Rare earths miner Lynas Corporation expects its workforce will continue to grow at the Mt Weld mine and concentrator near Laverton as it embarks on a project to double the capacity of its processing plant.
Lynas’ stunning turnaround over the past two years under former Telstra executive Amanda Lacaze has seen it re-enter the ASX200 and push the button on a $35 million program to ramp up production of its most valuable product, neodymium-praseo-dymium, from 500 to 600 tonnes a month between April and January next year.
That will involve a $14 million outlay to expand its processing capacity from 242,000 to 443,000 tonnes a year at Mt Weld, due to take three months to complete and be done by the middle of this year.
A Lynas spokewoman said it had already increased its workforce from 70 to 79 full-time employees ahead of construction, slated to begin in mid-March.
“As Lynas continues to ramp up production at Mt Weld, we expect to have incremental job increases,” she said.
Lynas is also spending $15 million on exploration and mining at Mt Weld, with its second mining campaign under way.
Mt Weld is the first port of call for Lynas’ product, which is shipped to a downstream processing facility in Malaysia. Production improvements have seen Lynas cut its $425 million debt bill by almost $200 million and emerge as the free market’s largest supplier of NdPr over the past two years.
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The market is tightly controlled in China, and as demand for products that use rare earths, such as electric vehicles, increases, Lynas is looking to lock in long-term contracts to manage supply and underpin production estimates.
It has already locked in one deal with German multinational Bosch.
Lynas made $93 million in sales revenue in the December quarter, down from $112 million in the September quarter after prices softened.
But receipts held over from the previous term helped it generate operating cashflows of $45.3 million.
It closed the quarter with $47.8 million in cash.
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