Francisco.

Molycorp Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection with $1.7 billion in debt. The company had spent $1.3 billion reopening Mountain Pass — the California mine that had supplied the world with rare earths from the 1950s through the 1980s — only to watch prices collapse after China flooded the market in 2012. Three months after the filing, Mountain Pass shut down. The US had tried to come back. It had failed.

Today, Mountain Pass is running again. MP Materials (NYSE: MP) acquired the site in 2017, and by Q1 2026 it was producing more than 13,000 metric tons of rare earth oxide per quarter — more than at any point since Mountain Pass's peak in the 1980s. Revenue surged 49% year over year to $90.1 million in the first quarter. The magnetics segment, the Independence facility in Fort Worth, posted positive EBITDA for the first time.

But for nine years, MP's operation has been limited to the same rare earths that Mountain Pass always produced: neodymium, praseodymium, lanthanum, cerium. The light rare earths. Dysprosium and terbium — the heavy rare earths that add heat-resistance to NdFeB magnets and that China has restricted since April 2025 — have never been separated there. No US facility has ever produced them at commercial scale.

In its Q1 2026 earnings release on May 8, CEO James Litinsky said "scaled heavy rare earth separation commissioning activities" are "set to begin imminently" at Mountain Pass. Today is mid-June — the window the company has targeted since announcing the plan in late 2025. The circuit is designed to process 3,000 metric tons of feedstock per year and produce up to 200 metric tons per year of dysprosium and terbium combined at nameplate capacity. MP has been stockpiling its own SEG+ concentrate since late 2023 and will also draw on third-party feedstocks.

The 200-metric-ton figure is modest against global consumption. China separates roughly 3,000–5,000 metric tons of dysprosium annually. Every high-temperature NdFeB magnet rated for use in defense actuators or EV traction motors depends on Chinese dysprosium atoms. Mountain Pass's first Dy/Tb production won't close that gap. It will establish that the gap can be closed at all — on US soil, for the first time.

Eleven years after the last attempt ended in bankruptcy, the same mountain in the Mojave Desert is about to produce something the United States has never produced before.

Ucore Rare Metals (TSXV: UCU) is installing RapidSX Machine A at its Strategic Metals Complex in Alexandria, Louisiana — a full commercial-scale rare earth separation module backed by a $22.4 million US Department of War agreement. Early production is targeted in the second half of 2026. The facility is designed for modularity: Machine A plus three additional RapidSX lines would give the complex a total capacity of approximately 9,600 metric tons of total rare earth oxide per year. Ucore's demonstration facility in Kingston, Ontario has already logged more than 5,700 hours of 24/7 operation separating Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd, Tb, and Dy — six of the seven REEs China has placed under export licensing restrictions. The Louisiana facility is designed to accept Western-friendly feedstock.

HyProMag's Tyseley Energy Park facility in Birmingham opened commercially in January 2026 — the UK's first commercial-scale sintered rare earth magnet recycling operation and the first sintered magnet manufacturing in Britain since the mid-1990s. The technology, developed at the University of Birmingham, uses hydrogen to break down scrap NdFeB magnets into alloy powder — a process called HPMS (Hydrogen Processing of Magnet Scrap) — without the acid dissolution and wastewater that characterizes conventional rare earth recycling. The facility has produced 9.2 tonnes of recycled NdFeB alloy powder to date, with Siemens as an early customer. Mkango Resources, the parent company, is evaluating a phased expansion toward 1,000 metric tons per year. The recycled alloy has roughly the same composition as primary NdFeB.

Amanda Lacaze steps down as CEO of Lynas Rare Earths at the end of June, and the Texas Seadrift heavy rare earth separation plant — once the Pentagon's preferred vehicle for US-based Dy/Tb production — remains in limbo. The facility stalled when the Trump administration chose MP Materials as the anchor of its rare earth strategy, providing MP with a $400 million equity stake and a 10-year offtake agreement with a price floor. Lynas management said the plant "might not proceed" and flagged "significant uncertainty" in August 2025 — with no reversal as of June 2026. The new CEO inherits the construction decision and the challenge of making Seadrift viable without a US procurement commitment.

James Litinsky, Founder, Chairman and CEO of MP Materials, Q1 2026 earnings release
May 8, 2026

LANTHANUM

Lanthanum is the most abundant rare earth on the periodic table. At Mountain Pass it makes up roughly 25–30% of the ore by rare earth content — but global demand is thin enough that producers often stockpile it or give it away. Its primary market is fluid catalytic cracking catalysts in oil refining, which improve gasoline yield from crude. It also goes into nickel-metal hydride battery anodes and high-index optical glass. China processes roughly 90% of the world's lanthanum. Without a market for lanthanum and cerium, the cost basis for producing neodymium and terbium collapses. No Western rare earth project works without solving the lanthanum problem first.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted a webinar on June 9 titled "China's New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten U.S. Defense Supply Chains" — the latest in a series of policy-level events on how China's export control architecture affects the US defense industrial base. CSIS's Critical Minerals Security Program has been tracking the evolution of China's licensing regime since the April 2025 Wave 1 controls. The June 9 event drew analysts from CSIS's Strategic Technologies and Defense 360 programs alongside defense procurement officials.

— CSIS

The Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy reported June 1 that the US Export-Import Bank is preparing to close the first funding tranche of Project Vault — the Trump administration's public-private partnership establishing a US Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve with up to $10 billion in EXIM capacity. Project Vault launched in February 2026. The first tranche is expected to target rare earth and critical mineral projects where US companies hold strategic offtake or equity positions, including MP Materials and USA Rare Earth.

— Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy

Mining.com reported June 1 that China has created an ecosystem of more than 40 specialist rare earth laboratories producing cutting-edge research — a structural scientific advantage on top of its processing dominance. The labs span separation chemistry, magnet alloy optimization, and rare earth recycling. Western counterparts include the US METALLIC consortium at nine national labs and the EU's ERMA program, but the scale and coordination of the Chinese system carries a multi-decade head start.

— Mining.com

The Critical Minerals for Defense Conference runs June 9–10 in Toronto, bringing together mining executives, defense procurement officials, and government representatives from the US, Canada, Australia, and allied nations to discuss supply chain resilience ahead of the January 2027 Pentagon deadline. The conference follows the February 2026 FORGE launch and the G7 ministerial in May. Toronto has become a significant node in the rare earth capital markets conversation, with several Canadian rare earth companies pursuing US dual listings this year.

— Rare Earth Exchanges Forum