Rare-Earth Producers

Outline

Innovation Metals Corp. (IMC) will provide separation services to producers of light, medium and heavy rare-earth concentrates, through their participation in the IMC Consortium. Participants will see significantly reduced capital expenditures for their rare-earth projects. They will also benefit from an attractive new pathway to market, for individual, separated rare-earth products produced via IMC’s low-cost tolling program.

Participating producers will have the choice of either taking receipt of their finished, separated rare-earth products after processing, or of placing their finished products into the IMC marketing program. This program will utilize an innovative, transparent auction process to connect producers with end-use consumers. Preference will be given to those producers who keep their products within the IMC marketing program, since this is the system that IMC will use to guarantee end-user consumers, access to finished products.

IMC can also assist participating producers in the structuring and pricing off-take contracts and agreements, to help such producers get their future mining projects financed and operating as soon as possible.

Using IMC’s independent, third-party solutions will allow participating producers to take full advantage of the economies of scale that centralized processing facilities will provide. While IMC believes that it can provide the most cost-effective route for rare-earth separation, participation in the IMC Consortium will by no means preclude participants from pursuing other avenues for the disposition of their concentrates. The IMC Consortium simply provides an additional option for participating producers for getting their products to market, at costs that will be lower than producers could obtain via in-house facilities.

The tolling costs for participating producers will be relatively low, because the IMC business model is relatively less risky than the up-stream stages of the rare-earth supply chain. Thus, as with similar programs in the precious- and base-metals industries, the associates margins can be lower. Centralizing the separation process gives stability and confidence to all participants.

Requirements

IMC has a few key requirements of producers that wish to participate in the IMC Consortium:

• Rare-earth projects under development should have at a minimum, an inferred mineral-resource estimate, per NI-43-101 or JORC guidelines;
• Participants should be well on their way to understanding the metallurgy of their project, and to the development of an initial pilot plant for the deposit;
• Rare-earth concentrates should contain at least 50% total rare-earth oxide equivalent;
• Rare-earth concentrates will need to be free of thorium and other similar contaminants.

IMC may be able to assist in the specification process for pilot plants, and in the separation of thorium; however, potential participants will need to secure their own storage facilities for thorium and other radioactive contaminants.

Current and potential rare-earth producers are invited to register their interest in joining the IMC Consortium, with no obligation, via the contact form. For qualified companies, IMC will subsequently provide additional information on the Consortium, and will then extend a proposal to the potential participant for consideration – again, with no obligation.