American Rare Earths partnering at the pointy endAnother player in the US is American Rare Earths (ASX:ARR). It’s already developing the La Paz project and has just announced plans to kick off drilling at its Halleck Creek project early next year.Director Keith Middleton said the company believes Halleck Creek has the potential to be significant, “certainly in the hundreds of millions of tonnes of rare earth mineralised rocks at a significantly higher grade.”And with America looking for alternative supplies, the company reckons it has the low penalty element advantage with a range of potential partners who are on the pointy end of developing processing technologies in the US.“There’s a universal understanding that America want to develop their own processing capability,” he said,“And our partners are applying their proprietary techniques in order to demonstrate the ability to liberate the rare earth elements from within the host material.“For us it’s a bit like backing every horse in the Melbourne Cup.“We’re not really fussed which get grant funding or however many develop the proprietary techniques, because what they’ll effectively be doing is using our feedstock in order to prove their methodology.“That potentially makes us at the epicentre of the new technologies that are being developed.“We believe that we’re incredibly well positioned to supply feedstock into that supply chain as that processing capability is developed,” Middleton said.“We believe that they will succeed and that will run in a parallel stream as our projects evolve.” QUOTE Daylight ahead, the horizon is in sight , time to shine IMO
