Vancouver-headquartered rare earths developer Rare Element Resources expects to have all federal and State permitting and licensing requirements completed for the Bear Lodge rare earths project, in Wyoming, early in 2028.

After the Bear Lodge project was designated as a ‘covered project’ under the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council’s FAST-41 programme in March, Rare Element Resources could publish a formal permitting schedule, which includes a review led by the US Forest Service in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act.

“Our initial permitting progress has been seamless. Thanks to the strong coordination of the US Department of Agriculture and the US Forest Service under the FAST-41 framework, a comprehensive and realistic timeline was completed in the required 60 days,” says Rare Element Resources president and CEO Ken Mushinski.

Meanwhile, the company continues to advance operations at the Bear Lodge demonstration plant. The facility will use the company’s proprietary technology to produce high-purity separated neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) oxide.

Following the successful commissioning of the balance of plant systems and initial plant operations, full plant operations have been delayed as the team works through operational and equipment changes necessary to efficiently produce the total rare earth concentrates which are the necessary feed to the separation circuits within the plant.

Rare Element Resources expects full, end-to-end processing operations at the demonstration plant to start in late summer 2026.

The plant is scheduled to run for up to 12 months, providing the essential operational, economic, and engineering data required to design and build a full-scale commercial separation facility.

"The primary objective of a demonstration plant is to systematically uncover and resolve mechanical and operational challenges before scaling to a commercial facility.

“By fine-tuning our primary processing circuit and resolving these filtration inefficiencies now, we are effectively derisking our commercial trajectory. Once this front-end optimisation is complete, the primary circuit will continuously feed our completed separation circuits to yield high-purity NdPr oxide,” Mushinski concludes.