In this episode of the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast, Joshua Ballard, CEO of USA Rare Earth, discusses the company’s journey in the rare earth industry, including their mining and magnet manufacturing strategies. He highlights the challenges faced in mining, the importance of government support, and the need for a domestic supply chain. Ballard also shares insights on the future of the industry, the company’s production plans, and the differentiation of USA Rare Earth in the market.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to USA Rare Earth
02:14 Challenges in Mining and Processing Rare Earths
06:47 Manufacturing Facility Developments
10:55 Government Support and Strategic Plans
14:46 Supply Chain and Offtake Agreements
18:49 Future of USA Rare Earth and Market Dynamics
22:34 Pricing and Competition in the Market
26:36 Sales Strategy and Customer Engagement
30:56 Conclusion and Future Outlook
Listen to the REEx Podcast
(opens in a new tab)Transcript
Dustin Olsen (00:01.164)
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. We’ve got another special guest, Joshua Ballard, who is the CEO of USA Rare Earth. And I’m joined by my illustrious co-hosts, Daniel O’Connor and John Parkinson. So thanks guys for being here. Daniel, we missed you last week, but we’re glad you’re here again.
Daniel O’Connor (00:21.757)
Happy to be here. Really happy that Josh was here and that we get into this.
Dustin Olsen (00:26.936)
Yep, absolutely. Yes, Josh, thanks for coming. So to kind of kick things off, can you give us just a brief history of USA Rare Earths and your role over there?
Joshua Ballard (00:27.073)
Yeah, appreciate you guys having me.
Joshua Ballard (00:38.323)
So USA Rare Earth was founded about six years ago. We partnered with a group called Texas Mineral Resources Corp to purchase the rights of the Round Top Mountain in West Texas. And we’ve been investing in the company since then. We’ve now expanded out past just the deposit, also magnet manufacturing, which we’re establishing in Oklahoma here pretty aggressively.
John Parkinson (01:02.42)
Yeah, well, one of the things that really interested me about USA Rare Earths was what was the motivation behind going, not just the mining, but going full mine to magma? What was involved with the thinking behind that sort of strategy? Because you don’t see it very often across the world.
Joshua Ballard (01:20.099)
Yeah, well, we saw the… I mean, there’s value in the entire…
supply chain, right, from mining to processing to metals all the way to magnets. And we saw that value there. And frankly, magnets is a near term value creation moment, whereas the deposit we’ve been working on for the last few years, the processing technology engineering is hard. know, a lot of these deposits don’t make it, as you know. Some do. We believe we will, by the way, but it’s taken a few years. And magnet, what’s exciting about it is it’s a near term opportunity. It’s just all about execution. It’s less, there’s
science to it but it’s a known science. We’re talking about building a plant, making good quality products, selling it to a customer base, you know, right now begging for a domestic supply. So it’s a near-term value marker that allows us to support the work that we’re doing on the mine and to create that option value that we have on
John Parkinson (02:14.789)
Okay, so and I know longer term Roundtop will obviously supply your magnet facility. So what stage is Roundtop at today and when do you anticipate production in the future?
Joshua Ballard (02:28.685)
So today Round Top is at the flow sheet stage. We’ve been working on this process engineering roughly the last three years or so. And as you know, we don’t really have that here in the US. So it’s been reinventing the wheel here for the US that we’ve been working on. You could say that in the first couple of years, we stumbled around the dark a bit, ran into walls.
tripped over ourselves, you know, but we’re starting to see daylight. Finally, seeing some real daylight to that flow sheet, we’re pretty excited about where we’re at. our goal, our target is to build a pilot plant here in the next couple of years. So we think we’re going to push through the flow sheet and move to the PFS sooner rather than later, but science will tell us at the end of the day and the engineers, but we’d like to build a pilot plant in the next couple of years and then move to the broader mind right after
Dustin Olsen (03:18.552)
That’s awesome. Are there any challenges that you’re facing right now that when it comes to mining, we hear it takes a long time to bring a mine online and get it fully functional. What challenges are you facing?
John Parkinson (03:18.963)
Okay.
Joshua Ballard (03:31.747)
I mean the challenges really are around the impurities in the rock. Well, two, the impurities and then how dispersed it is in the rock. And a lot of your viewers, you may know, of course, that rare earths are not like coal where you just go in and you dig out a vein and take it out. You have to, this stuff is 50 parts per million or 500 parts per million. You have to leach it out and then have that science and then separate out each of the oxides to get to the metals that you ultimately want.
And it’s hard and it’s different in every deposit and every rock. It’s different in ours and nobody’s ever done it before. We’re having to do it on our own and figure this out with help from others. there’s always a unique set of impurities. Ours happens to be things like calcium and aluminum.
and teasing out these heavy rare earths that are very close on the atomic structure. So you got to be able to grab them based on their atomic structure. They’re fairly close when you’re within that structure there. so.
It’s just a lot of hard science to get there and you have ups and downs with it. It’s an iterative process, different reagents, different acids, working on our continuous ion exchange, which is unique to us, but allows us to really separate things out efficiently after we’ve leashed it out of the rock. It’s just been a journey, a science journey for us. We’re getting there.
Daniel O’Connor (04:55.061)
I’ll just say it’s really exciting Joshua. I based on what we know, the sort of iron grip that China has on everything, the fact that you all are even in there doing this at this stage is incredible. Okay. It’s really incredible because there’s very few companies that are actually like doing mine to magnet, right? As John said. So first of all, you deserve a lot of credit for that. So it’s exciting.
Joshua Ballard (05:07.873)
Yeah.
Joshua Ballard (05:19.713)
shit out.
Daniel O’Connor (05:21.621)
What we’ve learned, and again, we were learning about this, you’re right. The process is very complicated. It changes by element. And it seems like China, the producers over there have really locked in, and this is a little bit off of the questions, but they’ve really locked in over the last decade or two processes to sort of scale that up, right? Is that a correct assumption from your standpoint?
Joshua Ballard (05:48.119)
Yeah, they certainly have. They’re very good at it, right? They also brute force it. They’re not worried about the environment. There’s a lot of things they don’t stress about that we think about here. And how I term it, you when I’m talking to investors, the mark is we need to go out, we need to figure this out, and we also need to be good humans and figure out how to do this in a responsible way here within the United States. And that’s, it’s a big challenge.
But I think it’s a worthy challenge and clearly the events of the past this year, although we all knew this was coming, right? It was just a matter of time before this became a major issue, which is why we’ve been working on it for so long. But the events this last year finally opened up everybody’s eyes and hopefully now we’ll not only get.
support from the investors we have, we’ll get support from the broader market, from the government, and from industry importantly who are now finally waking up to the need to have a more localized domestic supply chain without this choke point that we’ve existed with for so many years.
Daniel O’Connor (06:47.871)
Totally makes sense, John.
John Parkinson (06:48.659)
Yeah. Just going back to your manufacturing facility, the Stillwater facility in Oklahoma. So that’s a major piece of the strategy. Where are you at with that? And maybe you can just talk a bit more about the scale and size, what you’re doing there.
Joshua Ballard (07:01.931)
Yeah, we’re.
Joshua Ballard (07:05.887)
Absolutely. So we’re building a 300,000 square foot facility in Oklahoma. It’s big. It’s going to do at its peak 5,000 tons of magnets per year, close to, which is, I don’t know, 300 million magnets a year or 400 million magnets. There’s a lot, depending on what size you’re doing. Right now, we just commissioned our, what we call our innovations lab about a month ago. And this is now allowing us to actually prototype and sell to customers. It really launched our sales process and put us on the map.
We’re actively doing that now. We’re actively talking to customers to move to production in the early part of next year. Our goal is to commission roughly in the first quarter and then we’re going to have some shakeout, know, and start shipping out product as quickly as we can after that. In this first quarter or this first line that we’re commissioning next year will be about a quarter of our capacity. It’s about 1,200 tons. Revenue perspective, that’s $150, $200 million of revenue. Full scale will be $700, $800 million of revenue.
We just raised and closed this week $75 million of financing on top of the financing we raised when we were going public earlier in the year. And we’re investing that in this facility to get this built and start producing and shipping out next year for the goal. So we’re moving quite quickly there in Oklahoma at this stage.
John Parkinson (08:22.631)
Okay. And like we hear a lot about manufacturing independence in the US. What do your customers say to you about producing something in the US? that, it’s obviously, are your customers US based or is it more to do with tariffs? What’s driving it, you think?
Joshua Ballard (08:41.069)
What’s driving, they’re not all US based by the way, folks we’re talking to, most of them are, but not all, but what’s driving them today is this choke point.
Like they’re seeing the risk and I always like to say that as humans, we’re not very good at thinking strategically long-term all the time. And we’re seeing this play out now as everybody scrambles to figure out how to keep their supply chain going. But they’ve realized it now. And so they’re coming to us, they’ve valued in that risk. They’ve seen that literally their production lines can stop if they don’t figure this out sooner rather than later.
Daniel O’Connor (08:54.047)
Thanks.
Joshua Ballard (09:17.319)
And a good, close domestic supply is not only the right thing to do for their supply chains, but domestically, as people who love their countries, they want to do it as well to help support the industry. So we’ve seen a big change over this year. There were folks early on, well before these tariffs occurred, who were talking to us for the same reasons. Certainly not every company was reticent in this. But we’re seeing a big sea change now in terms of how many customers are coming to us. And we’re pretty excited.
John Parkinson (09:47.902)
Yeah, and you spoke about funding before and you said you secured some funding. I guess I’m interested in your view on what the government has been doing so far and what they could do better in the future. What would help you guys actually get your strategic plans actually operational? What’s the best thing to help you?
Daniel O’Connor (09:48.384)
Quit.
Joshua Ballard (10:10.849)
Yeah, it’s a good question and I’ve been talking a lot to the government. It’s a big part of my job and what I can tell you as I talk to them is they are on fire to figure this out. I they’re running around, I call it the, this is our Manhattan project moment for the rarest supply chain and they’re acting that way. It’s a breath of fresh air from what I’ve seen generally from the federal government but certainly what we’ve seen within the rare earth and critical mineral space.
Daniel O’Connor (10:30.333)
way.
Joshua Ballard (10:38.339)
We have seen some movement in the past on this side. mean, MP Materials has gotten financing, Linus has, EVAC, I got some financing for their magnet facility. So there’s been dribs and drabs that’ll come out. But I think what we’re gonna see, what I truly believe is a full force.
jump into this by the federal government through all sorts of avenues. Some of it direct financing, which is great. I think that’s important. But other, what we also need are other catalysts, which help us raise money in the private market and to create certainty that we can build this as fast as we need to. And some of that could be offtake agreements. It could be some of the financing and grants that they’re looking at or loan guarantees or pricing support. For example, in Congress right now, there’s the rare earth magnet security.
Daniel O’Connor (10:58.153)
more.
Joshua Ballard (11:26.033)
Act, which has been introduced but not passed, that would provide direct support, 20 to 30 bucks per kilo for magnets, which would be incredible support in these nascent years as we’re building up this supply chain. So I expect a lot from the government. truly believe, I don’t say this often, but I truly believe there’s the right focus today and that we can expect to see some action this year, not just for folks like me or for like USA Rare Earth trying to build a magnet facility, but broadly.
across the critical mineral as well as rare space. I think it’s going to be a really interesting year.
Dustin Olsen (12:02.264)
Do you think the government’s involvement, as you’re just saying, whether it’s direct financing or other incentive programs, will it be enough to get you guys down the road where you need to, maybe even at the pace, the speed that we’re all probably hoping for?
Joshua Ballard (12:24.363)
Yeah, that is a good question. I think there’s going to be a lot coming at us this year. But the question in my mind is how long does it last and will it be sustained? Because as we all know, none of this happens overnight. So if you look at our business, for example, if I can get the funding or even enough of a catalytic funding from the federal government today,
so that I can raise all the money I need to build our plant, I’ll build it as fast as I possibly can. And we’ll get that thing built in the next year, 18 months. We’ll have some feedstock issues we’d have to figure out along the way, but we can buy the equipment, we can get this thing built and really set the foundation that we need to drive up and scale up this business very quickly, right on the magnet side. But when you look at a deposit like Roundtop or…
You know, pick your deposit here in the US where there’s a lot of development work still to do. That’s a longer term play. There’s only so much money you can give me I can use today. I could certainly use some to scale up our work that we’re doing with our process engineers and do a lot more concurrently so we can move the engineering along faster. It’s not massive dollars, but there’s certainly dollars that we could use. But the mine is still a few years away.
And that’s where the big funding really comes in. And so are we going to have that sustained push? Will it last past the Trump administration? You know, these are big questions. A lot has happened with executive orders, which I think is great. But how much of that will be codified into law so that we can rely on it over the next 10 years and not just over the next three? I think these are the big questions the industry is asking. You know, one question is,
The government has thankfully started moving to reduce all the onus and stress around permitting to try to shorten that timeline, which is great. Now the challenge is, OK, if we rush that permitting, do we still have open liabilities we need to think about as an industry over the long term? those haven’t been solved yet. These are longer term problems that have to be solved.
Joshua Ballard (14:30.079)
And so a lot of positive steps from the administration, but I think these the harder, how do we codify and how do we make some of this permanent so that we can build this out over the next 10 or 15 years is what remains open in my mind.
John Parkinson (14:46.109)
Yeah, I remember just talking about when your mine’s coming online. And the first thing that stood out for me with your strategy with Stillwater was that’s going to come online first and you had to get supply. I know you’ve had some discussions with Australian, sorry, ASM, Australian Strategic Materials. I guess, what are your thoughts on how you’re going to supply the Stillwater facility?
before Mount and Top comes online.
Joshua Ballard (15:18.403)
Yeah, we have an off-take agreement with Australia Strategic Minerals, in particular with their affiliate KSM, which is Korea’s strategic minerals in Korea. They have a fantastic metal-making plant there in Korea. I visited it the week before I started my job. was one of the first things I did back in December. And they can scale up with us here over the next few years for sure. They make great product.
Daniel O’Connor (15:20.354)
Thank you.
Daniel O’Connor (15:40.95)
you
Joshua Ballard (15:46.963)
It’s a good company, great partnership with Rolina Smith, their CEO. And the question now is with them is how we partner in this strange new world we live in, to make sure that we can secure our ore and to make sure that we can really.
have that feedstock that we need for our plant here over the next few years as we scale. I think they’re gonna be there with us and then, you what we’re looking at as a company now is that that gets us through the first couple of years, but when we’re scaling up to 5,000 tons, you know, ultimately we wanna plug in our own deposit, but if we’re still a few years away, we need to figure out how we’re gonna secure the metal making. We’d like it closer to home. So whether we partner with an ASM, for example,
to co-locate there, whether we do it ourselves, whether it’s somebody else, we need to figure that piece out so we’re not sending materials all over the world and we can have it domestic. And then we need to make sure we secure the ore as we’re scaling until Round Top kicks in. Once Round Top kicks in, it has plenty for what we’re going to need for our manufacturing. So we have just enough NDPR that’ll cover what we need for that 5,000 tons. And then we have more heavies than we’ll ever use as a company at that facility.
Daniel O’Connor (16:47.404)
Really, I had a quick question. Sorry, I had internet trouble. I think I’m back. Can you all hear me okay?
Joshua Ballard (16:56.993)
selling the heavy rarists into the market. So with that we want to get that online to become our ultimate long-term feedstock for the plant.
Dustin Olsen (17:12.409)
So looking fires out, what’s the success look like for USA Rare Earth? So we kind of alluded to it a little bit, right? We got the Trump administration, you know, that’ll last four years. But after that, what do we anticipate? What are we thinking?
Joshua Ballard (17:33.411)
Why I anticipate that regardless of what happens with the next administration I anticipate that there’s been a sea change in the attitude and the in the approach to risk in broader industries including our defense industry but pick any other industry you want and that uses rare earths or rare earth magnets I don’t think that’s going to change
I don’t think they’re going to cut off China entirely if they can get back, but I think they’re going to start looking at how they balance out their supply chain to make sure that they have a reasonable amount of supply here in the US as well. So I believe that when I look out over the next three to five years, I believe that we’re going to sell out our capacity at our magnet facility in Stillwater. I hope we’re building a second facility of the same size or bigger. And I believe that
over this period will unlock those minerals at Round Top and that will become our feedstock. And I think we’ll have the first domestic, fully domestic, rare supply chain in the US. I truly believe that we’ll get there.
We’re already seeing that unlock from a financing perspective in the markets. I believe that’s gonna continue. I think the government will come in and be that catalyst. And we can really push this hard over the next few years. So I feel pretty confident about it. I am sure there’ll be hiccups along the way. There always is. Manufacturing is tough. I’ve done it most of my career. Magnum manufacturing is extra tough. So I’m sure we’ll make some mistakes along the way.
and we’ll have some regrets and some great things, but we’ll get there. And I think it’s going to be great for the country and great for the overall rare earth industry as well. And I hope that over this five year period, we’ll see other folks come in as well. You know, I welcome competition because we’re not going to be enough by a long shot. And when we look at
Joshua Ballard (19:42.527)
Choose your number. I’ve seen all sorts of numbers around how much the US uses in rare earth magnets. It’s all over the map from 7,000 tons a year to 50,000 tons a year. I believe the 50,000 ton number, when I look at the overall global use of these magnets, I think there’s a lot of hidden information because so much is made in China. So if coming out, if that’s the right number today, and that number is looking to at least double over the next 10 years, our little plant of 5,000 tons per year is only going to make up a fraction of that market.
So I think we need other players. We need this partner support for the industry. And I’m excited to see it evolve in the next three to five years.
John Parkinson (20:21.541)
It’s going to be very interesting that the next few years, I’m interested in your views on pricing. Just recently, obviously the last few years, China has been suppressing prices to protect their position. And just a few days ago, Linus in their quarterly basically said they’re starting to see the early stages of next China pricing coming through in their discussion.
Daniel (20:31.985)
It is.
John Parkinson (20:48.839)
Are you in your discussions, are you starting to see that ex China pricing and premium being talked about?
Joshua Ballard (20:57.623)
Yes, we are. think those discussions have changed a lot with customers already that we’re seeing. There’s not an assumption it’s going to be as cheap as it’s always been. I’ve certainly told my teams we’re not benchmarking off of some benchmark in China. It makes no sense for where we’re at. And we have to look at our pricing in terms of our cost structure and what we can survive on and thrive on, not what is being artificially placed on us from across the world.
And I believe that industry now is starting to see that happening. then hopefully, know, this is where love or hate tariffs, I think this is an area where it actually makes sense, certainly on the magnet side, as we’re building an industry, maybe.
Maybe we want to build into it here over the next few years because we have a lot to build here. We’re going have to buy overseas for a while. But I think tariffs, this kind of moat that we need to create to allow us to get our legs beneath us so we can build this industry is important. Whether that’s through direct support and or kind of these kind of tariff regimes.
it’s going to be necessary as we get this put together. There’s just too much subsidization and happening over in China. We all know from a magnet perspective, they’re literally selling magnets for no profit and getting funded, you know, on the back end from the government, right? So we can’t survive in that kind of reality as a democratic country that we are. So a lot of work to do there. But yeah, we’re seeing a disconnect beginning to happen. I think that’ll increase both on the mineral side as well as the…
in the.
Daniel (22:35.835)
Can you guys hear me okay?
Perfect. I agree with you, Joshua, 100%. We can’t, it’s apples to oranges. We need to take care of our own. It’s just not fair. We’ve been studying this and you’re absolutely right. DoD magnet rule January, 2027 beyond. There was a rule, no China magnets. Is that still on?
Joshua Ballard (23:03.701)
Yeah, it’s still on. They haven’t been very good at following it or building total. Let’s be honest. But that’s another thing I am sure that’ll change. that, you can hear it at the within the executive office, you’re hearing the agencies like this is all going to change here. It’s already obviously changing quickly now. And as soon as they can get domestic supplier or at least near domestic from allies, I’m sure that will happen.
Daniel (23:07.055)
Yeah
Daniel (23:34.833)
Certainly, that’s good to hear. Did we ask about, I had some internet troubles, did we ask about MP and just the differentiations, John?
John Parkinson (23:46.555)
No, haven’t. Josh, do you want to talk about the differences?
Joshua Ballard (23:48.929)
Yeah, yeah, we’re very different. In fact, I don’t look at MP as a competitor. look at us as we’re more, we’re peers, we’re different. fit together, we’re more complimentary than competitive, I view. So.
From a magna perspective, they have a magna facility that was built for GM. It was paid for by GM. It’s bespoke for GM. Our facility is not owned by anybody but our shareholders. And we’re building for the broader market. So we’re coming out to the market with this first line really focused on small to medium sized customers, anything 20 to 50 tons per year up to a few hundred tons per year. And…
We’ll look at auto manufacturing and some of that for future lines, but we need to get our sea legs. We need to understand our profitability. We need to start building in our efficiencies before we can jump into something like a major auto manufacturer. Too soon, right? We’re certainly talking to them, but it’ll be a later event.
But we want to build for the broader market, and that’s our plan. And then from a mineral perspective, MP has a light rare earth deposit out there in California. It’s 83 % lanthanum and cerium. And then they have a reasonable amount of NDPR that they’re beginning to process for their own uses as well as to sell into the market, which I think is good and important. But they don’t have much of the heavies.
I like to say we’re heavy in the heavy. So we’re kind of the opposite. We’re 50 to 70 % heavy rare earths. And then we’ve got a large deposit of gallium.
Joshua Ballard (25:26.371)
beryllium, hafniums, or coniums, so a lot of these tech metals that are also very important outside the rare earths. So we’re a very different deposit. I think both deposits are critically important for the U.S. today. And I think it’s important that Round Top gets developed. But we’re really complementary, I view. And so hopefully we can figure out, we can work together to help this industry really build up over the coming years.
Daniel (25:50.833)
Makes a lot of sense, Joshua, makes a lot of sense. So we were able to, again, your organization is extremely important for our national security. Okay, the timeline basically by next, by end of 2026, you’ll think you’ll be selling some magnets.
John Parkinson (26:01.815)
you
Joshua Ballard (26:11.749)
yeah, we’re going to be selling way before the end of 2026. Our goal is to start shipping as soon as we can early next year. So we’re going to commission in the first quarter and as soon as we shake it out and we’re comfortable with good quality product, we’ll be shipping it. So well before the end of next year.
Daniel (26:28.209)
And from a sales perspective, Joshua, you, if you look at how many, what’s your sales organization look like?
Joshua Ballard (26:36.127)
It’s small today. We’re hiring. So we’re starting to build that out. We have the financing we need now to build out an organization. So we’re going to be hiring quite a few sales folks. You don’t need a massive one. This isn’t going to be 100 people running around. It’s more six or eight or whatever it may be at the end. But we’re actively beginning that process now. We’re actively going to be bringing in application engineers.
Daniel (26:47.109)
Yeah.
Joshua Ballard (26:59.923)
and other engineers to make sure we get this whole customer process right. And then going from a prototype to the lab to building the processes we need to manufacture at scale, which can be quite different. There’s a lot of work to do there, and we’re building that organization out rapidly now while we’re standing up the manufacturing facility itself throughout this year.
bringing a lot of equipment online. We have equipment still coming in early next year, which is what we’re really waiting on to commission and building out the infrastructure where we need to in our facility there throughout this entire year. So there’s a lot going on in Stillwater, Oklahoma, but it’s all really good stuff and we’re going to get there.
Daniel (27:44.283)
John, any other, I have a few others I can ask, but do you? Okay. Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s an interest of mine, Joshua, the sales cycle. From one perspective, I could see it would be condensed just because of the conditions. And it’s not like there’s a huge number of choices.
John Parkinson (27:48.019)
I’ll let you go Daniel because you went MIA for a little bit there.
Daniel (28:06.097)
On the other hand, this is very complicated stuff and you really get into the customer. So just out of curiosity, and I know you all are learning as you’re going, but what do you think the sales cycle would be on average? know, once you have the right sales people, know, system engineers and you have that process dialed in.
Joshua Ballard (28:06.199)
Yeah.
Joshua Ballard (28:25.879)
Yeah, it’s going to be a range, Daniel. So the one reason, another reason why we’re looking at these small to medium sized customers is because that sales cycle can be more like three to six months. It can be a much shorter one. When you start getting moving to the auto manufacturing.
go to a Ford or GM or choose your manufacturer, that’s probably more like two years. And so we need to build up to that. You need to be ISO certified and then above ISO certified, and then they’re going to want to do some massive checks. And it’s just going to take time, which we understand very well. So while
We focus on these smaller customers that have shorter lead time so that we can get to shipping out as quickly as possible next year. I mean, that’s the goal. We have to get to revenue. We have to stand up a business, generate cash flow, improve ourselves as quickly as possible with quality. We can’t screw it up. We can’t go too fast, but we have, we got to get there and we can’t waste time. And that means we got to go out to a market that can accept that. And then while we’re doing that, we can have that hung, if you will, of working with auto manufacturers or defense
things that are going to take a little bit longer to get to, we will work on that to get there with our future lines. But it’ll be a range for sure, but think three to six months is a reasonable one for small to medium sized customers.
Daniel (29:45.457)
Well, one thing, Joshua, I really like how you’re going about it. It’s very pragmatic. It’s real, frankly. I feel like you all are taking a very good approach. Back to the magnets in the defense area, if this rules still in motion here, how are they going to achieve this? mean, just, again,
Joshua Ballard (30:11.523)
That’s good.
Daniel (30:12.273)
Why aren’t they knocking on your door now and saying, we’ll pre-order. Tell me I’m oversimplifying things, but why aren’t they identifying what you can do, lock into a three-year deal. It doesn’t have to, that there’s a process. Tell me if I’m thinking about this incorrectly.
Joshua Ballard (30:35.523)
No, I’ve been asking the same questions. it’s, think one of the challenges the federal government has is that they do actually have by law limitations in terms of how much, how long and how much of offtake agreements they can do. They purchase a lot of things through their own suppliers. So I don’t know, choose yours, but Lockheed Martin.
really is the person who needs to be coming to us ultimately to do an off take agreement. I think that’ll be changing. I have no doubt that they’re looking pretty hard at how they can create these kinds of moments for us to do it. they’re, you know, this is what I’ve been told by them literally, right? That they have to figure this out in order to put together everything we need to support this industry. And this is one area, my understanding is they have to beef up. So.
They certainly haven’t come knocking yet. They’re being very supportive, by the way, and we’re talking, having interactions. I think they’re doing a great job, frankly, with the challenge they have in front of them. But we’ll see how that shakes out and what that means in terms of them being a catalyst. Certainly holding their vendors to account, support this domestic supply and to come to folks like us. And in fairness, maybe a Lockheed Martin is just learning we exist.
We’re a very quiet company for a number of years and we’re just coming out strongly this year and showing ourselves in a different way. And so I think as people get comfort that we’re really here and we’re really building this and hopefully you see that we’re pretty serious about it, like we’re doing this. I think that we’ll start to see that change on the government side as well, I suspect. Part of it’s just because we’ve been quiet.
Daniel (32:17.915)
Thank you.
John Parkinson (32:18.097)
It’s a really, I mean, these are exciting times and I think your strategy is really exciting as well. I guess, is there anything at the end here that you want to get across to potential investors or the public?
Joshua Ballard (32:29.527)
Yeah, I think I’d say, you know, USA Rare Earth, we’ve been a quiet company for the past few years, but we’ve come out roaring here in 2025. And we will be the first and by far the largest fully domestic rare earth and magnet producer in the country. It’s going to happen. And the question is not whether it’s going to happen, but just how quickly we’re going to do it.
That’s what I’m being forceful about. On the financing side, we’ll build this as quickly as we can be financed. We’re going to make great quality product, and we’re going to build the supply chain here in the US.
Dustin Olsen (33:05.422)
Fantastic. Well, a lot of great information here and it’s honestly very exciting to see, you know, a kind of domestic magnet manufacturing here in the United States. Something that’s been missing, I think. So, yeah, Josh, anything you would, if you were to sum everything up that you shared here today, what would you, how would you say it? Put everything in perspective for us.
Joshua Ballard (33:20.035)
is exciting. Yeah.
Joshua Ballard (33:33.229)
Putting everything in perspective, well, it’s the word I just gave you. mean, we’re building, we’re a microcosm of what’s happening in this country, right? As we build from the very mind to the processing technologies, to the metals, to the magnets.
And we’re a reflection of everything that’s happening right now. And I think as you watch our reflection take form, you’re gonna see it turn into something really special. And it’s gonna be exciting to watch, it’s exciting to be a part of. And I hope others begin to take notice and support us and help us find our way. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.
Dustin Olsen (34:12.846)
Sweet, awesome. Thank you so much, Joshua. We hope to have you back on the show sometime in the future to get an update on the progress of USA Rare Earth, because we are excited. We’re very anxious to see how it turns out.
Joshua Ballard (34:26.947)
Appreciate you having me and hopefully next time we’re talking we’re making magnets and shipping them out the door would be the goal.
Dustin Olsen (34:31.97)
Perfect. Yes, we’d love to have that update. with that, everyone, thanks for joining us and we’ll see you next week.
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