News: Suppliers
17 July 2026
ReElement awarded $25m from Industrial Base Fund to expand US critical mineral refining capacity
The US Department of War’s Economic Defense Unit (EDU), in partnership with the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment (OUSW(A&S)), has awarded $25m through the Industrial Base Fund to American Resources Corp to expand capacity at the Marion Advanced Technology Center refining campus in Indiana of its affiliated minority holding ReElement Technologies Corp (a refiner of rare-earth elements and other defense-critical minerals).
The investment will fund additional refining equipment, production line installation and working capital to accelerate commercial production of high-purity rare-earth elements and other defense-critical minerals. The expanded capacity will process both primary and recycled feedstocks (including end-of-life permanent magnets and other strategic materials) to produce high-purity rare-earth oxides and specialty critical minerals such as yttrium, gadolinium, germanium and gallium for semiconductors, advanced defense systems, aerospace components, secure communications, and other strategic applications.
“This investment reflects the growing importance of secure, domestic refining capacity to America's national security and industrial resilience,” says ReElement’s CEO Mark Jensen. “This support accelerates our ability to deliver the high-purity rare-earth and critical mineral products needed to strengthen our defense industrial base while reinforcing America’s long-term economic and national security.”
Unlike conventional refining projects that are typically developed around a single mine, feedstock or commodity, ReElement has developed a refining-first platform designed to process multiple primary and recycled feedstock sources into a broad portfolio of high-purity rare-earth elements and critical minerals. Its modular, demand-aligned refining architecture enables production capacity to be sequenced alongside customer demand, allowing capital deployment to remain closely aligned with commercial growth while reducing dependence on any single upstream resource or geography.
ReElement says that its technology platform is designed to economically separate, purify and refine multiple critical materials using proprietary chromatographic separation technology. The platform is capable of producing products at purities ranging from about 99.5% to 99.999% and is designed to support multiple supply chains through a common refining infrastructure. This multi-element, multi-feedstock approach provides the flexibility to process a diverse range of primary mineral concentrates, industrial byproducts and recycled materials — including from permanent magnets, lithium-ion batteries, and industrial, defense, and technology waste streams, as well as mined ores, brines, and coal-based byproducts — while supplying customers across defense, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, permanent magnets, battery materials and other strategic industries.
The investment by EDU and OUSW(A&S) joins other previous investments in 2026 from Transition Equity Partners LLC and a strategic investment by Mitsubishi Materials Corp.
Since commercializing its technology, ReElement has demonstrated the production of more than a dozen rare-earth and critical mineral products, including germanium (Ge), yttrium (Y), gadolinium (Gd), dysprosium (Dy), terbium (Tb), samarium (Sm), neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), lithium (Li) and tungsten (W). The Indiana Commercial Validation Facility in Noblesville has validated products and refining processes across multiple feedstocks and end markets while supplying initial commercial production into markets experiencing significant global supply constraints.
The Marion refining campus represents the next phase of ReElement’s commercial expansion and is being developed using a modular approach that enables individual production lines to be commissioned based on customer demand. The facility is expected to support the commercial production of multiple rare-earth and critical mineral products while serving as a cornerstone of the USA’s growing domestic refining infrastructure.
The Department of War’s investment further reinforces the growing importance of establishing secure, domestic refining capacity as governments and industry work together to build resilient allied supply chains for critical minerals essential to national security and advanced manufacturing.
