POSCO International said on the 22nd that it signed an agreement in Washington, D.C., with U.S. corporations to push for establishing a joint venture to separate, refine and produce rare earths.
ReElement Technologies Corporation, a local company, produces recycled materials and feedstocks from various waste through its proprietary separation and refining-focused process.
Under the agreement, the two companies will invest a total of $200 million to set up a joint venture, build a rare earth plant in the United States with an annual capacity of 6,000 tons (t), and develop it into an integrated complex that produces through to permanent magnets.
POSCO International will lead management of the joint venture as the largest shareholder, and ReElement, the second-largest shareholder, will provide the core separation and refining technology. The investment will be used for plant and facility construction, operating funds, and future expansion.
With this agreement, the two companies plan to fully advance the Boiler Maker project, named in September last year, to diversify the global rare earth supply chain and strengthen Korea-U.S. industrial cooperation.
Through this, they plan to produce neodymium (Nd) and praseodymium (Pr) oxides, core raw materials for permanent magnets, as well as dysprosium (Dy) and terbium (Tb) oxides, which are heavy rare earths, and manufacture permanent magnets using them.
In phase one, they will establish a system to produce 3,000 t a year, then expand capacity to 6,000 t a year through a second-phase expansion. After pilot production in the fourth quarter of 2027, they aim for full-scale mass production in 2028.
Lee Gye-in, president of POSCO International, said, "This joint venture goes beyond merely building a refining plant and will be the starting point for establishing a critical minerals value chain in the United States that connects raw materials to final materials."
Mark Jensen, chief executive of ReElement, said, "By combining ReElement's separation and refining-centered platform with POSCO International's global capabilities and industrial scale, we will create an integrated production system that fills supply chain gaps in the market."