Why Washington Is Treating Rare Earths Like Gold

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NEW YORK, July 28, 2026 /CNW/ -- In 1937, the Army guarded the first shipments of a critical resource, U.S. gold, as it was transferred into Fort Knox. Nearly 90 years later, Washington faces a similar situation with a very different resource. The Army picked REalloys (ALOY) to build a facility to process dysprosium and terbium at Utah's Tooele Army Depot - two rare earths that keep high-performance magnets working in weapons, radar, sonar and electric motors. Companies mentioned in today's commentary includes: Realloys Inc. (ALOY), Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), FMC Corporation (NYSE: FMC), Teck Resources Limited (NYSE: TECK), The Metals Company (NASDAQ: TMC), Critical Metals Corp. (NASDAQ: CRML).

Gold went to Fort Knox because America was unsure they could protect it from threats abroad. Rare earths now raise a similar question: how much of the defense supply chain can the country afford to leave overseas?

"The ability to process critical minerals on U.S. soil is a national-defense priority required for munitions, missiles, sensors, batteries, and the platforms our Soldiers depend on," said Dr. Jeff Waksman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment.

"Leveraging our legal authorities and land, the U.S. Army is able to help nurture a critical minerals industrial base which equips and sustains America's Soldiers without putting any taxpayer dollars at risk."

China controlled about 91% of global separation and refining for magnet rare earths as of 2024 and produced roughly 94% of the world's rare-earth permanent magnets, according to the International Energy Agency. The Army has spent decades buying equipment that depends on those magnets. Now it has picked one of its own bases for domestic dysprosium and terbium processing in the Utah desert.

The Army Has Never Done This Before

The Army has never hosted commercial mineral processing on a U.S. installation before, which makes the Tooele award more than an ordinary land deal. REalloys won the dysprosium and terbium site at the 43,000-acre Tooele Army Depot. The arrangement is simple: the Army keeps the land while REalloys brings the capital, builds the facility and runs it.

For a new processing project, that changes the starting point. REalloys (ALOY) would not have to begin by finding and securing an industrial site. The Army has already picked one and tied it directly to a U.S. defense priority. It also chose the first two metals carefully. Dysprosium and terbium help powerful magnets continue working under extreme heat. The Army uses those magnets in precision guidance, defense electronics, electric motors, sonar and radar - systems that cannot afford to lose strength when conditions get rough.

China dominates the processing behind those magnets, giving Beijing control over a part of the supply chain the U.S. defense industry cannot easily replace.

In April 2025, Beijing showed how damaging wielding that much control is when it put seven heavy rare earths under export controls, along with related metals, compounds and magnets. The effects rippled out quickly. U.S. and European manufacturers struggled to find magnets, and some cut production or temporarily stopped factory lines, according to the IEA.

Mining more ore could not restart those lines either. Companies still needed someone to separate it, refine it and turn it into magnet-ready material. That's why, at Tooele, the Army is going after the part of the chain that mines alone cannot fix.

What REalloys Already Has in Place

REalloys has been making rare-earth metals in Ohio for years and has now locked in processed material from Canada. At Euclid, Ohio, REalloys produces rare-earth metals and magnet materials for the Defense Logistics Agency, the Department of Energy's Ames National Laboratory and industrial customers, according to its latest quarterly filing.

In Canada, REalloys struck a supply deal with the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC). REalloys secured 80% of the annual production from SRC's upgraded capacity and agreed to invest about $21 million in the expansion.

At full production, SRC expects the upgraded facility to produce up to 30 tonnes of dysprosium oxide and 15 tonnes of terbium oxide a year. The expansion would also lift high-purity neodymium-praseodymium metal output from 400 tonnes to 600 tonnes. REalloys says SRC could send high-purity dysprosium and terbium oxides for customer testing as early as the fourth quarter of this year.

SRC separates and refines the material in Canada. The Tooele plant would then bring dysprosium and terbium oxides to convert them into metals before it's turned into alloys at REalloys' Ohio facility.

One Day Later, REalloys Announced $100 Million in Financing

The Army announced its conditional award for the project in Tooele on June 25. REalloys closed a $100 million financing the next day. The filing directs the proceeds to working capital and general corporate purposes, not specifically to Tooele. However, the Army deal makes their roles in the unprecedented agreement clear.

The Army would provide the land. REalloys would provide the construction money. REalloys (ALOY) would finance and build the plant. The $100 million secured through financing gives the company more capital to work across Ohio, Saskatchewan and, if the Army finalizes the lease, Utah.

The 2027 Deadline Is Closing In

The Army's partnership agreement comes amid the Pentagon's January 2027 sourcing deadline. On January 1, 2027, a new DFARS rule is set to go into effect which will set new rules for neodymium-iron-boron magnets sold under covered defense contracts.

The rule bans rare earth material if China or another named country mined, refined, separated, melted or produced it, with limited exceptions. That means defense suppliers will have to trace each magnet's origins back to the beginning, starting with the rare earth materials and every processing step behind it.

REalloys expects SRC to send its first qualification material in late 2026, just before the expanded rule takes effect. SRC aims to start commercial production in early 2027. REalloys says Tooele could enter development in 2027 and start initial operations by or before 2028.

What REalloys Has to Do Next

The Army made the Tooele award conditional, and REalloys still needs a completed lease.But while REalloys and the Army are still negotiating the historic deal, the importance of securing rare earth materials produced at home has clearly become a top priority for Washington.

The Army has never hosted commercial mineral processing on a U.S. installation before. Now it has picked Tooele for dysprosium and terbium with REalloys leading the charge.

Fort Knox became a symbol of how seriously America guarded its gold. Tooele could mark the moment the military began treating rare-earth processing the same way, as critical infrastructure it needs to secure onto its own bases.

America can already mine rare earths, but it still needs the companies that can separate, refine and convert them into usable material and do that work closer to home. At Tooele, the Army has chosen REalloys for that job.

Other companies to watch:

Albemarle Corporation (ALB) remains the largest publicly traded lithium producer globally, with a geographically diversified asset base spanning Australian hard-rock spodumene operations, Chilean brine production in the Salar de Atacama, and the Silver Peak facility in Nevada, currently the only active U.S. lithium brine operation. That diversification provides operational resilience across pricing cycles and regulatory regimes as lithium demand remains structurally tied to EV and stationary storage deployment.

Following the lithium price correction that extended through 2024–2025, Albemarle has shifted decisively toward capital discipline. The company has slowed portions of its expansion pipeline, reduced operating costs, and prioritized high-margin conversion capacity rather than pure volume growth. Management continues to evaluate the potential restart of the Kings Mountain project in North Carolina, which could materially expand domestic lithium supply if market conditions support redevelopment.

FMC Corporation (FMC), headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a global agricultural sciences company that delivers innovative technology to farmers worldwide. While FMC is not a traditional mining company, its significant stake in lithium, a critical component in rechargeable batteries and other high-tech applications, sets it apart. Lithium is a strategic mineral in the transition to a clean energy future, and FMC's involvement in this sector positions the company for growth in the years to come.

FMC's commitment to innovation and sustainability is commendable. The company's agricultural products, such as crop protection solutions and plant nutrition technologies, contribute to increased crop yield and quality, addressing global food security challenges. In recent years, FMC has benefited from robust demand for its crop protection products, driven by higher commodity prices and strong agricultural market fundamentals.

Teck Resources Limited TECK) is a major international base- and battery-metals producer with significant exposure to copper, a metal central to electrification and battery manufacturing. Its world-class operations in the Americas and resource expansion projects position it to benefit from structural growth in electrified transport, renewable infrastructure, and industrial decarbonization.

Teck has also been advancing initiatives to lower the carbon intensity of its mining and smelting footprint, aligning with the demand from customers and policy frameworks that increasingly prefer low-emission metal supply.

The Metals Company (TMC) is the global leader in deep-sea mineral exploration, targeting polymetallic nodules on the seafloor of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean. The company's NORI-D project is estimated to contain enough Nickel, Cobalt, Copper, and Manganese to meet the requirements of 280 million electric vehicles, roughly the size of the entire U.S. light vehicle fleet. Because these nodules are "rocks on the seafloor" rather than ore buried in the ground, TMC's collection process eliminates the need for blasting, tailings dams, and deforestation typically associated with terrestrial mining.

TMC is currently working with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence to finalize a Life Cycle Assessment that will prove the environmental benefits of seafloor nodules to Western automakers and defense contractors.

Critical Metals Corp. (CRML) entered the spotlight in late 2025 by securing control of the Tanbreez deposit in Greenland, one of the largest rare earth deposits on the planet. What makes Tanbreez particularly attractive to the defense sector is its 27% heavy rare earth content, which is significantly higher than most global deposits. In early 2026, the company broke ground on a pilot plant and signed a major joint venture with a Saudi Arabian conglomerate to build out midstream processing capacity.

The company's strategy is built on providing a "geopolitically neutral" source of minerals for the West. By targeting commercial-scale heavy rare earth production by Q4 2026, CRML is racing to fill the most acute gap in the U.S. defense supply chain. As a Nasdaq-listed entity with strong offtake agreements already in place, the company represents the "frontier" of the global race for mineral security.

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