Lynas Corporation, Ltd. is an Australian rare earths mining company, listed on the Australian Securities Exchange

Australian Securities Exchange

The Australian Securities Exchange was created by the merger of the Australian Stock Exchange and the Sydney Futures Exchange in July 2006. It is the primary stock exchange group in Australia....

 as a S&P/ASX 200

S&P/ASX 200

The S&P/ASX 200 index is a market-capitalization weighted and float-adjusted stock market index of Australian stocks listed on the Australian Securities Exchange from Standard & Poor's...

 company. It has two major operations: a mining and concentration plant at Mount Weld

Mount Weld

Mount Weld is a mountain and a mine site in Western Australia, located about 30 km south of Laverton and 120 km east of Leonora. It ranks as one of the richest major rare earth deposits in the world....

, Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

, and a refining facility now under construction at Kuantan

Kuantan

Kuantan is the state capital of Pahang, the 3rd largest state in Malaysia. It is situated near the mouth of the Kuantan River and faces the South China Sea. If one measures the distance along the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, it is located roughly halfway between Singapore and Kota Bharu...

, Malaysia.

History

The company was founded in 1983 as Yilgangi Gold NL The company took on the Lynas name in 1985. It became publicly listed in 1986 on the ASX. In 2001, it sold off its gold division and focused on rare earths.

Lynas was founded by Nicholas Curtis, a former executive director at Macquarie Group

Macquarie Group

Macquarie Group Limited is a global investment banking and diversified financial services group, providing banking, financial, advisory, investment and funds management services to institutional, corporate and retail clients and counterparties around the world...

 Ltd.

Mount Weld

The production at Mount Weld is intended both to be sold directly to other countries for further refining, and to act as a feed stock for the company's facility, under construction in Malaysia.

In November 2010, it signed an agreement with the Japanese rare earths trading company Sojitz

Sojitz

is a trading corporation based in Tokyo, Japan. It operates in many industries, including construction, forestry, plastics, chemicals, mining, petroleum, textiles, and international trade. Sojitz also participates in joint ventures with foreign companies in Japan....

 to export $350 million worth of rare earth minerals from its mine in Mount Weld.

Kuantan

The plant at Kuantan is being built with extensive subsidy from the Malaysian government, with "pioneer" status including a 12-year tax exemption.
The ore processing will yield considerable amounts of thorium-containing tailings. The concerns storage and the further safety of this radiative material fueled some protests in Malaysia in 2011.

Crown deposit

In April 2011, Lynas was attempting to sell its Crown polymetallic deposit at Mount Weld to Forge Resources. Forge, a company listed on the ASX, also shares the one and only common Director and CEO of Lynas, Nicholas Curtis, although former Lynas executive director Harry Wang is also involved with Forge and the transaction. In a 2007 Company presentation, Lynas claimed that the Crown deposit was worth $50 billion (according to page 17 of their 2007 Annual report) but have valued it at $20.7 million for sale to Forge. Curtis as a director of Forge would receive a 24,000,000 performance shares if the deal between Lynas and Forge proceeds. Certain commentators and journalists have called into question the regulatory oversight of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) as to the legality of such a proposal.

Lynas shareholders were set to meet at an Extraordinary General Meeting to decide whether such a transaction should proceed.