User:Edvardd/sandbox - Wikipedia

Pini Althaus is a business executive with over 20 years of experience in the mining and critical minerals sector. He is the founder of USA Rare Earth, where he played a key role in developing the Round Top project.^[1]

Pini Althaus was born in Melbourne, Australia, and comes from a Chassidic Lubavitcher background with strong ties to Jewish tradition. His early education and career development set the stage for his involvement in the mining and critical minerals sector, where he has held executive roles for over 20 years.^[2]

Pini Althaus is a business executive with extensive experience in the mining and critical minerals industry. He is the founder and former CEO of USA Rare Earth, a company he co-founded in 2019.^[3] Under his leadership, USA Rare Earth advanced the Round Top Mountain project in Texas, which is recognized for its significant deposits of heavy rare earth elements, lithium, and gallium.^[4] The Round Top project has been identified as an important initiative in establishing a domestic supply chain for critical minerals in the United States.^[5]

During his tenure as CEO, USA Rare Earth launched the first rare earth and critical minerals processing facility in North America, located in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. This facility is capable of separating all rare earths into individual oxides and processing other materials found in rare earth deposits, including contained radioactive materials and lithium.^[6] Additionally, under Althaus's leadership, technology development was implemented to optimize processing at the Round Top deposit, enabling USA Rare Earth to process third-party materials, thereby reducing the necessity of sending these materials to China for final separation.^[7]

Althaus also oversaw the acquisition of the only neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) permanent magnet manufacturing system in the Americas, formerly owned and operated by Hitachi Metals America Ltd. in North Carolina.^[8] This NdFeB magnet plant, which can produce 2,500 tonnes per year, is currently being reestablished in a new $100 million facility in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with plans for potential scaling.^[9]

Beyond his work with USA Rare Earth, Althaus has been involved in several other business ventures. He co-founded Dominion Minerals Corporation, which made significant discoveries in Panama, and Cove Capital, a company focused on the mining and critical minerals industry.^[10]

One of Althaus's major projects is his work in Kazakhstan, where he is the managing partner of Cove Capital. Through Kaz Critical Minerals LLP, a subsidiary fully owned by Cove Capital's portfolio company Kaz Resources LLC, Althaus is leading efforts to explore and develop rare earth elements and critical minerals.^[11] Kaz Resources LLC has been granted 11 licenses for projects originally developed during the Soviet era. These projects contain lithium, tantalum, beryllium, niobium, cesium, rubidium, and tin, along with rare earth elements.^[12]

A key project under Althaus's leadership is the Akbulak rare earth project in the Kostanay region, a joint venture with the Kazakhstan state-owned mining company Tau-Ken Samruk. Preliminary studies have indicated the potential for a significant deposit of rare earth metals, estimated at around 380,000 tons.^[13]

Cove Capital LLC has also signed an agreement with Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund, Samruk Kazyna, to collaborate on developing Kazakhstan’s critical minerals supply chain. This collaboration is part of a broader strategy to establish a vertically integrated supply chain for critical minerals within Kazakhstan, including the potential construction of a centralized processing facility, potentially costing around $500 million, to reduce reliance on exporting these minerals to China.^[14]