This article has been disseminated on behalf of Ucore Rare Metals Inc. (TSX.V: UCU) (OTCQX: UURAF) and may include paid advertising.
- Minerals vital to energy and advanced manufacturing have become an energy security issue in their own right, notes “Time” report.
- The IEA has launched a Critical Minerals Security Program to promote joint action in the face of disruptions.
- Ucore’s commercial objective is to deliver the missing link in North America’s rare earth chain.
Alarm bells are ringing over a new kind of energy crisis — and it’s not oil or gas. A recent “Time” article warns that governments must act now to stave off damaging disruptions to industries from power grids to jet engines, arguing that the same international playbook forged after the 1973 oil crisis must be applied to critical minerals today (https://ibn.fm/iKc0k). In that context, Ucore Rare Metals (TSX.V: UCU) (OTCQX: UURAF) is advancing U.S.-based rare earth separation capacity with its RapidSX(TM) technology and a Louisiana Strategic Metals Complex designed to reduce dependence on overseas refining bottlenecks.
Time’s analysis makes the case that minerals vital to energy and advanced manufacturing have become an energy security issue in their own right. The report notes that these materials are essential to batteries, power equipment, artificial intelligence (“AI”) chips, jet engines, defense applications and more — and that supply interruptions can cripple manufacturing with far-reaching economic consequences. The article points to recent rare earth export turbulence as a sobering example and urges governments to prepare both for near-term shocks and to diversify structurally over the long run.
This highlights how concentrated today’s refining landscape has become. For 19 of the 20 most important strategic minerals that the International Energy Agency (“IEA”) tracks, China is the leading refiner with about a 70% average market share, a concentration that has intensified in recent years. More than half of these strategic minerals are now subject to some form of export restriction or control, including curbs on the know-how and equipment that turn raw materials into finished components. These facts help explain why a minerals shortfall, even without an oil-style shock, can ripple through factories, jobs and national security.
Just as the IEA was built to coordinate emergency oil stocks, a coordinated response is emerging for minerals. The IEA has launched a Critical Minerals Security Program to promote joint action in the face of disruptions, while governments experiment with tools such as price floors, offtake commitments and streamlined permitting to unlock new refining and processing capacity (https://ibn.fm/ktdSe). In addition, the U.S. Department of Defense is entering public-private partnerships that aim to establish a fully domestic rare earth supply chain, underscoring how industrial policy is shifting from raw extraction to midstream processing where the choke point actually lies.
That shift is where Ucore Rare Metals is positioned. The company is building a domestic separation and refining capability focused on rare earth oxides in Alexandria, Louisiana, anchored by its RapidSX technology, which Ucore describes as a faster, smaller-footprint evolution of conventional solvent extraction (https://ibn.fm/fYk3a). The Louisiana Strategic Metals Complex is an 80,800-square-foot brownfield facility at England Airpark that the company plans to commission for commercial-scale separation, providing a U.S. conduit from allied feedstock to finished oxides for high-performance magnets.
U.S. government support adds weight to this effort. In 2025, Ucore announced an initial $18.4 million agreement with the Department of Defense to advance RapidSX toward full-scale operations at the Louisiana site, later describing continued progress on system engineering, feedstock partnerships and preparation for full-scale equipment testing (https://ibn.fm/1il5q). The company subsequently detailed a groundbreaking ceremony at the SMC with U.S. and state stakeholders, signaling that the project’s path from demonstration to commercial deployment is underway.
Feedstock security is the other pillar. In August, Ucore executed a nonbinding, 10-year offtake Letteer of Intent (“LOI”) with Critical Metals Corp. to source heavy rare earth concentrate from Greenland’s Tanbreez Project for the Louisiana facility, with initial volumes to be qualified at Ucore’s Canadian demonstration plant (https://ibn.fm/y2G71). Additional updates in September outlined ongoing engineering and DPAS status progress intended to prioritize critical equipment and materials under U.S. national-defense authorities, reinforcing the project’s role in supply-chain resilience.
The need for domestic midstream capacity is not theoretical. The IEA warned in 2025 that low diversity in critical-mineral markets, particularly in refining and processing, heightens the risk of supply disruptions and price volatility as demand surges for clean-energy and defense technologies. The agency projects persistent concentration in refined material supply through 2035, and analysts have flagged copper and several battery inputs as particularly exposed (https://ibn.fm/p47Ex). Those findings mirror Time’s call for new partnerships and financing tools to rebalance market power and reduce systemic risk.
Ucore’s commercial objective is to deliver the missing link in North America’s rare earth chain: separation capacity that can accept concentrates from allied sources and output magnet-grade oxides, such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, without relying on Chinese equipment or processing routes. By marrying government-backed industrial policy with a modular separation platform and long-term feedstock strategies, the company aligns tightly with the safeguards experts say are needed to avoid minerals-driven shocks to the energy transition and national security manufacturing base.
If the 1970s taught the world that oil security required shared rules, stocks and coordination, 2025 is teaching that mineral security requires the same, and perhaps more. Ucore Rare Metals is one example of how the United States can translate that lesson into steel, controls and chemistry on home soil, turning a global risk into a strategic capability the supply chain can depend on.
For more information, visit www.Ucore.com.
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