Morocco

Morocco's rare-earth potential sits inside its phosphate industry. USGS places most of the world's phosphate rock reserves in Morocco, yet it lists no rare-earth production or reserves for the country.

State-owned OCP exercises the state monopoly on exploring for and mining phosphate. It says the rock also carries fluorine, rare earths and vanadium that could be recovered along its processing chain. Rock mined at Khouribga moves by slurry pipeline to Jorf Lasfar, where it is turned into phosphoric acid and fertilizer.

Phosphogypsum, the main byproduct of the acid step, is where the rare-earth work has focused. OCP holds a U.S. patent on a process to purify and concentrate rare earths from it. Rainbow Rare Earths describes its work with OCP and Mohammed VI Polytechnic University as a test program.

Rainbow reports that initial upgraded samples of OCP phosphogypsum averaged 0.40% TREO and held all four magnet rare earths: neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. Sedimentary phosphate of this kind is typically lower in rare earths than the hard-rock carbonatites mined elsewhere. The open question is whether phosphogypsum can yield separated rare earths at a cost that justifies such low grades.