Lynas Corp <LYC.AX> on Friday said it has complied with Australian Securities Exchange's disclosure rules in response to an exchange letter asking the miner about its disclosures on the funding of a rare earths processing plant in the United States.
Questions from the ASX in a letter on May 27, according to Lynas' response, focused on disclosures about funding from the United States Department of Defence for the first stage of the development of its planned Blue Line heavy rare earths facility in Texas, and a subsequent pause in that funding.
Lynas notified the market on April 22 it had been chosen to receive the funding, and said it then became aware that the U.S. defence department had put the funding for the facility on hold on April 29. It said it did not immediately inform the market of the pause because it did not consider the news material.
It considered the funding arrangement temporarily paused and not withdrawn, it said. Lynas also said it had never been given a timeline for the funding to arrive, and that the cost of the plant would be only several million Australian dollars.
Reuters reported exclusively last week that the Pentagon had reversed its decision to fund two projects - one of which was Lynas' Texas project - to process rare earth minerals for military weapons.
The Phase 1 work for the project would at most cost A$2 million ($1.3 million), Lynas said, which it did not consider "to have a material effect on the price or value of its securities".
(Reporting by Anushka Trivedi in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue)
