There has been some really positive responses in the rare earths...

There has been some really positive responses in the rare earths space in the last few months but strongest seems to have been primarily to those exploring for clay hosted REEs. I find this interesting and wonder if the burgeoning number of explorers with interesting land here in Oz is actually a threat to the big hard rock players. Probably not Lynas with it's operations big and funded already but what about the others like NTU, ARU, HAS etc who have projects that will be looking for capital for very expensive and quite tricky plants.

I wonder if money will instead want to flow to these new group of explorers who might be able to get something profitable running much faster and more cheaply. Part of the equation will be types of extractable REEs (not all are valuable or in particular supply deficit) but all things being equal i could money holding back from those explorers from the earlier wave of REE exploration.

Then there's the situation with ILU getting huge funding from the govt to support their plant at Eneabba. This is going to be geared to processing monazite and that's a potential straight proposition win for KTA/Mt Clere monazite sands (we'll be hearing more on this this year) but I imagine that the speculation in the S/head article linked yesterday makes sense that some of the clay players may be able to produce to fit into the back end of their processing flow.

Interesting times ahead. we are in a good position.