It was not a small ask. While all commodity markets are prone to boom and bust, Australia-listed Lynas – the only major producer of– has known more hard times than most.
In the 2010s, the price of its products had crashed to rock bottom, and debt was piling higher. Meanwhile, local opposition was growing to the low-level radioactive waste produced at its Malaysian processing plant which began operations in 2013. It came to a head in 2018 when the government added a condition to the renewal of the company’s operating licence, requiring it to remove the waste from Malaysia by the following year or shut it down. Some thought the business could be on the verge of collapse.
“There may have been a few times when I put my head down on the desk,” Lacaze tellsThe Ageand theHerald.
Lynas chief executive Amanda Lacaze.JOE ARMAO
But in volatile global commodity markets, much can change in four years, and today, rare earths – a group of 17 metals needed to make permanent magnets for products such as smartphones, military weapons, wind turbines and, crucially, electric cars – are back in hot demand amid the global push to electrify transport and cut carbon emissions.
Benchmark prices for Lynas’ key metals neodymium and praseodymium – NdPr, for short – were sitting around $US35 a kilogram just two years ago but have risen as high as $US120, says Lacaze. Phone calls from buyers looking for long-term purchase agreements have become markedly more urgent.
“That’s useful, but theoretical, if you don’t have an operating plant that your people can run efficiently,” she says. “We did our heavy lifting in the tough years.”
While the journey Lynas has taken to get here has been “not so simple”, it has emerged today in an enviable position. The company, which mines its rare earths in Western Australia and ships the raw material to Malaysia for processing into rare earth oxides, has overcome its long-running saga with Malaysian politicians, secured environmental approvals from the government to build a permanent disposal facility for its low-level radioactive waste and had its crucial licence to operate in the country renewed. Last week, in a new milestone, construction began on a $500 million processing plant in Kalgoorlie, WA, to process concentrate from its mine at Mt Weld.
And growth is unlikely to stop there. With governments including in the United States, Europe and Australia boosting plans to spend billions of dollars developing rare earths projects to lessen the world’s reliance on China, which presently accounts for 80 per cent of global rare earths supply, Lynas is also in talks with the Biden administration in the US over plans to develop a rare earths facility in Texas.
In the three months to March 31, the company reported its best-ever output and sales across the March quarter, with revenue reaching a record-high $327 million, up from $110 million a year earlier.
Analysts are anticipating brighter profits to come. “Much better financial returns should be coming next half due to surging commodity prices,” Barrenjoey mining analyst Daniel Morgan said.
Lynas has previously set a target to boost the company’s rare earths output by 50 per cent by 2025. It now concedes this will no longer suffice.
“We were always looking to what life was going to look like once we got through some of those big challenges, and I don’t think there was a single person in our team who thought we were going to fail, it was just when and how much were we going to win,” says Lacaze.
“But today … our biggest challenge is simply, ‘How do we grow faster?’”
Lacaze describes this as a “rich man’s challenge, frankly”. “We have taken actually some of our very best and brightest and put them into project teams to work on that,” she says.
Lynas has indicated it will present an accelerated growth plan to its investors within the next three to six months.
Having steered Lynas through from the depths of its troubles, and fending off an opportunistic $2.25-a-share takeover bid from conglomerate Wesfarmers, Lacaze has overseen a 2000 per cent share price lift since her appointment in 2014 to peak above $10 this year. It now has a market capitalisation of more than $8 billion.
After eight years in the job, Lacaze insists, she is not done yet. Last week, she told the Melbourne Mining Club she has a “big appetite … and a big vision” for the company’s future.
While she recognises in business that there are “few legacies that survive the next CEO”, Lacaze says she intends to focus on building up Lynas’ global footprint and ensuring it can supply the portfolio of customers it has developed.
“By the time I leave the company, which just by the way is no time soon, I actually really liked my job … those are the things that are really going to matter,” she says. ”
And, I would really like it if the people in the business said, ‘We’re sorry, she’s going
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