Molycorp’s Expanded Heap Leach System Put into Service at Mountain Pass

Molycorp, Inc. (NYSE:MCP) has put its expanded leach system into service at its Mountain Pass facility in California. The expanded system is expected to “mitigate a major production bottleneck,” and to allow for a larger amount of rare earth production once fully operational.

As quoted in the press release:

Company officials said that improvements made to the Leach system include the installation of additional leach tanks, a proven technology to increase the system’s retention capacity. While operations of the new Leach system are expected to be limited in the near term due to constraints in onsite production and market availability of hydrochloric acid (HCl), Company officials said that the system expansion addresses one of the major production bottlenecks at Mountain Pass and is expected to boost rare earth production and lower operating costs once it is fully operational and sufficient supplies of HCl are available.

Molycorp president and CEO, Geoff Bedford, said:

Expanding our Leach system is a significant step in our efforts to increase rare earth production over the coming months at Mountain Pass and to continue to reduce our operating costs. We remain committed to meeting our customers’ needs by building a global, vertically integrated company that produces rare earth materials in an environmentally superior way and at a cost that is competitive with any other producer in the world.

Click here to read the Molycorp, Inc. (NYSE:MCP) press release