Rare earth elements sit at the center of nearly every advanced technology — electric motors, wind turbines, defense systems, semiconductors, and jet engines. The United States mines almost none of its own supply and refines even less. China controls the overwhelming majority of global rare earth processing capacity, and has repeatedly used export licensing for specific elements — including scandium, dysprosium, terbium, and yttrium — as a point of trade leverage. Recent years have made the risk of that dependency impossible to ignore.
At the same time, the United States and many other leading and important nations already have enormous, verifiable, underutilized domestic resources containing measurable concentrations of valuable rare earth elements, already sitting in inventory. RARE17 exists to unlock them economically, sustainably, and in an environmentally responsible way.
As we expand our feedstock pipeline, materials with different chemistry are assessed case by case:
RARE17’s patents pending proprietary process unlocks the glass matrix that traps rare earth elements inside REE-containing feedstock particles, without the high heat that makes conventional ore processing energy-intensive and capital-heavy. Under mild conditions, the rare earths are brought into solution, and a proprietary separation step recovers a scandium-enriched stream apart from the lanthanide elements before either moves into finishing.
A domestic, non-mined source of critical minerals at a moment of acute supply-chain urgency.
Sitting on ash, slag, residue, or tailings? It may be worth far more than you think.
Around the world, utilities, refiners, fertilizer producers, mines, and municipalities hold millions of tons of material that contains measurable rare earth elements, yet is treated as a liability. We know where these materials are, what they contain, and how their chemistry differs. RARE17 adapts its process to each feedstock. If you own or control any of the materials below, we want to hear from you.
United States: Coal ash ponds and landfills across Appalachia, the Illinois Basin, and the Powder River Basin; phosphogypsum stacks in Florida and Louisiana; bauxite residue along the Gulf Coast; acid mine drainage sludge in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky; steel slag and municipal incineration ash nationwide.
Canada and Latin America: Bauxite residue in Brazil, Jamaica, and Suriname; sugarcane bagasse ash in Brazil, Mexico, and the Caribbean; copper and polymetallic mine tailings in Chile and Peru; coal ash in Mexico, Colombia, and Canada.
Middle East and North Africa: Phosphogypsum from phosphate and fertilizer producers in Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia; bauxite residue from alumina refining in Saudi Arabia and the UAE; waste-to-energy incineration ash in the UAE and Qatar; date palm and agricultural biomass ash across the Gulf; coal ash in Morocco, Israel, and Türkiye.
Former Soviet Union: Vast coal ash deposits in Kazakhstan and Ukraine; bauxite residue from alumina refining in Kazakhstan and Ukraine; phosphogypsum in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan; legacy mining and processing tailings across Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Asia-Pacific and Europe: Coal fly ash in India, Indonesia, and Australia; red mud, slag, and incineration ash across Europe.
How it works:
Tell us what you have: material type, location, approximate tonnage, and any assay data.
We review it under a mutual NDA.
We test a sample of your material to confirm recovery.
Together we choose the right commercial path: licensing, joint venture, or offtake.
You know your material. We know what may be locked inside it. Tell us what you have, and we’ll show you what it could be worth.