Frontier Rare Earths Limited, a privately held Luxembourg-based mineral exploration and development company, said it had signed a Technology Supply Agreement with Carester SAS and a 7-year offtake agreement, renewable for a further 3 years, covering mixed heavy rare earth carbonate from its Zandkopsdrift magnet rare earths and battery-grade manganese project in South Africa. The group also said it had secured a $20m strategic equity investment from South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation to finance a definitive feasibility study, with work already under way and completion scheduled for the first half of 2027.
The company said Carester’s proprietary rare earth solvent extraction technology would be deployed at Zandkopsdrift to produce high-purity mixed neodymium and praseodymium oxide, and mixed heavy rare earth carbonate at the mine site. Under the offtake agreement, Carester will purchase the mixed heavy rare earth carbonate for separation at its facility in Lacq, southwest France, producing dysprosium and terbium oxides.
The announcement was made in Luxembourg on 5 February 2026.
Carester’s Lacq plant and western supply chains
Frontier said Carester was constructing a heavy rare earths separation plant and a rare earths recycling plant in Lacq, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, with operations scheduled to start in the fourth quarter of 2026. The plant is being developed with €216m of financial support from the French government, the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security and Iwatani Corporation.
Frontier said the Lacq facility would have production capacity of about 600 tonnes a year of dysprosium and terbium oxides and would be the largest heavy rare earth oxide separation plant in the western world, representing about 15% of current global production capacity.
The average annual production for the first 25 years at Zandkopsdrift was 3,038 tonnes a year of neodymium-praseodymium oxide. Frontier expects 114 tonnes a year of dysprosium oxide and 25 tonnes a year of terbium oxide would be recovered from the mixed heavy rare earth carbonate produced at Zandkopsdrift and separated by Carester at Lacq. At planned production rates, the company said Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves would support a mine life of more than 45 years.
Manganese by-product
Frontier added that an updated prefeasibility study completed in 2025 concluded Zandkopsdrift was expected to be the lowest-cost producer of battery-grade high purity manganese sulphate monohydrate globally and the lowest-cost producer of magnet rare earths outside China, after taking into account manganese by-product revenue credits.
The company estimated the net revenue contribution from battery-grade manganese sulphate monohydrate to cover about 90% of rare earth production costs, resulting in a net neodymium-equivalent production cost of less than $15 a kilogram. It compared this with a current neodymium price of more than $100 a kilogram.
The prefeasibility study also set out a planned annual battery-grade manganese sulphate monohydrate output of 96,000 tonnes. The company said Zandkopsdrift would be built in two phases, with phase 2 doubling phase 1 capacity.
Frontier added that the Zandkopsdrift was designated a Strategic Project under the European Union Critical Raw Materials Act in June 2025 and that it was the only Strategic Project in South Africa. Frontier shareholders in the Zandkopsdrift project include the Industrial Development Corporation, Korea Mine Rehabilitation and Mineral Resources Corporation, and South African Black Economic Empowerment shareholders.
