In a letter to shareholders, Texas Rare Earth Resources CEO Dan Gorski admitted that due to difficult capital markets in 2015, the company was caused to scale back its process and development work originally planned for the past year. Still, he stressed that the company has made technical progress with is K-Tech rare earth separation process, and that the company plans to fulfill its contract with the US Defense Logistics Agency.

TRER, through REETech, plans to fulfill the contract with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) to produce highly refined samples of yttrium, ytterbium and another unnamed element. In view of the fact that ion exchange is the preferred method of making highly refined rare earth oxides (99.999% and 99.9999%) we believe that completion of the DLA contract will give REETech a chance to serve the market for these high purity products. Contingent on satisfying this contract and on arranging the necessary financing, we plan to construct and operate a pilot plant to make the entire suite of separated rare earth products.
In an otherwise challenging commodities environment, the DLA contract is a sign that Round Top rare earths could well meet critical demand, adding national security considerations to our commercial potential. With the closure of Molycorp’s operations, which even at peak production did not address strategic heavy rare earths demand, the U.S. is once more 100% dependent on Chinese supply. In 2016, we will continue to make Round Top’s potential as a reliable domestic source of critical rare earths known to relevant federal officials in the executive and legislative branches, as well as key state officials in Texas.
Again, contingent on arranging the requisite financing, we plan to conduct a series of column leach tests to optimize recoveries of the rare earth elements and also the various by-products present in the leach solution. We believe these so-called by-products are now important enough to be considered as co-products. In order to stress their importance and to more accurately reflect the expanded scope of our final products we are proposing to change the name of the company to Texas Mineral Resources Corp.
Work on processing the primary leach solution to separate the fertilizer and industrial sulfates is presently being carried out in the Geology Department labs at University of Texas at El Paso under the supervision of one of our directors, Dr. Pingitore.