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NEW YORK, July 7, 2026 /CNW/ -- The U.S. Army has placed REalloys (ALOY) at the center of America's drive to rebuild its heavy rare earth supply chain, selecting the company to build and operate the first-ever commercial critical mineral processing operation on a U.S. military installation. REalloys plans to build a heavy rare earth processing complex at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah capable of refining dysprosium and terbium, two of the most strategically important rare earth elements used in high-temperature permanent magnets for defense systems.  Companies mentioned in today's commentary includes:  Realloys Inc. (ALOY), MP Materials Corp. (NYSE: MP), USA Rare Earth, Inc. (NASDAQ: USAR), Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX), Perpetua Resources Corp. (NASDAQ: PPTA).

For the first time, commercial critical mineral processing is being integrated directly into America's national security infrastructure. The Tooele platform is expected to support the U.S. Army, the Defense Logistics Agency, the Department of Energy and NASA, placing REalloys at the center of one of the country's most strategically important industrial buildouts. Commercial development is targeted to begin in 2027, with initial operating capability expected no later than 2028. That urgent timeframe is scheduled to coincide with the January 1, 2027, federal procurement ban on Chinese rare earth materials used in American defense systems. 

REalloys expects to finance, build, and operate the facilities under an Enhanced Use Lease structure, creating a commercial processing platform on federal military property while keeping ownership, financing, and operations in private hands.

The Army award moves REalloys upstream. Earlier this year, the Defense Logistics Agency backed the company's metallization technology through a contract to expand domestic samarium and gadolinium metal production. The Tooele project reaches further into the supply chain, adding commercial heavy rare earth processing to a platform that already includes metals and alloys. Washington is compressing years of supply chain development into a matter of months. An integrated domestic rare earth industry is taking shape in real time.

Why The U.S. Army Chose REalloys

Much of REalloys' heavy rare earth platform was already in place when the Army selected the company for Tooele. Over the past two years, REalloys has assembled feedstock agreements, processing rights, metallization technology, and downstream manufacturing capacity designed for what is expected to become the largest heavy rare earth metallization facility outside China through its partnership with the Saskatchewan Research Council.

The company committed approximately $20.6 million to upgrades at the Saskatchewan Research Council's rare earth processing facility, securing exclusive supply rights for 80% of the facility's expanded output, including NdPr metal and dysprosium and terbium oxides.

SRC's initial commercial production remains targeted for early 2027, with REalloys is building a dedicated heavy rare earth metallization facility for dysprosium and terbium metals. Engineering is underway, major equipment procurement has begun, and qualification materials are expected as early as the fourth quarter of 2026. That gives REalloys (ALOY)  something few companies in the Western rare earth sector can claim: access to separated heavy rare earth output, a path to metallization, and a U.S. manufacturing base in Euclid, Ohio.

The company has also secured long-term feedstock, including a definitive long-term offtake agreement for 15% of Phase 1 production from Critical Metals' Tanbreez project in Greenland, a strategic alliance and offtake commitment tied to the Sheep Creek rare earth deposit in Montana, and a proposed supply framework with Ramaco Resources for coal-hosted rare earth material from the Brook Mine platform in Wyoming. And it's pursuing additional supply arrangements with domestic and allied sources, including coal-hosted rare earth material from Ramaco's Brook Mine platform in Wyoming.

The result is a company already moving across multiple stages of the chain that the Army is trying to rebuild: feedstock, processing, metallization, alloys, and eventually permanent magnets.

Washington Is Building An Industry

The Tooele announcement is about far more than a single processing facility. Over the past year, Washington has introduced procurement restrictions, awarded defense contracts, backed commercial processing, accelerated qualification programs, and now opened the gates of a U.S. military installation to commercial rare earth production.  Those decisions are reshaping an industry that scarcely existed outside China only a few years ago.

Building a domestic rare earth industry requires far more than opening new mines. Ore must first be mined and concentrated before it can be chemically separated into individual rare earth elements. Those materials are then converted into high-purity metals, alloyed into specialized magnetic materials and ultimately manufactured into the permanent magnets that power everything from precision-guided weapons and fighter aircraft to electric motors, radar systems and naval platforms. 

For decades, China built nearly every step of that industrial chain while much of the West allowed those capabilities to disappear. The effort extends well beyond the rare earth sector itself. 

Earlier this month, President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to address production bottlenecks across the defense industrial base, citing limited manufacturing capacity, fragile supply chains and long-lead dependencies. And this week, President Trump met with the heads of Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and L3Harris as the administration pressed the defense industry to accelerate production and replenish U.S. weapons stockpiles.  Those efforts coincide with the January 1, 2027, procurement restrictions, which require covered defense systems to source compliant rare earth materials and permanent magnets.

Meeting those requirements involves far more than finding new suppliers. Rare earth oxides, metals, alloys, and permanent magnets must all be qualified before they can enter defense production, a process that can take months or even years depending on the application. That process is already underway. 

REalloys (ALOY)  is expected to began qualification efforts for defense-grade heavy rare earth materials by the end of 2026, allowing prospective customers to validate North American-produced dysprosium, terbium and other rare earth materials ahead of the January 1, 2027, procurement deadline. The result is one of the most coordinated industrial reconstruction efforts the United States has undertaken in decades, and REalloys is at the heart of it. 

Other companies to keep an eye on:

MP Materials Corp. (NYSE: MP) is the obvious name to watch. The company runs the only rare earth mine and processing operation in the U.S., at Mountain Pass, California, and it's already the government's flagship partner in the same push to rebuild the domestic supply chain that REalloys is tapping into at Tooele. The Department of Defense became one of MP's largest shareholders last year through a $400 million equity stake and locked in a 10-year price floor of $110 per kilogram for the company's neodymium-praseodymium output.

That backing is showing up in the numbers. MP posted first-quarter 2026 revenue of $90.6 million, up roughly 49% year over year, with adjusted EBITDA lifted in part by price-protection payments tied to the DoD deal. The company is pushing downstream too, producing its first commercial-scale neodymium magnets at its Independence facility in Texas and breaking ground this year on a second, larger plant expected to bring its total U.S. magnet capacity to 10,000 metric tons annually. Details are in MP's announcement of its public-private partnership with the Department of Defense.

USA Rare Earth, Inc. (NASDAQ: USAR) is chasing a similar mine-to-magnet vision from the other direction. Where MP started with a mine and is building toward magnets, USA Rare Earth started with metallurgy, through its ownership of the UK's Less Common Metals, and is building backward toward the Round Top heavy rare earth deposit in West Texas.

The company hit a real milestone in March, commissioning the first production line at its Stillwater, Oklahoma, magnet facility, enabling it to begin filling customer orders for sintered neodymium-iron-boron magnets, with capacity expected to double to 1,200 metric tons a year by early 2027. It followed that with a second site pick, in Cherokee County, South Carolina, for a new magnet and refined-metals plant projected to create roughly 490 jobs.

The read-through for the Tooele buildout is straightforward. USA Rare Earth is one of the only other companies attempting the full domestic value chain the Pentagon is trying to stand up, and it's racing the same January 1, 2027, procurement deadline.

Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB) broadens the lens from rare earths to critical minerals generally. It's the world's largest lithium producer, and lithium's price swings tend to serve as a bellwether for the broader battery-minerals complex Washington is trying to reshore alongside rare earths.

The company just posted a sharp turnaround. First-quarter 2026 adjusted EBITDA jumped 148% year over year to $664 million as lithium prices rebounded from 2025 lows, and adjusted earnings came in well ahead of what Wall Street had modeled. Albemarle used the recovery to cut debt too, retiring $1.3 billion of obligations during the quarter.

Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX) is the scale play on this list. It's the largest publicly traded copper producer in the U.S., and copper, like rare earths, has been formally classified as a critical mineral for defense, feeding everything from armored-vehicle wiring to radar systems and munitions components.

The company delivered strong first-quarter 2026 results, net income of $881 million, more than double the year-ago quarter, on revenue of $6.23 billion, as realized copper prices climbed to $5.78 a pound. It also locked up its most important long-term asset, an agreement with the Indonesian government extending PT Freeport Indonesia's operating rights at the giant Grasberg minerals district well past the current 2041 expiration.

Perpetua Resources Corp. (NASDAQ: PPTA) is the closest thing on this list to a pure defense-driven critical minerals story. Its Stibnite Gold Project in central Idaho sits on the only identified domestic reserve of antimony, a mineral the Pentagon needs for small-arms ammunition, tracer rounds and missile components and currently sources almost entirely from China, Russia and Tajikistan.

The company just landed the financing to actually build the mine. The Export-Import Bank's board unanimously approved a $2.9 billion senior secured loan in May under its Make More in America initiative, which combined with Perpetua's cash on hand is expected to fully fund construction. A federal court in Idaho also denied opponents' bid to halt work in late May, clearing the way for crews to begin building the project's access road days later.

By. Michael Kern

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