(Reuters) -Rare earths miner MP Materials posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday and said it has started refining small amounts of the strategic metals in California.
A wheel loader operator fills a truck with ore at the MP Materials rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, U.S. January 30, 2020.
China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of rare earths and rare earth magnets.
For the past three years, MP has processed rock that it extracts from its California mine into rare earths concentrate.
That concentrate is sent to Chinese partners where it is further processed into neodymium and other rare earth metals used to make magnets.
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California, Pass , California, U.S, China, Las Vegas