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American Rare Earths’ Cowboy State mine: METALLIC role and flowsheet notes for engineers

March 18, 2026|

Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

American Rare Earths’ Cowboy State mine: METALLIC role and flowsheet notes for engineers

First reported on MINING.com

30 Second Briefing

American Rare Earths’ Cowboy State mine in Wyoming has been selected to supply allanite ore feedstock to the US Department of Energy’s METALLIC consortium, led by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, to develop domestic critical minerals supply chains. The Halleck Creek project, held by subsidiary Wyoming Rare, hosts an estimated 547.5 million tonnes of total rare earth oxides at a 1,000 ppm cut-off, ranking it among the world’s top 10 rare earth projects. Around five tonnes of ore delivered in December 2025 will be used across four METALLIC test centres to validate ARR’s mineral processing flowsheets and trial novel rare earth extraction methods.

Technical Brief

  • Latest Cowboy State resource: 547.5 Mt TREO inventory at 1,000 ppm cut-off grade.
  • Feedstock comprises allanite-rich ore from a dedicated test pit within the Halleck Creek licence.
  • Four METALLIC test centres will each receive portions of the same ore batch for comparative trials.
  • METALLIC pools capabilities from nine US national laboratories to run mineral processing and extraction campaigns.
  • ARR’s proprietary mineral processing flowsheets will be run first, then benchmarked against novel extraction methods.
  • Third-party operation of ARR’s flowsheets provides external validation of recovery, reagent schemes and operating assumptions.
  • Any process improvements from METALLIC could directly reduce ARR’s future capex/opex for magnetic REE recovery at Halleck Creek.

Our Take

With Halleck Creek’s Cowboy State resource now at about 547.5 Mt TREO and ranked among the top 10 rare earth projects globally in our database, supplying ore to the US Department of Energy’s METALLIC facility positions American Rare Earths as a key test case for how very large, low- to mid-grade US deposits might be integrated into domestic magnet supply chains.

Wyoming is emerging as a rare earths cluster in our coverage, with Ramaco Resources’ Brook mine and American Rare Earths’ Halleck Creek both feeding downstream or R&D channels, which is likely to strengthen the state’s leverage in securing federal support and permitting for critical minerals projects.

Compared with Dateline Resources’ move into heavy rare earths at Music Valley in California, Halleck Creek’s focus on magnetic rare earth elements and its DoE research link suggest a strategic tilt towards optimising processing flowsheets for large-scale, magnet-focused production rather than niche heavy-REE output.

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Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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