Rare earth elements in N.L. have big potential, says industry

Rare earth elements and minerals have been thrust into the political spotlight — and Newfoundland and Labrador has them buried underground which has the industry optimistic about its potential.

For 15 years, Search Minerals has been working near the community of St. Lewis, Labrador, to mine for rare earth elements at its Foxtrot and Deep Fox deposits.

CEO Joseph Lanzon said Labrador is rich in rare earth deposits.

He said his company is still in the exploration phase but that should change soon when it submits for an environmental review, which will put the project into the feasibility phase.

"From downtown St. Lewis, we would have 17 years of mining on Deep Fox," he told CBC News.

He said they are finishing more drilling and exploration at Foxtrot and they’re also drilling and exploring at two other pits. Between three of those deposits, he said it could mean 30 years worth of mining.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has been searching to make deals with countries, that would help it dominate access to rare earth minerals.

In the recently tabled federal Liberal budget, the importance of critical minerals — which contain rare earth minerals — is highlighted, with a commitment to support some projects and funding through a critical minerals sovereign fund.

Lanzon said that budget has “set us up” to go after rare earth minerals and figure out how to process them closer to home.

“That’s the important piece,” he said. “This is a North American pro-environment solution and that's what we're working towards.”

Lanzon said the metallurgical process, where metals are extracted from their ores through a series of physical and chemical processes, is currently done outside of North America.

“We allowed other countries that have different regulatory components to take our market. Today, we are prisoners. So how do you get out of prison? How you get out of prison is by us doing our mining and just making sure that the metallurgy is a Canadian solution,” he said.

Mining Industry N.L. executive director Amanda McCallum said rare earth elements are critically important to a number of sectors but the province's mining sector needs support to capitalize on it.

“Exploring and searching for minerals is a very expensive endeavor and especially when you're in jurisdictions where there hasn't been a lot of exploration activity,” she said.