Lacaze backs taxpayer support for US battery metals giant

Lynas Rare Earths managing director Amanda Lacaze has backed a Morrison government decision to hand almost $5 million to US battery metal giant Ablemarle as it grapples with what to do with waste from a lithium hydroxide plant it is building in Western Australia.

Lynas received a grant of $14.3 million towards work on a $500 million project that includes building a rare earths cracking and leaching plant at Kalgoorlie.

Ms Lacaze said the grants had been allocated after a thorough application process and that Western governments were always cautious about picking winners and losers when it came to offering even modest support.

The company said the new process produced a higher purity rare earths carbonate that could feed both its existing Malaysia plant and a new heavy and light rare earths plant it is building in Texas with support of the US Department of Defense.

Ms Lacaze said Lynas remained on track to have the Kalgoorlie plant up and running by mid-2023 under a deadline set by Malaysian authorities to cease cracking and leaching and storing associated low-level radioactive waste in that country.

The Ablemarle project that is being part-funded by taxpayers involves building what the company is calling a lithium-aluminosilicate aggregate plant to process waste residue into a construction material.