Good news indeed if this comes to fruition. It shows a change in...

Good news indeed if this comes to fruition. It shows a change in narrative from the Malaysia government and creates a way from them to keep Lynas crack and leeching operations running at LAMP whilst saving face, which is extremely important in Asian culture.

If the Malay government follows through on their rhetoric (banning all domestic REO exports). I am a bit confused / doubt how they believe they build a domestic rare earth industry and supply chain from starch whilst doing this. So I would caution any belief that Lynas stands to benefit monetarily from processing Malaysian rare earth concentrate.

Being that a mine is easy enough to commission and open. Step 1 they can produce concentrate easy enough.

Agree doesn't make any economic sense to build a new refinery when Lynas LAMP already exists. So in theory Lynas can refine concentrate to seperated REO (oxides). Step 2

Step 3 then lies the problem. If you are banned from exporting rare earth product what do you do with your seperated REO? Malaysia could use Ce and La locally in their fuel refining industry. But those are abundant and cheap. All the good ones (Nd Pr Dy Tb) they don't have any buyers for. So from starch they'll have to invest 500M USD to build a alloy smelting plant to allow them to turn REO into magnets. And who is going to step forth and invest that money in Malaysia? Certainly won't be Lynas or any other western company after the political risk of investing in Malaysia has now been exposed.

Its the same chicken and egg problem the west faces with securing a complete non Chinese rare earth supply chain. History would tell us the Malay government lacks the patience and vision to support companies over many years (like Japan and Lynas) to develop their own domestic rare earth industry.

Sad really for what could of been for the Malaysian people. But it's time for Lynas to focus efforts on new markets in the US, Europe, and Korea.