Could MTM's Flash Joule processing tech be the shot in the arm America needs for REE independence?
China's REE squeeze fuels US investor push into next-gen rare earths
MTM is looking to re-shore REE refining in the US with its Flash Joule Heating technology
A commercial demonstration, already in the works, will be built by the end of the year
China's export curbs on rare earths have sparked a scramble among US investors to back the next generation of high-potential rare earth element ventures.
In April, Beijing imposed export restrictions on key heavy REEs such as dysprosium, terbium, gadolinium, samarium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium – materials that are critical not only to EVs and wind turbines but also to F-35 fighter jets, nuclear submarines, Tomahawk missiles, and MRI machines.
But the problem for the US lies in the fact that it produces only a small share of the world's REEs at home and procures 72% of its needs from China. It now faces a critical gap in commercial-scale heavy REE separation capabilities.
China, on the other hand, dominates both the production and processing of REEs. It produces about 70% of the world's mined rare earths, but holds an even more substantial lead in refining, processing roughly 85% of global supply.
While many rare earth companies remain tethered to China-centric supply chains, MTM Critical Metals (ASX:MTM) has charted its own path with a proprietary US-based processing solution that could potentially redefine domestic independence.
The company's wholly owned US subsidiary, Flash Metals USA Inc, holds the global exclusive license for Flash Joule Heating (FJH) — an electrothermal processing platform originally developed at Rice University in Houston.
Unlike traditional sulphuric acid-based flowsheet which are energy-intensive, hazardous, and slow, FJH technology rapidly heats feedstock to over 3000 degrees Kelvin in seconds using pulsed direct current and chlorine gas.
The technology unlocks an entirely new commercial pathway for MTM in urban mining, which is being trailed on three different fronts – NdFeB permanent magnet scrap from EVs, wind turbines and electronics, electronic waste from servers and telecom hardware, and secondary streams such as refinery waste and red mud.
In an interview with Stockhead, MTM managing director Michael Walshe said the goal for the company is to recover REEs from US sourced industrial and post-consumer waste to reduce reliance on mined feedstock and build a circular domestic supply chain – something China has already mastered.
Repositioning as an industrial-tech player
'From a high-level perspective, what we're aiming to do is to transition from an exploration company and rebrand ourselves as an industrial technology company like IperionX (ASX:IPX) and Alpha HPA (ASX:A4N),' he said.
'Generally speaking, they've transitioned from beginning their lives as explorers to now being industrial tech, which seems to command higher valuations if you get the technology to work out correctly.'
Despite not having entered commercial production, both companies have market capitalisations north of $1bn.
Iperion owns the Titan critical mineral project in Tennessee – the largest resource of titanium, rare earth and zircon mineral sands in the US.
Its technological foundation lies in a decade-long collaboration between the University of Utah, Boeing, and Arconic, with funding from the US Department of Energy's ARPA-E program.
This partnership led to the development of proprietary technologies aimed at producing titanium more sustainably and efficiently.
Alpha HPA marked its entry into industrial technology with the development of its proprietary HPA First Process, a low-carbon, near-zero waste technology designed to produce ultra-high-purity alumina (HPA).
The technology extracts HPA from various feedstocks including bauxite and recycled materials using a solvent extraction and refining method, significantly reducing emissions compared to traditional methods and enables the recycling of nearly 100% of reagents used in production.
Walshe said while MTM are still very early in their journey to a potential re-rate, the Flash Joule Heating technology has shown signs of promise.
Testwork shows solid opportunity
'There's a huge range of different metals that we're going after but right now our primary focus is on three different feedstocks,' he said.
'That includes the gold-rich electronic waste, a gallium and germanium-rich refinery waste as well that we've secured from a New York-based company and then the third is the rare earth concentrates, where we're aiming to improve the flow sheets of how rare earth concentrates are traditionally processed.'
MoUs are already progressing on the first two.
Testing on printed circuit board feedstock carrying grades of 551g/t gold, 2804g/t silver and 42% copper demonstrated recoveries of over 95% for gold and titanium, with silver, tin and zinc recoveries exceeding 90% in water-soluble metal chlorides using FJH.
As much a 100% of the gold was recovered to the chloride, with silver recoveries of 97% from the e-waste char residue generated as a by-product of a process that turns the plastics from e-waste into syn-gas.
MTM's US subsidiary Flash Metals USA has now executed a letter of intent with Dynamic Lifecycle Innovation Inc. to produce a target volume of 800t of PCB rich e-waste material annually over a five-year period starting in Q4 2025.
It comes on top of a MoU with New York based Indium Corporation, which will supply high grade scrap from which MTM plans to extract gallium, germanium and indium, metals critical to semiconductor chips and solar panels which China has issued export controls on.
While it is yet to reveal a partner in the rare earths space, testwork has shown FJH could be used to convert rare earth concentrates into REE chlorides.
They are a more valuable, easier to handle and refined intermediate compared to sulphates which generated average recoveries of 93% of rare earth elements in testwork with a 95% reduction in key impurities iron, aluminium and phosphorous using a single step solution.
Commercialisation is in the works
A major step towards commercialisation was taken in March with the finalisation of the process design for its FJH demonstration plant based in Houston, Texas.
'We aim to have that plant built by the end of this calendar year, so by December we hope to have the plant built and in commissioning,' he told Stockhead.
'Then in the first half of next year we'll hopefully be processing these feedstocks and recovering the metals from them and potentially generating revenue.'
Walshe said there were a number of factors contributing to the company's plans on making significant progress in the US, compared to other locations like Australia.
'The first is that it's a US invented technology and typically it is a lot easier to get big checks from the grant agencies like the Department of Defence which we are targeting – there's a huge amount of grant funding for critical metal processing over there,' he said.
'We've got a few different grants underway with the Department of Defence and also with the Department of Energy.
'There's also a lot of feedstock available for electronic waste within the US and therefore we would be immune to any tariff related impacts if we're sourcing all the material in the US,' Walshe added.
'We also eventually want to get on the NASDAQ as a dual listing similar to Iperion and the reason for that is the pools of available capital available in the US are much, much bigger than in Australia.'
He said given the current geopolitics, there's a renewed interest in commodities in general, getting out of the big tech stocks and going into the more hard type commodity-based stocks.
'We think that over next four years under Trump, that interest is only going to increase – plus we have that technology edge which tends to fair best in the US out of anywhere globally.'
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