ElementUSA lands $67M DOE award for Louisiana rare earth plant

By AI, Created 6:06 PM UTC, June 03, 2026, /AGP/ – ElementUSA and Colorado School of Mines won a $67 million Department of Energy award to advance a rare earth processing facility in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. The project builds on ElementUSA’s separate $29.9 million Department of War program and could reshape U.S. supply chains for critical minerals.

Why it matters: - The award gives ElementUSA a major federal boost as the company tries to build a domestic source of rare earths and other critical minerals. - The Louisiana project is aimed at turning bauxite residue, an industrial waste stream, into marketable metals for semiconductors, energy systems and national security uses. - The new funding also strengthens ElementUSA’s pitch to lenders, offtakers and industrial customers as the project moves toward construction.

What happened: - ElementUSA and Colorado School of Mines announced a $67 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy this week. - The money will support the design, construction, commissioning and operation of a rare earth element processing facility in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. - The award adds to ElementUSA’s existing $29.9 million project with the Department of War focused on gallium and scandium recovery and commercialization. - ElementUSA said it will break ground on the first phase of the Louisiana project later this month.

The details: - ElementUSA’s process is built to co-produce pig iron and recover critical metals and rare earth elements from bauxite residue. - The targeted materials include scandium, gallium, germanium, yttrium, neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, gadolinium, titanium, vanadium, niobium and tantalum. - ElementUSA said the diversified output improves unit economics by creating multiple revenue streams. - The company is advancing a phased plan for a full-scale facility with about 1 million tons per year of feed capacity. - Estimated capital expenditure for the full-scale plant is about $1.1 billion. - ElementUSA has exclusive access to the Louisiana bauxite residue resource, which the company says totals about 34 million tons of proven reserves and is growing. - The company said the resource could supply 45% to 385% of annual U.S. demand for gallium, scandium, yttrium, germanium, ytterbium, dysprosium and gadolinium at scale. - ElementUSA said more than 95% of the Louisiana resource is payable metal across iron, rare earths and critical minerals. - The company said the process platform is designed to scale globally, and more than 4 billion tons of bauxite residue are estimated worldwide. - ElementUSA’s Critical Resource Accelerator in Cedar Park, Texas, serves as the company’s lab-to-pilot hub for validation, product qualification and scale-up. - The Critical Resource Accelerator works with Colorado School of Mines on technical validation, mineral characterization and scale-up studies. - Colorado School of Mines’ Waste to Value Center, led by Elizabeth Holley, focuses on recovering critical minerals from mine waste from site selection through implementation.

Between the lines: - The DOE award and the earlier Department of War funding suggest federal interest in building non-Chinese supply chains for rare earths and other strategic minerals. - ElementUSA is trying to position a waste-stream project as both an environmental reuse story and a strategic minerals project. - The company’s emphasis on co-production and multiple metals suggests a bid to reduce the cost risk that has hurt many single-commodity critical minerals projects. - The collaboration with Colorado School of Mines adds academic and technical credibility at a stage when process validation and scale-up still matter most.

What’s next: - ElementUSA said it will start first-phase ground-breaking in Louisiana later this month. - The company is working on long-term offtake agreements and additional financing. - ElementUSA is also pursuing product qualification and contractual pathways with defense primes, semiconductor companies, advanced materials firms and other specialty buyers. - As the facility scales, the company expects phased commercial deliveries.

The bottom line: - ElementUSA now has federal backing, a research partner and a claimed reserve base as it tries to turn Louisiana bauxite residue into a commercial rare earth supply chain.