Colossal mounds of fertilizer byproduct across Russia could hold the key to transforming the country's supply of rare earth metals, according to a co-founder of SkyGrad, a Moscow region-based company specializing in rare earth metals development.
Those mounds contain about 300 billion tonnes of phosphogypsum — an industrial waste particularly rich in the rare earth metals needed for advanced technologies such as those used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and military systems.
The challenge for companies such as SkyGrad is to find ways to extract and process the metals in sufficient quantities to chip away at China's near-monopoly on global supply.
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As such, Russia commands only a fraction of the market. Although the country holds the fourth-largest reserves of rare earths — behind China, Brazil and Vietnam, according to U.S. Geological Survey data — it produces very little of the refined metals. Because rare earths occur in low concentrations, they require a lengthy separation and purification process. China produced 120,000 tonnes of rare earth oxides in 2018, compared to Russia's 2,600 tonnes.
"Nations such as the United States, Morocco, and Russia have enough rare earths in their phosphates to make any [amount] of them ... independent of Chinese supply," said Jack Lifton, a senior fellow at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in the U.S. "The problem outside of China is the lack of a total supply chain in any country but China to produce rare earth-enabled products."
Yuri Sobol, who founded SkyGrad with fellow ex-military scientist Alexey Abramov in 1995, believes that the company can soon raise Russia's rare earths output through a combination of cutting-edge technology, partnerships and a new network of processing facilities.
SkyGrad is already developing extraction technology and is the only company in the country using technology to separate the metals from concentrate in industrial quantities, and doing so cost-effectively, according to its co-founder. "We are the leaders in the field of rare earth separation ... so we are talking with many companies," Sobol said in an interview at the company's headquarters in the formerly closed city of Korolyov, once home to rocket manufacturing for the military and the Soviet space program.

Expansion mode
SkyGrad processes about 120 tonnes of rare earth-containing concentrate from OJSC Solikamsk Magnesium Works at its facility on the outskirts of Korolyov and will start building two plants later this year or early in 2020 in Voskresensk, a town southeast of Moscow, to produce its own concentrate from phosphogypsum.
One of the plants in Voskresensk will produce a concentrate of rare earths and purified phosphogypsum, while the other will produce gypsum binder used in building materials. The second plant, which SkyGrad is due to purchase from China in the coming months, will have a planned annual capacity of 50,000 tonnes of purified phosphogypsum, Sobol said. Solikamsk's concentrate primarily contains metals that fall within the light group of rare earths, which can be used for consumer electronics. The phosphogypsum dumps that SkyGrad plans to exploit contain much more of the heavy rare earths, with uses including clean energy and electric vehicle technologies.
Among its other plans, SkyGrad is looking to build a larger plant in the Moscow region in 2020, which would be used to separate concentrate from a network of eight new phosphogypsum-processing facilities nationwide.
Ultimately, SkyGrad wants to process as much as 3 million tonnes of phosphogypsum across eight regions, potentially yielding 10,000 tonnes of concentrate per year, according to Sobol. It could take 20 to 30 years to produce between 6,000 tonnes and 8,000 tonnes of concentrate per annum, though.
Potential edge
Among the local companies looking to work with SkyGrad is JSC Uralchem. In June, the potash producer and SkyGrad agreed to work together to clean up the so-called "White Mountain" phosphogypsum dump outside Voskresensk.
This may help SkyGrad get an edge on China, according to Sobol. "We have US$10 of profit from every tonne of gypsum. China does not have any phosphogypsum dumps with rare earth elements," and so must mine its rare earth minerals.
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| The "White Mountain" of phosphogypsum near Voskresensk in Moscow Oblast. Source: Uralchem |
The importance of rare earths to Russia is not lost on President Vladimir Putin, whose ministries have provided funding for the sector that had all but disappeared in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
In August, Putin passed a bill to reduce the national mineral extraction tax to 4.8% from 8% for rare earths. Speaking at the State Duma, the government's lower house, before the bill's approval, Yevgeny Kiselyov, head of Russia's Federal Agency for Mineral Resources, cited state plans to invest 40 billion rubles in rare metal and rare earth projects.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade said in an email that the government is formulating a new policy for rare earth development, including global expansion targets, which will run to 2035.
As for SkyGrad's own strategy, Sobol is expecting a growing market for its rare earths in Japan and South Korea, though Russia will be its primary focus.
As of Oct. 7, US$1 was equivalent to 64.84 Russian rubles.


