This article is a sponsored feature from Mining.com.au partner RareX. It is not financial advice. Talk to a registered financial expert before making investment decisions.
RareX (ASX:REE) is built on a strong belief in the importance of the rare earths industry and the need to develop rare earth element (REE) assets to support global supply and to drive the energy transition. Through portfolio assets, major proposals, and investments, RareX holds a significant interest in large-scale lithium, copper, and REE projects.
The company was formed on the back of the acquisition of the Cummins Range Project in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, well before REEs were a trending commodity.
James Durrant, Managing Director and CEO of RareX, says that the board’s initial intention with Cummins Range was to explore the scale of this large carbonatite-hosted deposit with the potential that it could have developed similarly to Lynas Rare Earths’ (ASX:LYC) Mt Weld mine, which is one of the world’s most valuable REE deposits.
While Cummins Range is not quite as big as Mt Weld, it has shown itself to be Australia’s largest undeveloped REE project by scale, hosting significant gallium intercepts as well as clean phosphate hosted in pure apatite, which has the potential to develop as its own commodity of value in the project.
Durrant notes that since he joined the team in 2021, the REE market has fluctuated significantly, initially booming and gaining significant market interest but then collapsing as rare earth prices fell to multiyear lows, before recovering strongly in an emerging, geopolitically supported bull cycle. This is what caused RareX to include the development of a selection of projects alongside Cummins Range, as a way to both spread its risk and boost potential growth.
Part of the risk profile of a rare earth project is metallurgy.
“The nature of rare earth elements is that they can be very complex metallurgically,” Durrant says.
“Arafura Rare Earths (ASX:ARU) is an example of a company that took many years to find a development solution, and they’re finally on their way to financing and building their Nolans project.”
RareX has a number of exploration projects, in addition to Cummins Range, within its portfolio.
The Khaleesi Project is a significant land package, spanning more than 1,000km2 and is a ‘significant’ REE, niobium, base metals, and precious metals asset in Western Australia’s Yilgarn region, hosted within a large alkaline intrusive complex.
Durrant notes that RareX has conducted a lot of Indigenous relations work for this project, as well as a lot of work with its neighbours, including Deep Yellow (ASX:DYL), due to shared infrastructure requirements for the planned drill program.
RareX has also done substantial work on the flora and fauna in the area as the project is close to a nature reserve. The company has now received its permit for work approval and is ready to get moving.
“The recent unexpected challenge was whether we’re going to have access to fuel to kick off the exploration program, because a lot of fuel suppliers aren’t giving out new contracts as they can’t guarantee fuel supply themselves. However, RareX has now resolved this constraint.” Durrant says.
RareX’s exploration assets also include the Piper Project in the Northern Territory, which Durrant notes is “a very large bullseye-shaped geophysical anomaly that’s along trend from WA1 Resources (ASX:WA1)’ Luni discovery and the Nolans Bore deposit”.
RareX is currently working through a lengthy legal process with Northern Territory regulators to gain access to Piper, though recent Indigenous engagements at the project location appear to have gone very favourably and a heritage agreement is now being drafted.
“It’s a longer and more complex process in the Northern Territory regarding native title, compared to WA, but once the native title agreement is in place, a lot of progress can be made on the project,” Durrant says.
The company has also formalised interest in another large carbonatite intrusive in Kenya’s Mrima Hill Project, in consortium with Iluka Resources (ASX:ILU). The Kenyan Government is currently running a formal assessment process.
Advancing Cummins Range and expanding the pipeline
Durrant notes that RareX has advanced Cummins Range through exploration already, having defined the deposit, expanded the resource, and completed early engineering studies on it.
However, following the COVID-19 pandemic, it saw a downturn in the equity capital markets, with funding drying up.
“It wasn’t a good environment in the equity capital markets to pursue rare earth projects because the pricing was so low for REEs, and funding evaporated from the sector,” Durrant says.
With the downturn in capital markets, the company paused its metallurgical work and focused on acquiring the mining licence in coordination with the Jaru Traditional Owners.
“This came to a climax in December 2025, when we signed the native title heritage agreement for mining with the Jaru Traditional Owners, resulting in a mining lease granted in January 2026,” Durrant says.
With the mining lease in hand, RareX has now restarted its metallurgical work across REEs, gallium, and phosphate, working through three different programs to develop separate revenue streams for each.
Durrant notes that RareX is about three quarters of the way through that metallurgical program.
On the exploration front, RareX also pursued work on another of its assets, the Mt Mansbridge Project located in the southern Kimberley region, in an area with hydrothermal xenotime mineralisation.
“We did the first round of exploration at Mt Mansbridge but then made the decision that the next dollar should be placed into Khaleesi for better potential uplift, so we moved the exploration program over,” Durrant says.
Strategic stakes in copper, lithium, and REEs
In addition to the company’s development projects, RareX carries significant investments in other listed companies, providing additional investor upside and funding contingency when needed.
RareX holds three key investments. The first is Canadian Rare Earth (TSX-V:LL), a rare earth trading company that Durrant notes is doing a lot of interesting things behind the scenes in the industry. RareX holds 25 million shares in Canadian Rare Earth.
RareX also holds 45 million shares in Kincora Copper (ASX:KCC), with Durrant sitting on the Board of Directors as well.
Kincora Copper is a project generator with a model objective of finding deep and large copper-gold porphyry deposits, with a focus on New South Wales.
Durrant notes that Kincora is run in a very disciplined way and “having exposure to copper through that company is very thematically aligned to RareX’s focus on energy transition metals”.
The company’s third investment is Cosmos Exploration (ASX:C1X). Cosmos is merging with EAU Lithium, which is focused on lithium development in Bolivia in partnership with Vulcan Energy (ASX:VUL).
Once the merger is finalised between Cosmos and EAU Lithium, RareX will hold an interest in large-scale lithium, copper, and REE assets.
Durrant says that RareX’s investments in early-stage projects with big potential are strategically tied to the energy transition, because the world cannot turn back from that shift.
“The electrification metals: lithium for battery storage, copper for transmitting, and REEs for use in electricity-motion conversion, those are the big three for us,” Durrant says.
Global supply chains and Australia’s refining push
Durrant notes that he is seeing a lot of interest in the REE space at the moment, but that it can be hard to understand these projects if you are not that well versed in the industry.
“As rare earths grow in their use, in electric vehicles, robotics, advanced technologies, we see growing demand and a growth in the number of projects around,” Durrant says.
“You need to be able to understand the dynamics of the project as only a few of those projects are going to be successful in the end.”
While there is this growing demand that comes alongside diversified technology use, the supply chain for the REE industry is still heavily concentrated in China on the processing side.
We are seeing a clear directional shift in the US under the Trump Administration to diversify its REEs and other critical minerals, but it is not a fast or straightforward process.
“There are still very few major companies outside of China that have the ability to process rare earths.”
Because it is a complicated process to both process and refine REEs, Durrant notes that the private sectors and equity capital markets are not necessarily the best placed to fund these projects, so a lot of focus needs to come from governments to push these projects forward.
Iluka Resources is developing its Eneabba rare earths refinery in Western Australia, which is due for completion in 2027. This is set to become Australia’s first fully integrated refinery for producing separated rare earth oxides.
“Australia is contributing a material market share of that processing capability,” Durrant says.
“I think Australia’s better positioned than the US, generally speaking, because it’s much more familiar with the mineral process industry overall and has more supporting industries set up already.”
The key barriers at the moment are electricity and labour.
“Australia needs to ensure that electricity generation is cheap and reliable, which is absolutely critical for a refinery. Australia also needs to make sure that the people are productive as we have a high cost of labour here.”
Australia’s regulatory environment also needs to be more efficient, allowing these types of projects to be proposed, evaluated quickly, and then permitted with the key controls and licensing in place.
“If Australia can get those things right, and I don’t think we’ve got it right just yet, then we can really form a major part of the global, non-China supply chain, all the way through refining.”
Defining projects beyond exploration
The major milestone that RareX is waiting for at the moment is the awarding of the Mrima Hill Project in Kenya.
While RareX has a significant amount of exploration projects that are all at various stages, Durrant highlights that it is not an exploration company at heart.
“We want to define and develop a project, whether that’s Cummins Range, which is in the feasibility stage, whether that’s the award of Mrima Hill, or whether it’s the acquisition of another project from our BD work stream.
“The exploration work we do is necessary, it’s part of the pipeline and part of the risk mitigation, but it’s not the heart of what we want to do as a business. We want to have a major company-building asset that will allow us to participate in the political minerals value chain in a meaningful way.”
With its diversified portfolio and focus on energy transition metals, RareX is positioning itself not just as an explorer, but as a company-builder, ready to play a defining role in the global critical minerals supply chain.
Write to Amy Rotman at Mining.com.au
Images: Mining.com.au and RareX
