Interesting find, had not seen that discovery yet. Broadly that...

Interesting find, had not seen that discovery yet.

Broadly that deposit is a carbonatite hosted rare earth, so not ideal. Plenty of peers for carbonatites and I think the best comparison would be Peak (PEK), they have a huge 214 mt deposit at 2.2% TREO which is somewhat superior to the Norwegian find of 559 mt at 1.6% TREO due to the higher grades. PEK also has reserves of 19 Mt at a very respectable 4.8% TREO (three times the Norwegian grade). Despite this, PEK sits at a market cap on only $53m and their 2022 BFS relied on an insane NdPr price of US$232/kg, more than 4 times the current spot price, to make a 37% IRR. So the Norwegian project would have no hope of being economic at sub US$100/kg NdPr prices based on the PEK deposit economics.

Many of these "generation 1" carbonatite rare earth deposits have been in development since the early 2010's and have largely been superseded by "generation 2" which includes the Brazilian ionic clay projects, monazite by-product projects (e.g. Iluka, Tronox, Energy Fuels) and of course our very own Sybella (early days of course).