PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Critical minerals explorer American Rare Earths has raised A$14-million in a single tranche share placement to fund drilling at its Halleck Creek and La Paz rare earth projects, in Wyoming and Arizona, respectively.

The ASX-listed company on Thursday said that it had completed the placement of more than 48.27-million shares, at a price of 29c each to institutional, professional and sophisticated investors, providing the company with a balance sheet well capitalised to accelerate exploration activities in North America.

"We are delighted with the interest shown by new and existing investors under this placement and see it as a real demonstration of confidence and support for our vision to build the next major rare earth and critical minerals company and play a key role securing supply for the US,” said American Rare Earths MD Chris Gibbs.

“Our company welcomes the new institutional, professional and sophisticated investors who join the company under this placement and look forwards to an exciting long-term future together as our projects continue to grow and develop.

“American Rare Earths is also very appreciative of the level of continued support it receives from existing shareholders who have again shown their belief in the vision and strategy of the company, by participating in this placement.”

American Rare Earths earlier this week announced that its wholly owned US subsidiary, Western Rare Earths (WRE), had joined as the industrial partner in a research consortium that included the technology company, Phinix, LLC and Virginia Tech University.

The consortium will receive up to C$500 000 in research and development funding from the US Department of Energy, under the Critical Materials: Next Generation Technologies and Field Validation programme.

WRE will provide rare-earth-bearing ores as feedstock for extraction and separation-focused processing technology studies.

The project goal is to produce light, medium and heavy rare earth oxide products of greater than 95% purity. Given the criticality of neodymium, a neodymium oxide product of greater than 95% purity will also be produced.

American Rare Earths told shareholders that an innovative extractor technology, based on gas‐assisted micro‐flow extraction theory, will be employed with an efficient task‐specific ionic liquid for rare earths extraction and separation. Success could reduce capital expenditure and operating expenditure for producing high value rare earths from lower grade sources while improving recovery efficiencies, thus reducing the loss of valuable rare earths to the tailings pile.