PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Rare earths miner Lynas has reported a massive surge in net profit for the full year ended June, as revenues rose.

Net profit for the 12 months  increased to A$157.1-million, from the loss of A$19.4-million reported in the previous financial year, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation increased from A$59.7-million to A$235.3-million.

Rare earth oxide sales volumes during the full year increased from the A$14.1-million reported in 2020 to A$16.4-million, with the average selling price also improving from A$21.50/kg to A$29.80/kg.

“This strong result is a testimony to the hard work of our team this financial year. We are pleased to have delivered a record profit for our shareholders. This has been achieved while maintaining Covid-19 health and safety protocols for our people and communities, responding to logistics challenges and managing inventory to meet our customers’ needs,” CEO and MD Amanda Lacaze said on Friday.

“Sales revenue increased to A$489-million. Strong cost controls were maintained as we benefited from favourable market conditions for rare-earth materials. During the year, our balance sheet was enhanced via an equity raise of A$425-million to fund our Lynas 2025 foundation projects, primarily the Kalgoorlie rare earths processing plant and associated upgrades at the Lynas Malaysia plant.

“Throughout the year, we reached a number of milestones related to our Lynas 2025 growth strategy, which is focused on building capacity to meet forecast demand growth,” Lacaze added.

Progress on the Lynas 2025 projects continued during the financial year and a number of milestones were achieved, including further exploration of the company’s Mt Weld resource.

Lynas noted that the establishment of two new exploration drill holes below the current Mt Weld pit floor identified significant and continuous intersections of rare-earth minerals below the current life-of-mine, and in June 2021 Lynas successfully completed a 1 km deep exploration drilling at Mt Weld.

“The results will expand the orebody knowledge of the Mt Weld rare earth element deposit and will assist planning for future resource expansion drilling into the fresh carbonatite,” the company said.

Meanwhile, the Kalgoorlie rare earths processing facility project achieved a number of milestones during the year including the placement of orders for all long lead time items and 60% of total equipment requirements.

In March, the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority approved minor and preliminary works on site. These works established an access road, site office and a pad suitable for the delivery of equipment such as the steel tanks that were fabricated in Perth.

In the June quarter, Lynas signed contracts for two separate funding grants from the US government during the year, one for Phase 1 work for a US-based heavy rare earths (HRE) separation facility and another for the development of a commercial light rare earths separation plant in the US.

The US project team submitted detailed engineering design work for the HRE facility to the US government in line with Department of Defense (DoD) Phase 1 milestones and the DoD is now conducting a merit evaluation of the submission.