Thor Energy (LON: THR) is up 17% on the announcement of their ionic clay rare earth find at Alford East. Ionic clays are a valuable source of rare earths, how to mine such a deposit is well known. It's also true that ionic clays are higher in the desirable - and money making - magnet metals and lower in the money losing light rare earths than more traditional deposits. Of course, this is early days for Thor Energy and this specific deposit, much more work will need to be done to prove the resource. But it's good news for THR stock all the same.
However, as we've been saying, this does rather change the economics of the rare earth industry globally. There's an increasing change that the business plans of the likes of Lynas and MP Materials will get derailed. For their deposits are higher in the money losing light rare earths and lighter in those more valuable magnet metals. The more of these ionic clays are found then the worse the long term situation looks for the current producers - that's just the economics of the game speaking there.
Thor Energy share price from London Stock Exchange
On ionic clays there's this announcement from Thor Energy. There's a background piece in the Daily Telegraph on the subject. Lavortto has a recent announcement. Australian Rare Earths, OD6 - we have a little list of 6 Australians and one Argentian before even this by Thor. It's simply no longer sustainable that rare earths are rare. Nor that ionic clays are confined to China and the Burma border areas. A common result of granites weathering in subtropical climes. That means - inevitably - that the magnet rare earths are more common than thought. Therefore, over time, they're going to be cheaper too.
Business plans which depend upon expensive magnet rare earths out to three and five years in the future are now under great pressure.