Excellent. Welcome everyone to the second session, Diggers and Dealers, Day Two. My name's Tim Hoff. I'm a Senior Mining Analyst at Canaccord Genuity. First up, we have Alex Logan, General Manager of Development at Lynas Rare Earths. He joined Lynas Rare Earths in 2012 and recently led the $570 million Mount Weld expansion, from project design through to construction and commissioning. Alex is an alumni with a background in chemistry and extractive metallurgy.
Thanks, Tim. Morning everyone. I've got the great privilege to be here today at Diggers, representing Lynas and here to tell you a bit about what we've been up to, where we're heading, and a little bit about the rare earths market, which is entering a very, very exciting phase. Disclaimer. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners on the lands on which we live, work, and meet, in particular our Aboriginal employees, traditional owners, and business partners across our assets, some of whom are here today. In 2019, we announced our Lynas 2025 strategy, which was to expand our production capacity, expand our product range, and diversify our footprints. Here in Diggers in 2022, Amanda announced the Mount Weld expansion. We have largely completed the investment phase of the Lynas 2025 plan.
We've built two new plants in the Goldfields, including the Kalgoorlie Rare Earths Processing Facility, which some of you may have seen on your way here to Diggers this week, and the Mount Weld expansion in Laverton. We've completed an efficient expansion of our refinery in Malaysia, including new facilities for solvent extraction, product finishing to lift our capacity to 10,500 tons of NdPr per annum, the processing of Mixed Rare Carbonate, and new circuits to allow the production of separated heavy rare earths. This makes Lynas the only producer of separated heavy rare earths outside of China today. In total, over $1.5 billion has been invested in the last five years, with most of that here in the Goldfields.
It was an ambitious agenda, and as 2025 marks the end of the investment phase, we're starting to see the benefits of this plan materialize, including record production last quarter. As we move into 2026, our task is to consolidate those benefits and deliver a return on capital for our shareholders. The timing is excellent. The assets are on the ground. We are a proven and capable supplier of rare earth materials at a time where the market is undergoing rapid change and rapid growth. With the completion of the Lynas 2025 plan, we have a different business today, match fit for the next decade. For those that have been to Mount Weld, we often have visitors say, "Is that it? It looks like a pilot plant." It pretty much has been. The reason for that is Mount Weld is very high grade.
For over a decade, Mount Weld has been providing a significant component of the Western world's feedstock for rare earths. When I started at Lynas 13 years ago, Mount Weld looked like this. We had a tiny mine, and there was scrub growing at the bottom of the pit because we campaign mine. We had eight years between the first and the second mining campaign. We had this great resource, but really only knew how to process the very high-grade material and had limited understanding of the geology and the mineralogy of the deposit. We dosed our chemicals and reagents via IBCs, and crushing was done with an excavator with a screening bucket attached. Our water balance and tailings management was a challenge, and our people were tenants at the Granny Smith Gold Mine camp, which we're very grateful for at the time.
We've learned a lot over the last decade, and the old plant has served with distinction, but now is the time to move to the next phase in the Lynas journey. This is Mount Weld today. At Diggers three years ago, Amanda stood on this stage announcing the Mount Weld expansion. At three years from FID, we've executed the Mount Weld expansion on time and within budget, whilst keeping production going from the existing facility. Whilst we call it an expansion, it is essentially building a new plant with some existing assets repurposed where it made sense. Construction and commissioning has been staged, with many circuits already in operation or commissioned, and first production of the new mills on track for this quarter. As everyone in the room knows, the value starts in the ground, and Mount Weld truly is a world-class deposit: high grade, long life, close to surface.
Last year, we announced the mineral resource and reserve update, and just as a recap, the mineral reserve is sitting at 32 million tons at 6.4% total REO, supporting a mine life of over 20 years at the expanded rates. Mount Weld is not just a light rare earth deposit. We do have heavies and significant quantities, with over 12,000 tons of dysprosium oxide contained in the ore reserve. The mineral resource is over 100 million tons at over 4% total REO. The Mount Weld deposit has provided Lynas the confidence to invest in growth capacity right across the value chain, as well as providing confidence to our customers of an assured supply of rare earths over the long term. We have set up Mount Weld for the next 20 years, with increased capacity, enhanced efficiency, and improved sustainability.
The Mount Weld expansion delivers a step change in production capacity, with a four-fold increase in throughput capacity to 1.3 million tons per annum, so still fairly small volumes because of the grade, and the ability to deliver feedstock to support 12,000 tons per annum of NdPr finished product. We actually have a crusher now, allowing us to move away from that high-cost mobile crushing. The concentrate dewatering circuit was the actual bottleneck of Mount Weld, so we took a deliberate strategy to build that circuit first, and the photo up on the top left ties that into the existing operation while we built the balance of plants. That dewatering circuit has been operating for all of calendar year 2025, and that allowed us to step up production to support processing at both the Kalgoorlie Rare Earths Processing Facility as well as our plant in Malaysia.
The baby ball mill has gone, and we've replaced it with a SAG and ball mill. That gives us the flexibility to ramp up throughputs and process a wider range of ore types. The mills are undergoing commissioning as we speak, and as I said, production is on track for this quarter from the new facility. We've had the rare opportunity to apply a decade of operating experience and learnings into the new plant at Mount Weld, so we looked to take full advantage of that. We've put new circuits with improved technology, including a regrind mill, which is the one on the left. That allows us to improve the liberation of the very fine rare earth materials and the latest generation high shear flotation cells to improve fine particle recovery.
We've designed in flexibility to process the wide range of ore types, including apatite-rich ores, and these new circuits allow us to process tailings that were not recovered in the high-grade early years of operation through the mill this time. The plant's much more automated, and we're able to capture process and labor efficiencies with this investment. We have made a substantive investment in sustainability initiatives as part of this expansion. We're no longer burning diesel for power. A gas-fueled hybrid renewable power station will replace the existing diesel power station and provide reliable baseload power, but deliver about 70% average renewable energy penetration when online. Once fully operational, this power facility does provide us a lower unit cost of power and reduce our emissions intensity.
With our partner Zenith, the power station has been staged, the gas baseload and solar farm are operational, and two of the four wind turbines are installed. The wind's on track to be online by the new year. Water is very precious at Mount Weld. Sometimes we say it's rarer than rare earths at Mount Weld, and our process is very sensitive to water quality. With this expansion, we've invested a significant amount of that investment capital into water sustainability initiatives. We've built a high recovery bore water RO plant and also a state-of-the-art recycle water facility which processes water from our tailings dams and delivers over 90% recovery. That's been over five years in development. It's quite a high-tech Gen 4 design. It includes softening, lamella clarification, ion exchange, high pH, high RO, high pressure RO.
These sustainability initiatives establish the modern Mount Weld set for the next two decades. At Lynas Kalgoorlie, we have built and commissioned the plant and now are establishing an operating rhythm. Kalgoorlie is a core part of our business. It's fully integrated into operations and is essential to our growth story. As a mineral process engineer, plants like this get us really excited. Lots of chemicals, lots of complex processes, and lots of complex chemistry. The plant works, and now we're at the phase, like other assets and many people who run assets here, we are entering the continuous improvement phase, which doesn't have an end date. Our current focus is on stabilizing production at the higher run rates and improving Mixed Rare Earth Carbonate quality, which is important for efficient downstream processing.
We have experts from our Malaysian team working alongside our Kalgoorlie workforce, and that's been a real highlight in our business to watch that knowledge transfer from over a decade of operating these plants in Malaysia to our Kalgoorlie residential workforce. The Kalgoorlie facility is the first evidence of value add for rare earths in Australia, and that's aligned with the federal government's Future Made in Australia policy. Kalgoorlie can be a vibrant critical minerals hub with additional investment in infrastructure that allows participants to be successful. Reliable, low-cost power, access to gas and water, and cost-effective landside logistics are all essential for a vibrant critical minerals industry. Most critical minerals firms don't have the scale to build standalone infrastructure like the iron ore miners. Developing industrial hubs with common user infrastructure is essential for our industry and allows all firms the opportunity to be successful.
We look forward to the continued progress from government in this area. At Lynas Malaysia, we've completed a very cost-effective expansion, including facilities to receive and process Mixed Rare Earth Carbonate and an uplift in capacity to 10,500 tons of NdPr per annum through our solvent extraction and product finishing circuits, as well as a heavy rare earth separation facility. Lynas broke the monopoly of NdPr oxide production from China 10 years ago, and in the last few months, we've broken the Chinese monopoly of heavy rare earth separation with the successful on-spec production of separated dysprosium and terbium oxide. This is an incredible achievement, and our team is very proud to be the only commercial scale producer of separated heavy rare earths outside China today. We have a very low turnover of our people across our organization and across all levels, and that's allowed us to build institutional knowledge.
This knowledge has been built on expertise and commitment from our people, right from Senior Management through to operator level, and the ability to design, build, and then produce on-spec separated heavy rare earths in pretty much one go is a real-world example of that value of that institutional knowledge, and that's what we think sets us apart from larger businesses. Being able to produce separated heavy rare earths also gives us a competitive advantage and allows us to participate in markets where customers are less sensitive to price, including the electronics market and certain defense applications. In addition, it allows us to offer a different sales model to our customers, such as bundling dysprosium and terbium with NdPr to suit very specific magnet formulas for our customers. This is a very significant milestone for our business and one we're looking to further expand on.
Lynas now has two assets in the Goldfields, and we're very proud to have achieved 74% of our supplies from WA headquartered companies, something we've worked really hard on over the last few years, and that's across both our construction, procurement, and contracting strategies, as well as our operations. With the government commitment to support common user infrastructure here in Kalgoorlie, we do see excellent upside for Goldfields businesses to participate further in a flourishing critical minerals industry. We operate in a high-growth and dynamic market. We all know the EV growth story, but rare earths are essential to a range of technologies. Robotics, factory automation, and now humanoid robots are entering a transformation era, and we are starting to see this sector move the way that EVs and wind turbines did 10 years ago. Reliance on single-source supply chains is risky, and this is not unique to rare earths.
We saw the consequences of this during COVID, but the downstream rare earths supply chain and market is highly concentrated, and the consequences of that have played out on a global stage this year. I've been in rare earths for 13 years now, and during that time, there's been a lot of expectation about this growth in magnet maker capability outside of the incumbents, Japan and China, and that growth didn't really happen until today. New metal and magnet projects are in development across Korea, Vietnam, Europe, Canada, and the U.S. A vibrant outside China rare earths industry is emerging, and it's perhaps a little later than expected, but it is actually happening today. Recent policy initiatives by the U.S. government to establish a local supply chain are industry shaping, and they've turbocharged the already strong momentum on developing the rest of the world industry.
These initiatives by the U.S. Department of Defense are the most significant action from governments since the Japanese invested in Lynas in 2010, and further highlights that governments and OEMs are finally making tangible action to reduce exposure to single-source supply chains and monopoly markets. We're seeing a more vibrant rare earths industry in the rest of the world, and that's filtering through to increased demand from existing customers, OEMs, and new magnet makers. To have a vibrant rest of the world rare earths market, the participants need to be successful, sustainable businesses and able to compete in a global market. We at Lynas Rare Earths are very focused on building strategic partnerships with magnet makers and OEMs and provide a guaranteed supply of rare earth materials from mine through to magnet and motor.
This provides the OEMs the confidence to invest into magnet makers and magnet makers the confidence to invest and grow their business. We're working with new magnet participants across Korea, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the U.S. to establish these supply chains. This includes a recently signed MOU with Korean firm JS Link to build a magnet facility in Malaysia. In the last quarter, we achieved our highest average selling price since July 2022, a reflection of improved market pricing and a focus on a balanced customer portfolio. We're seeing opportunities to establish these supply agreements that are independent of the market index. This is particularly relevant for the heavy rare earths where we're able to participate in these markets outside of the automotive sector that are less price sensitive, such as the defense market and certain microcapacitor applications. It's a very exciting time for Lynas .
The market's growing, the rest of the world industry is finally being established, and Lynas is in an excellent position to capitalize. In closing, Lynas is at the tail end of an ambitious expansion with over $1.5 billion invested across our assets in the last five years. We're now well positioned to get a return on that capital in a growing and dynamic industry and further strengthening our position as the proven and reliable supplier of rare earths outside China. Despite a decade of operation, we remain a growth stock in a growth market. We have the resource, we have the low-cost assets, and the know-how to deliver. Thanks for your time.