Pentagon offers $400m loan for Australian scandium mine

The Pentagon has announced a $400 million conditional loan commitment to Sunrise Energy Metals to build a proposed scandium mine in New South Wales, Australia.

Sunrise said the Syerston project in Fifield, about 450 kilometres west of Sydney, would be the world's first primary mine for scandium, a rare earth used in defence, aircraft and data centres. Scandium is usually obtained as a byproduct of other mining.

“We aim to establish Syerston as a cornerstone of Western scandium supply,” Sunrise chairman Robert Friedland said in a statement.

The Pentagon said the project would “ensure Western alignment from mine to finished product”. The announcement was made at a meeting between President Donald Trump and mining executives in Washington.

China dominates scandium supply and processing and restricted exports of scandium for defence products last year. Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical minerals agreement in October that pledged $1 billion in project investment from each country.

Sunrise reached a deal last year to sell Lockheed Martin 25 percent of its scandium output for the first five years of the mine. Friedland said the company would make an announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange on Monday.