Is DRE the next "Lynas". My association with rare earths goes...

Is DRE the next "Lynas". My association with rare earths goes back as far as 1947 when I left school and started full time work as a trainee industrial chemist. I worked for a sand mining company where a byproduct of the mining was Monazite. The chemist I worked with developed the method of extracting the cerium from the monazite. A pilot production plant was established. This is the same method used now by Lynas to extract the range of rare earths. In those early days the only one of value was the Cerium where it was in demand as a polishing agent for polishing glass for spectacles and binoculars.

My association with Lynas began when my son in law drew my attention to the company. He was in a fly in, fly out job with a gold mining company and got to meet Lynas employees on the same flights. This was in the early days of the development of the Mt Weld, Lynas mine. He used to keep me up with Lynas news. I was also part of a shareholders group that acted against the sale of assets to the Chinese and to another Curtis company.

Lynas didn't have an easy path to success. This has made it easier for DRE to navigate through these early stages. I compare DRE to LYC and believe that DRE has similar deposits of rare earths. In addition to the rare earths, DRE has nickel, silver, copper and gold combined and, as with mineral sands, the rare earths are a valuable by-product or maybe the nickel, silver copper and gold are the by-products.