Privately held Rare Earths Norway has approved construction of a 24 million euro (about C$38 million) pilot plant in an existing industrial building at Ulefoss, about 160 km southwest of Oslo, to test processing of material from the Fen carbonatite complex. The plant is scheduled to start operating in the third quarter of 2027 and, under the pilot application published by Norway’s Environment Agency in March, would process about 6,000 tonnes of ore over three years to optimise concentrate production and validate the route from ore to separated rare earth oxides for permanent magnets.
Funding includes 5.4 million euros from Innovation Norway and 1.9 million euros from the Telemark Development Fund, with EIT RawMaterials involved in the project; other contributions were not specified. Chief executive Havard Moe presented the decision in Torino alongside EIT RawMaterials, framing the plant as the demonstration step for a deposit the company aims to bring into commercial extraction in the early 2030s.
Fen’s scale is not in doubt. A resource update in March outlined 123 million indicated tonnes grading 1.35 percent total rare earth oxides, containing about 1.7 million tonnes of oxides, plus a much larger inferred inventory. What is unproven is everything after geology: the metallurgy, the underground mine design, where the company has increased the protective rock cover above underground openings from 25 metres to 100 metres, and the permits. Norway’s government took over the zoning process in April on national interest grounds, with the state led plan intended to fix the locations of the mine, plant, tailings and infrastructure by 2028 at the latest. The pilot plant runs in parallel with that process, which means Fen’s critical path is now as much regulatory as technical.