Ask which US rare earth companies matter and you get a list of names. That list hides the thing that decides everything: rare earths pass through four separate industrial steps, almost nobody does more than one of them, and the step most companies skip is the step China controls.
A rock has to be mined. The mixed rare earth concentrate has to be separated into individual elements, which is chemistry, not mining. Those oxides have to be turned into metal and alloy. Only then can anyone press a magnet. A company can be entirely real at one of those steps and have nothing at all at the other three.
So this page is a survey of capability, not a ranking. It answers one question for each company: which of the four steps does this business actually perform on American soil, and is that step running, being built, or only announced? Companies are listed alphabetically. Nothing here is a buy list.
Table of Contents
The US rare earth stack in one table
Read the table by column, not by row. The columns are the four steps. "Yes" means the company performs that step in the United States at commercial scale today. "Building" means construction or commissioning is underway. "Planned" means it is announced, studied, or funded, but not built.
| Company | Mine | Separation | Metal & alloy | Magnet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Rare Earths (ASX: ARR, OTCQX: ARRNF, ADR: AMRRY) | Planned | Planned | — | — |
| Energy Fuels (NYSE American: UUUU) | — | Yes, light / Building, heavy | Planned | — |
| e-VAC Magnetics (private, VAC Group) | — | — | — | Yes |
| Idaho Strategic Resources (NYSE American: IDR) | Planned | — | — | — |
| MP Materials (NYSE: MP) | Yes | Yes, light / Building, heavy | Yes | Qualifying |
| NioCorp Developments (Nasdaq: NB) | Planned | Planned | — | — |
| Niron Magnetics (private) | — | — | — | Building, rare-earth-free |
| Noveon Magnetics (private) | — | — | Partial | Yes |
| Phoenix Tailings (private) | — | Planned | Yes, small scale | — |
| Ramaco Resources (Nasdaq: METC, METCB) | Planned | Building, pilot | — | — |
| Rare Element Resources (OTCQB: REEMF) | Planned | Building, demonstration | — | — |
| ReElement Technologies (private) | — | Yes, early commercial | — | — |
| Ucore Rare Metals (TSXV: UCU, OTCQX: UURAF) | Planned | Building | — | — |
| USA Rare Earth (Nasdaq: USAR) | Planned | Building, demonstration | Planned | Commissioning |
| Vulcan Elements (private) | — | — | Planned | Yes |
One column is nearly empty, and it is the one that matters most. Separation is the bottleneck, and it is the step where the United States has the least capacity and the longest lead times. We looked at why separation resists scaling in more detail.
Who is actually mining rare earths in the United States
One company mines rare earths as a primary product. MP Materials operates Mountain Pass in California, and it is the only mine in the country producing rare earth concentrate as its main output at commercial scale. Monazite is also recovered in the southeastern United States as a byproduct of heavy mineral sand mining, which is where some domestic feedstock comes from. Everything else on the mining side of this list is exploration, study work, or permitting.
That is worth sitting with, because a great deal of coverage implies otherwise. Ramaco Resources held a ribbon-cutting at its Brook Mine in Wyoming and described it as the first new rare earth mine in the United States in 70 years. In a cautionary statement filed with the SEC, the same company writes that Brook Mine "remains an exploration stage property, and no assurance can be given that it will be successfully developed into a commercial scale mine." (opens in a new tab) Both statements come from Ramaco. Only one of them is a legal disclosure. We examined the gap between the Brook Mine story and the Brook Mine filings separately.
The same care applies to the word "producer." Energy Fuels is often described as a rare earth producer, and it does run rare earth chemistry at White Mesa in Utah. It does not mine rare earths; its feedstock is purchased monazite. Idaho Strategic Resources appears on nearly every list of US rare earth companies, and its ground at Lemhi Pass is genuinely interesting, but the company's revenue comes from gold. It is a producing gold miner with a rare earth exploration portfolio, and there is no mineral resource estimate at Lemhi Pass to point at.
| Metric | Figure | Period |
|---|---|---|
| MP Materials, REO in concentrate produced | 11,072 t | Q2 2026 |
| MP Materials, NdPr oxide produced | 840 t | Q2 2026 |
| MP Materials, REO in concentrate produced | 50,692 t | FY 2025 |
| MP Materials, NdPr oxide produced | 2,599 t | FY 2025 |
| US mineral concentrate output, all producers | 51,000 t REO, $240M | 2025 estimate |
| US compounds and metals output | 8,900 t | 2025 estimate |
| US net import reliance, compounds and metals | 67% | 2025 estimate |
| US net import reliance, compounds and metals | 53% | 2024 |
| China share of US rare earth compound and metal imports | 71% | 2021–2024 |
| US net import reliance, mineral concentrates | Net exporter | 2021–2025 |
Note how sharply import reliance moves between the two years in that table. Anyone quoting one stable percentage for American rare earth dependence is quoting something that does not hold still. Note too that the United States is a net exporter of rare earth mineral concentrates. The dependency sits in processing, not in digging.
Rare earth refining and processing companies in the US: who separates what
Separation, the step usually reported as refining or processing, is where a mixed rare earth stream becomes individual elements pure enough to sell. It is dozens or hundreds of solvent extraction stages, it is chemically difficult, and it is the reason a mine on its own buys a country very little. This is the step China spent four decades building, and it is why export controls on separated product hurt more than controls on ore.
Light rare earth separation at commercial scale exists at two sites. MP Materials separates at Mountain Pass. Energy Fuels separates at White Mesa on purchased feedstock, and states a commercial capacity (opens in a new tab) for separated NdPr oxide that appears in the capacity table below. Energy Fuels does not publish how much it actually produced in any recent period, and that distinction matters: capacity is what a plant could do, not what it did.
Heavy rare earth separation, the part that matters most for defense-grade magnets, does not yet exist commercially anywhere in the country. Energy Fuels has begun construction on a heavy circuit at White Mesa and has produced high-purity dysprosium and terbium oxide at pilot scale. MP Materials is building heavy separation at Mountain Pass, with commissioning expected but not yet declared; its disclosed heavy product to date is a mixed heavy rare earth concentrate rather than separated individual oxides. Our reporting on the heavy rare earth bottleneck covers why this gap constrains everything downstream.
Several companies are building separation capacity outside the two mining names. ReElement Technologies runs chromatographic separation in Indiana and has moved from pilot into early commercial operation. Rare Element Resources began operating a demonstration separation plant at Upton, Wyoming. USA Rare Earth commissioned a hydrometallurgical demonstration facility at Wheat Ridge, Colorado and has produced commercial-grade dysprosium and NdPr oxide there from recycled magnets. Ucore Rare Metals is building its Strategic Metals Complex at Alexandria, Louisiana, though every tonne it has separated with its RapidSX process so far was separated at its demonstration facility in Ontario, not in the United States.
There is also a company frequently placed in this column that does not belong there. Lynas Rare Earths was funded to build a heavy rare earth separation plant at Seadrift, Texas. Lynas and the US Department of War then modified that agreement (opens in a new tab), in Lynas's words, "based on significant uncertainty as to whether the construction of the Heavy Rare Earth processing facility at Seadrift, Texas would proceed." What replaced it is a four-year commitment by the US government to buy oxide from Lynas facilities that already exist in Malaysia and Australia. Lynas has not announced that Seadrift is cancelled, and it has not announced that it is going ahead. What is certain is that Lynas is a supplier to the US government, not a US separator.
Who is making rare earth magnets in the United States
This is the step that has moved fastest, and the one where American capacity has gone from essentially nothing to a real, if small, industry. A short list of companies ships commercial sintered neodymium-iron-boron magnets from US plants. The table below marks which, and when each started.
Two qualifications matter. Magnet makers are not rare earth companies in the upstream sense: they buy oxide or metal, and most of the world's oxide and metal still comes from China, so a domestic magnet plant running on Chinese feedstock relocates the assembly step without relocating the dependency. And announced magnet capacity far exceeds built magnet capacity. The gap between the two is where most of the optimism in this sector lives.
Niron Magnetics is building a plant in Minnesota that belongs in the same demand conversation and none of the same supply conversations. Its magnets are iron nitride and contain no rare earths at all. Counting Niron's tonnage toward American rare earth magnet capacity is a category error, though substitution is a real strategic variable and worth watching on its own terms, precisely because it cuts against the rest of the sector's case.
| Facility | Location | Stated capacity | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noveon Magnetics | San Marcos, TX | 2,000 t/y nameplate, company stated | Shipping; deliveries under a General Motors agreement began July 2025 |
| e-VAC Magnetics | Sumter, SC | 2,000 t/y, stated scalable to 12,000 | Shipping since fall 2025 |
| Vulcan Elements | Durham, NC | Not published | Shipping; company describes the site as small-scale commercial and R&D |
| MP Materials, Independence | Fort Worth, TX | ~1,000 t/y | Customer qualification; no finished-magnet revenue reported |
| USA Rare Earth, Stillwater | Stillwater, OK | 600 t/y target run rate, 1,200 t/y with phase 1b | Commissioning; no magnet revenue reported |
| Vulcan Elements | Benson, NC | 10,000 t/y | Announced, conditionally financed |
| MP Materials, 10X | Northlake, TX | Contributes to ~10,000 t/y company-wide | Under construction; commissioning from 2028 |
| USA Rare Earth, Blacksburg | Cherokee County, SC | 6,400 t/y magnets, 5,000 t/y metal and alloy | Announced; commissioning targeted 2028 |
| Niron Magnetics, Sartell | Sartell, MN | Up to 1,500 t/y iron nitride, no rare earths | Under construction; operations targeted 2027 |
Add the rows marked as shipping and the built total is a few thousand tonnes of nameplate capacity, against announced plans measured in tens of thousands. Both numbers are true. They describe different years.
Development-stage projects and what has to happen before they count
Most American rare earth deposits are years from a decision to build, and the ones furthest along are not always the ones that get the most attention.
NioCorp's Elk Creek in Nebraska has the most advanced study work of any of them, with a feasibility study completed and mine portal excavation underway. It is also routinely mis-described. Elk Creek is a niobium, titanium and scandium project with rare earth co-products, and by tonnage the ferroniobium and titanium streams are far larger than the magnet rare earths. The portal work is pre-construction ahead of a final investment decision, and that decision has not been taken.
American Rare Earths has by far the largest resource on this list at Halleck Creek in Wyoming, at low grade, which makes scale and processing cost the whole question. Ucore's Bokan-Dotson Ridge in Alaska has a recently updated resource sitting on top of an economic study that dates from 2013.
Round Top in Texas deserves particular care, because it is among the most-cited projects and has the least disclosed underneath it. USA Rare Earth now owns Round Top outright, having acquired its former joint venture partner. In its annual report the company states that "the Round Top Project is at the exploration stage" (opens in a new tab), and those filings disclose no mineral resource or reserve and no technical report summary under the SEC's mining rules. Any tonnage or grade figure circulating for Round Top is therefore not an SEC-compliant resource. That does not make the project bad. It makes the confident numbers unsupported.
| Project | Operator | Furthest study completed | Resource status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elk Creek, NE | NioCorp | Feasibility study, 2026 | Reserves declared; 40-year life |
| Halleck Creek, WY | American Rare Earths | Prefeasibility, in optimization | 2.63 billion t at 3,292 ppm TREO, JORC |
| Bokan-Dotson Ridge, AK | Ucore | Preliminary economic assessment, 2013 | Resource updated 2026; heavies 35–40% of TREO |
| Brook Mine, WY | Ramaco Resources | Initial assessment under S-K 1300, 2026 | Inferred resources declared; company calls the property exploration stage |
| Round Top, TX | USA Rare Earth | Definitive feasibility study in progress | No resource disclosed under S-K 1300 |
| Lemhi Pass, ID | Idaho Strategic Resources | Surface sampling; no drilling | None |
Federal support: who has what, and how much of it is real
Government money is the reason this sector moved at all, and it is also the most frequently misreported thing in it. The instruments are not equivalent, and the difference between them is the difference between a press release and a bank balance.
- A letter of interest is a lender saying it might be willing to look at a loan. It is non-binding and it is not a loan. EXIM letters of interest are routinely reported as loans. They are not.
- A conditional commitment goes further and is still contingent on diligence, documentation and closing. Nearly every large Office of Strategic Capital number announced in this sector is a conditional commitment.
- An award or direct investment is money committed under a program such as the Industrial Base Fund or a Defense Production Act Title III agreement.
- A price floor or offtake is the strongest instrument of all, because it changes project economics without the government writing a check up front. Price suppression is historically the mechanism that kills Western projects, and a floor is the only thing that neutralizes it.
| Company | Program | Instrument | Amount | Announced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MP Materials | Dept. of Defense partnership | NdPr price floor, 10-year | $110/kg | Jul 2025 |
| MP Materials | Dept. of Defense partnership | Convertible preferred equity plus warrant | $400M | Jul 2025 |
| MP Materials | Dept. of Defense | Loan, heavy separation expansion | $150M | Jul 2025 |
| USA Rare Earth | Dept. of War | Equity in offtake vehicle, with price floors | $750M | Aug 2026 |
| USA Rare Earth | Dept. of Commerce CHIPS Program | Definitive agreements: incentives plus loan capacity | Up to $1.6B | Jun 2026 |
| USA Rare Earth | DoE Critical Material Innovation, Efficiency and Alternatives | Selection for award negotiation | Up to $19.3M | May 2026 |
| Energy Fuels | Office of Strategic Capital | Conditional loan commitment, 20-year | $725M | Jun 2026 |
| Vulcan Elements | Office of Strategic Capital | Conditional direct loan | $620M | Nov 2025 |
| Vulcan Elements | Dept. of Commerce CHIPS Program | Non-binding preliminary letter of intent, equity | $50M | Nov 2025 |
| Phoenix Tailings | Office of Strategic Capital | Conditional loan commitment | $500M | Jun 2026 |
| Niron Magnetics | Office of Strategic Capital | Conditional loan commitment, 20-year | $150M | Aug 2026 |
| ReElement Technologies | Industrial Base Fund | Direct investment | $25M | Jul 2026 |
| Ucore Rare Metals | DoD Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment | Other transaction agreement, non-repayable | $22.4M cumulative | 2023–2025 |
| e-VAC Magnetics | Section 48C | Advanced energy project tax credit | $111.9M | Apr 2024 |
| NioCorp | DPA Title III, scandium supply chain | Milestone-based award | Up to $10M | Aug 2025 |
| NioCorp | EXIM | Letter of interest, then preliminary term sheet; not approved | Up to $800M | Mar 2023 |
| American Rare Earths | EXIM | Letter of interest; not approved | Up to $456M | Sep 2024 |
| Lynas Rare Earths | Dept. of War | Binding letter of intent, oxide purchase with $110/kg floor | ~$96M over 4 years | Mar 2026 |
Two entries reward a close reading. Price floors, once unheard of, now appear three times in that table, which tells you the government concluded that lending against a project China can price into the ground does not work.
The second is a caution. ReElement Technologies was announced as the recipient of an Office of Strategic Capital conditional loan commitment as part of a headline package with Vulcan Elements. That commitment was subsequently reported by Reuters, citing administration sources, not to have been taken up, with the company saying it preferred equity to debt; no agency or company release confirms either a closing or a withdrawal. What is on the record is a smaller direct investment from a different program a few days later. We followed how that unwound at the time. Announced federal support is a forecast, not a fact.
What the label "US rare earth companies" leaves out
A company can be headquartered in America, listed on an American exchange, funded by the American government, and still depend on China for the material in the middle of its process. The label describes where a company is registered. It does not describe a supply chain.
Three patterns recur. Magnet plants buy metal and alloy, and outside of MP Materials very little of that is made domestically. Separators buy concentrate, and Ucore has been explicit that its Louisiana feed will come from purchased material from friendly sources rather than from its own Alaskan deposit. And some revenue attributed to American rare earth companies is earned abroad: USA Rare Earth's reported revenue has come from a metals business it acquired in the United Kingdom, not from magnets made in Oklahoma, and both Energy Fuels and USA Rare Earth have recently bought overseas operations that will change what their consolidated numbers describe.
None of this is deceptive on the companies' part. All of it is disclosed. It is simply invisible if you read a list of names instead of a chain of steps. The line between rare earths and the wider critical minerals category gets blurred the same way, and for the same reason.
How to read a rare earth company's disclosures
Five habits separate a useful reading from a trusting one. They apply whether you are an investor, a procurement lead, or a policy analyst.
- A resource is not a reserve. A resource is rock that exists. A reserve is rock a company has shown it can mine economically. Only reserves have survived that test, and several well-known American projects have none.
- Study stage is the real timeline signal. Scoping, initial assessment or preliminary economic assessment, prefeasibility, feasibility. Each step narrows the cost estimate and adds engineering. Capital estimates can move by billions between the early stages and feasibility.
- Total rare earth oxide grade is not magnet grade. What matters commercially is the fraction that is neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. A large deposit of cerium and lanthanum is a large deposit of the elements the world already has too much of.
- A memorandum of understanding is not an offtake. Binding, priced, volume-committed agreements are rare, and companies say so plainly when they have one.
- Nameplate capacity is not output. This is the most common error in coverage of this sector. Design figures and realized throughput can differ by orders of magnitude at an early-stage plant. Both can be accurate. They answer different questions.
Apply those five and most of the noise resolves. The companies doing real work say what stage they are at, in filings, in language their lawyers approved.
Company profiles
Alphabetical. This is deliberately not a ranking, and the order carries no judgment.
American Rare Earths (ASX: ARR, OTCQX: ARRNF, ADR: AMRRY)
Develops Halleck Creek in Wyoming through its US subsidiary Wyoming Rare (USA) Inc., with the Cowboy State Mine as the development area inside it. The resource is the largest on this list by a wide margin and the grade is low, so scale and processing cost decide whether it works. Prefeasibility is in optimization and feasibility drilling is underway. Holds a Wyoming state grant for a pilot processing facility and an EXIM letter of interest that has been widely and wrongly reported as a loan.
Energy Fuels (NYSE American: UUUU)
A uranium producer that built rare earth separation alongside its existing chemistry at White Mesa in Utah, running on purchased monazite rather than its own rare earth ore. Separates light rare earths and is constructing circuits for dysprosium, terbium, samarium, europium and gadolinium. Has completed the acquisition of Australian Strategic Materials, which brings an operating metals and alloy plant in South Korea, and has agreed to acquire VAC, the German magnet group whose American plant is e-VAC in South Carolina. The VAC deal has not closed. We examined what the VAC acquisition would and would not solve separately. The open question is execution: this is a company assembling a supply chain by acquisition faster than it has demonstrated it can run one.
e-VAC Magnetics (private, VAC Group)
Operates the Sumter, South Carolina sintered magnet plant, shipping since fall 2025 and built with the support of a Section 48C advanced energy tax credit. Holds a long-term supply agreement with General Motors and a Defense Logistics Agency contract to supply magnet blocks for the national defense stockpile. Ownership is in transition pending the Energy Fuels acquisition of its parent.
Idaho Strategic Resources (NYSE American: IDR)
Idaho's largest primary gold producer, operating the Golden Chest mine, with rare earth exploration ground at Lemhi Pass, Mineral Hill and Diamond Creek across more than 20,000 acres of claims in central Idaho and western Montana. Surface sampling has returned high total rare earth oxide grades, but no drilling has been completed at Lemhi Pass and there is no mineral resource estimate. Selected for a Department of Energy project on rare earth metallization pathways. The gold business funds the exploration, which is a real structural advantage over a single-asset explorer, and it is also the reason the rare earth work moves at the pace of a side project.
MP Materials (NYSE: MP)
The only company on this list that mines, separates and produces metal and alloy in the United States, and the only integrated American rare earth business in any meaningful sense. Operates Mountain Pass in California and the Independence facility in Fort Worth, where magnet production is in customer qualification rather than commercial sale, and where no finished-magnet revenue has been reported. Building a second magnet campus at Northlake, Texas. Has a recycled-magnet partnership with Apple with shipments expected from 2027, which we covered when it was announced, and a refinery joint venture in Saudi Arabia that adds no American capacity and should not be counted toward it. Two concentrations are worth naming: the company's separated output has historically moved through a Chinese offtake relationship, and its price floor, its largest preferred equity position and a construction loan all come from the same government counterparty.
NioCorp Developments (Nasdaq: NB)
Developing Elk Creek in Nebraska, a niobium, titanium and scandium project with neodymium-praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium as co-products. Has the most advanced study work of the development-stage names, with a feasibility study and declared reserves over a forty-year mine life. Mine portal excavation has begun as pre-construction work ahead of a final investment decision that has not been taken. The EXIM financing has moved past a letter of interest to a preliminary indicative term sheet and independent technical review, but it has not been approved. Listed on Nasdaq only; the company delisted from the TSX in 2024 and wire services still sometimes tag it incorrectly.
Niron Magnetics (private)
Building a commercial iron nitride magnet plant at Sartell, Minnesota on a former paper mill site, with operations targeted for 2027. Its magnets use iron and nitrogen and contain no rare earths, which makes Niron a substitution play rather than a rare earth company. If it works at scale it reduces demand for the material everyone else on this list is trying to supply. Iron nitride has been promising in the laboratory for a long time and the open question is whether the magnetic performance holds at commercial volume.
Noveon Magnetics (private)
Operates a sintered magnet plant at San Marcos, Texas, and describes itself as the first company to reshore sintered neodymium magnet production in over twenty years, a claim e-VAC contests in similar language. Its process can run on recycled end-of-life magnets or on virgin material, and it has a supply agreement with Solvay and a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Lynas for mined feedstock, so describing it as purely a recycler is inaccurate. Holds a General Motors agreement with deliveries from July 2025, a binding Nidec offtake, and a Defense Logistics Agency contract.
Phoenix Tailings (private)
Turns rare earth oxide into metal and alloy at Burlington, Massachusetts and Exeter, New Hampshire, initially neodymium-praseodymium metal and dysprosium-iron alloy. This is metallization, a step almost nobody else in America performs, which makes the company strategically important and commercially early. Holds a conditional Office of Strategic Capital loan commitment toward a larger facility with initial operations targeted for 2028, and we examined what that commitment reveals and what it does not. The company publishes design capacity for its facilities and does not publish realized output, so the distance between the two is unknown from the outside.
Ramaco Resources (Nasdaq: METC, METCB)
A metallurgical coal producer developing the Brook Mine in Wyoming, where rare earths and gallium, germanium and scandium occur in carbonaceous ore. An initial assessment under SEC mining rules declares inferred resources, and a pilot processing plant and laboratory are under construction near Sheridan with full pilot operations expected in 2027. Two studies exist with very different scopes and capital estimates, and the higher net present value figures in circulation come from the company's own modeling built on a third-party study rather than from the study's conclusions. Holds a Wyoming state matching grant. Nothing is in production.
Rare Element Resources (OTCQB: REEMF)
Began operating a rare earth processing and separation demonstration plant at Upton, Wyoming, in partnership with the Department of Energy, tied to its Bear Lodge deposit. A demonstration plant is a real milestone and it is not commercial capacity; the step from one to the other is where most of this sector's timelines slip.
ReElement Technologies (private)
Separates and purifies rare earths and other critical minerals using chromatographic refining at Noblesville and Marion, Indiana, with feedstocks including end-of-life magnets and recycled material. First commercial-scale germanium production was commissioned at Marion. No longer a consolidated subsidiary of American Resources Corporation, which deconsolidated it at the end of 2025 (opens in a new tab) and retains a minority equity-method interest. Chromatographic separation at scale is the thing to watch: it is genuinely different from solvent extraction, and different has to be proven at volume before it counts.
Ucore Rare Metals (TSXV: UCU, OTCQX: UURAF)
Building the Strategic Metals Complex at Alexandria, Louisiana to separate purchased concentrate using its RapidSX process, with the first machine targeted for commissioning in 2027. Has demonstrated separation to high purity on multiple feedstocks, though at its demonstration facility in Kingston, Ontario rather than in Louisiana. Also holds Bokan-Dotson Ridge in Alaska, which has an updated resource and a much older economic study. Note that the capacity figures on the company's own project landing page are superseded by its later engineering release, which is a reminder to date every number you take from a corporate website.
USA Rare Earth (Nasdaq: USAR)
Publicly traded following a special purpose acquisition company merger, and no longer privately held. Commissioning a sintered magnet line at Stillwater, Oklahoma, running a hydrometallurgical demonstration facility at Wheat Ridge, Colorado, and building toward a much larger magnet and metals facility at Blacksburg in Cherokee County, South Carolina backed by definitive CHIPS Program agreements. Now owns Round Top in Texas outright after acquiring Texas Mineral Resources, resolving an ownership structure that produced years of confused coverage; Round Top remains at exploration stage with no resource disclosed under SEC mining rules. Has also combined with Serra Verde, which gives it an operating rare earth mine in Brazil and changes what its consolidated results describe. Our reporting has tracked whether the South Carolina plant gets built and the congressional scrutiny of the federal package behind it.
Vulcan Elements (private)
Produces sintered neodymium magnets at Durham, North Carolina, at a site the company itself describes as small-scale commercial and R&D, with confirmed deliveries to defense and technology customers. Has announced a far larger plant at Benson, North Carolina. Does not publish its current output tonnage, which is the main gap in assessing it. The headline federal package announced alongside ReElement combined conditional loans, a non-binding equity letter of intent and private capital, and it has since lost one of its components. Holds a feedstock agreement with ReElement and a supply-chain collaboration with Ucore.
Also worth tracking
American Resources Corporation (Nasdaq: AREC) retains a minority interest in ReElement. Lynas Rare Earths (ASX: LYC) supplies oxide to the US government under a purchase agreement and is worth following as a supplier even though it processes nothing on American soil, a position we looked at in our coverage of how the market read its Malaysian filings.
Where to go next
For the elements themselves and where each one sits in the supply picture, start with the neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium pages. For what the sector's funds actually hold, as against what their names imply, see our analysis of rare earth ETFs. For the equities more broadly, see rare earth stocks and rare earth mining stocks. Subscribers can go deeper on the project-level data behind this page in the REEx rankings and project databases.
Frequently asked questions
Which US rare earth companies actually produce today?
MP Materials is the only company mining rare earths as a primary product at commercial scale in the United States, at Mountain Pass in California. MP Materials and Energy Fuels both separate light rare earths domestically. Noveon Magnetics, e-VAC Magnetics and Vulcan Elements ship commercial sintered neodymium magnets from US plants. Everything else is exploration, construction, or announcement.
Does the United States separate heavy rare earths?
Not commercially yet. Heavy rare earth separation is under construction at Energy Fuels' White Mesa Mill and at MP Materials' Mountain Pass. Energy Fuels has produced high-purity dysprosium and terbium oxide at pilot scale, and USA Rare Earth has produced commercial-grade dysprosium oxide from recycled magnets at a demonstration facility in Colorado. No company has declared commercial heavy rare earth separation, and this remains the sharpest gap in the American supply chain.
How dependent is the US on China for rare earths?
The US Geological Survey estimated net import reliance for rare earth compounds and metals at 67 percent for 2025, up from 53 percent in 2024. China supplied 71 percent of those imports over the 2021 to 2024 period. Those are two different measures and should not be combined into a single figure. The United States is a net exporter of rare earth mineral concentrates, which is a reminder that the dependency sits in processing rather than in mining.
What is the difference between a rare earth mine and a rare earth refinery?
A mine extracts ore and concentrates it into a mixed rare earth product in which the individual elements are still blended together. Separation, often called refining or processing, is the chemical step that splits that mixture into individual high-purity oxides. Separation is the harder step, it is the step China dominates, and a mine without access to separation capacity produces a material it cannot sell into finished applications.
Why do announced US rare earth capacity figures keep getting revised?
Because most published figures are nameplate design capacity rather than realized output, and because large federal numbers are frequently conditional loan commitments or non-binding letters of interest rather than money disbursed. Both get reported as if they were operating facts. Checking the instrument, and checking whether a plant is commissioning or producing, removes most of the discrepancy.
Disclaimer:
The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Rare Earth Exchanges receives no compensation from any company named on this page. Readers are strongly encouraged to consult with a qualified financial advisor or licensed investment professional before making any trading or investment decisions. Figures change; verify with the issuer before relying on them. Rare Earth Exchanges, LLC makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided, and shall not be held liable for any losses, damages, or expenses arising from the use of or reliance on this content. All investments carry risk, including the potential loss of principal.
