American Resources Corp. (AREC) has entered into a bond purchase agreement with Hilltop Securities, Inc., for the sale of the West Virginia Economic Development Authority (WVEDA) preliminarily approved issuance of, and a volume cap allocation for, $45 million of private activity, Solid Waste Disposal Facility Revenue Bonds, Series 2023, for the company’s Wyoming County Coal (WCC) complex, located near the town of Oceana, W. Va., USA.
“To have achieved this important milestone for our Wyoming County complex and our ReElement Technologies division is a monumental moment for our company and the industry,” said Kirk Taylor, CFO of AREC. “This funding enables us to efficiently modernize and transform the complex to be the first in the industry to process for both carbon and rare earth and critical battery mineral concentrates. The planned transformation will expand the footprint of the complex to incorporate higher efficiency carbon processing and logistics infrastructure, while also broadening its resource potential to capture and process critical and rare earth elements. These improvements, which use our innovative suite of intellectual property, will allow us to produce the raw materials needed to support modern infrastructure and the growth of electrification and clean technologies in the most environmentally safe ways.”
The WCC complex is strategically located within one of the last substantial mid-volatile metallurgical carbon deposits and, with direct rail access, provides favorable transportation logistics to U.S. ports. Additionally, WCC is surrounded by a number of high-value metallurgical carbon reserves and mining sites that would otherwise be considered “stranded” without access to the WCC processing and logistics complex.
The company’s focus will initially be to bring two new underground mines into production, which will produce an estimated 55,000 tons of carbon per month, with further expansion potential as the mines are developed. AREC will also look to upgrade and expand WCC’s carbon processing plant’s capacity from its current 350 tons per hour (tph), to approximately 700 tph, while also incorporating the company’s innovative “capture” and “process” technology, which will enable the facility to capture and process critical and REE from new carbon production and carbon-based waste sources to produce rare earth and critical element concentrates. The REE and CE concentrates produced will be transported to the company’s ReElement Technologies refining facility in Indiana for further separation and purification into forms needed for the manufacturing of modern goods and technologies.