I'm not current on mineral sands markets (I participated in a...

I'm not current on mineral sands markets (I participated in a major study of mineral sands markets in the late 70s), and nor am I current on REE (I did a substantial valuation of Mt Weld in 1989 which resulted in a zero value then on the basis that the company that then owned it had no business plan to enter the market, and all we could see then were liabilities).

However, my impression is that being able to produce saleable monazite and leucoxene concentrates is a major advantage. There is active trade in such concentrates, with REE processors able to process. That means that the miner producing monazite and leucoxene doesn't have to worry about the processing and marketing of end products.

My impression of the REE business is that because the products come as co-products, and because there is demand for some REE products and not others, the established producers have large inventories of partly processed and fully processed materials sitting waiting for a market. They can of course sell the products that are in demand.

These characteristics constitute high barriers to entry in the REE industry. A monazite/leucoxene producer is generally not disadvantaged by these characteristics, providing the products are acceptable in the market.

There is a Canadian company, Medallion Resources (TSX V.MDL) that has a strategy based on monazite.