Ionic Rare Earths, via Ionic Rare Earths USA, and Missouri-based US Strategic Metals are forming a 50-50 joint venture to build $100 million in NdFeB and SmCo magnet recycling facilities at USSM’s fully permitted 1,800-acre site near Fredericktown, Missouri. USSM will provide $95 million, with a further $5 million equity split between the partners to fund front-end engineering design and accelerate demonstration-scale recycling. Ionic’s Belfast subsidiary, Ionic Technologies, will license its magnet recycling process to recover high-purity, separated rare earth oxides from magnets, magnet scrap and other heavy-REE-bearing compounds.

Frontieras North America and Western Fuels have signed an MOU to build a mine-mouth FASForm coal fractionation facility at the Dry Fork open-pit mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, initially processing up to about 2.7 million tons/year of sub-bituminous coal and potentially 5.4 million tons/year at full build-out. The patented FASForm process disassembles coal in a continuous, closed-loop, zero-waste, reducing atmosphere to produce clean solid carbon (FASCarbon), ultra-low-sulphur diesel, naphtha and other products, with 30-year ground lease, feedstock, diesel offtake and logistics agreements envisaged. FASCarbon could be railed to Western Fuels Association member utilities or exported, positioning the Dry Fork facility within a 1,200 MW mine-mouth generation cluster as a hub for future FASGEN co-location at nearby coal-fired plants.

Faraday Copper’s latest 22,510-metre drilling phase at Copper Creek, Arizona, has expanded shallow oxide and sulphide mineralisation, with hole FCD-26-190 cutting 100.8 metres at 0.22% copper from surface at Copper Giant East and FCD-26-192 returning 19 metres at 0.55% copper from 42 metres near American Eagle. Near-surface mineralisation was reported in 14 of 23 new holes, supporting a staged development starting with oxide feed and copper cathode production ahead of larger sulphide open-pit and underground phases. Faraday is closing its acquisition of BHP’s former San Manuel mine, which processed ~800 million tonnes at 0.66% copper, and plans at least 23,000 metres of drilling there this autumn toward a combined Copper Creek–San Manuel resource by mid-2027.