Texas Mineral Resources and K-Technologies, Inc. Successfully Complete Rare Earth Strategic Materials Research Contract for the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency

• TMRC and K-Tech have produced specified rare earth elements to 99.999% purity, using continuous ion exchange and continuous ion chromatography
• Demonstration grant was awarded under BAA-DLASM-2105-01: National Defense Stockpile Research

Texas Mineral Resources Corp. (OTCQX: TMRC), an exploration company targeting the heavy rare earths and a variety of other high-value elements and industrial minerals, is pleased to announce that it has successfully completed a demonstration-of-concept project to separate and refine specific high-purity rare earth elements for the United States Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Strategic Materials Division in conjunction with its joint venture partner K-Technologies, Inc. (K-Tech).
In the bench scale demonstration, Texas Mineral Resources Corp. and K-Tech successfully separated specified high-value rare earths to between 99.996 and 99.999% purity, using static column systems designed to provide the general design concepts for ultimate use of continuous ion exchange (CIX) and continuous ion chromatography (CIC) systems at larger scales. The use of continuous systems may allow for larger scale production at reduced capital and operating costs when compared to previous fixed bed chromatographic methods or solvent extraction separation techniques.
The work was conducted under a DLA Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) research contract, awarded to the Company in September 2015. The Defense Logistics Agency is the Department of Defense’s largest logistics combat support agency, providing worldwide logistics support in both peacetime and wartime to the military services as well as several civilian agencies and foreign countries. The DLA Strategic Materials Division is charged with maintaining cognizance of worldwide strategic and critical material’s supply chain from the source to final assembly, evaluating the capability of these supply chains to support national defense and essential civilian industries, and developing mitigation solutions when access to materials are insufficient to provide support for national defense and emergency response.
“TMRC has now demonstrated that we can separate rare earth elements to ultra-high purity levels — and we can do it with feedstock sourced here in the United States, and separated here in the U.S. as well. We are prepared to assist the DLA and other U.S. government entities as they look to develop a secure source of critical materials,” said Dan Gorski, CEO.
The feedstock used in the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency demonstration was produced by leaching crushed rock from TMRC’s Round Top deposit near El Paso, Texas with dilute sulfuric acid.
A Single Critical Metals Supply Chain Strategy
Earlier this month, TMRC announced it has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a well-established privately-held Pennsylvania coal company. The MOU gives TMRC a six-month period of time to further evaluate the potential to finance, recover and produce scandium and other rare earth byproducts from their properties.
“Our high-purity demonstration with DLA, our development of Round Top and now our work to explore extracting high-value rare earths from coal ash and coal overburden are linked by a single strategy — they are all steps towards restoring a reliable and secure U.S. rare earths supply chain,” noted Anthony Marchese, Chairman of the TMRC Board of Directors. “Taken together, Round Top and our Pennsylvania coal venture position TMRC as a potential long-term domestic supplier of the full range of critical rare earths including scandium, as well as associated high value by-products such as uranium, lithium, and beryllium.”
About Texas Mineral Resources Corp.
Texas Mineral Resources Corp.’s primary focus is exploring and, if warranted, developing its Round Top heavy rare earth and industrial minerals project located in Hudspeth County, Texas, 85 miles east of El Paso. The Company’s common stock trades on the OTCQX U.S. tier under the symbol “TMRC.”
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including, but not limited to, statements regarding potential significant amounts of scandium and rare earth byproducts at the projects under the MOU, preliminary internal analysis of the economics of the project including potential processing rate, recovery rate, production rates, CAPEX estimates and estimates of pre-tax cash flow from the coal ash, potential synergies with the Company’s Round Top project, satisfactory completion of due diligence and execution of a definitive agreement over the projects covered by the MOU, the potential significance of the project as a domestic source of scandium and other similar statements. When used in this press release, the words “potential,” “indicate,” “expect,” “intend,” “hopes,” “believe,” “may,” “will,” “if, “anticipate,” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Such factors include, among others, risks related to the development of the coal ash and coal overburden projects, completion of more thorough economic analysis and feasibility studies, initial economics not accurately accounting for potential costs of mining, up-scaling of preliminary testing, risks related to changes in future operating costs and working capital balance, risks related to mining results not matching preliminary tests and risks related to the ability of TMRC to raise adequate working capital and continue as a going concern, as well as those factors discussed under the heading “Risk Factors” in the Company’s latest annual report on Form 10-K, as filed on November 30, 2015, and other documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements.