en.Wedoany.com Reported - Pensana Plc (LSE: PRE), a rare earth development company headquartered in London, UK, announced on June 9, 2026, that the main construction of its Longonjo Rare Earth Mine in central Angola has reached 22% completion, with cumulative expenditure of $36 million against a total project budget of $250 million. The first batch of Mixed Rare Earth Carbonate (MREC) products is planned to commence production in 2027. Pensana CEO Tim George stated that detailed design is progressing smoothly, significantly minimizing the risk of potential capital overruns.
Pensana is a rare earth exploration, mining, and processing company headquartered in London, UK, founded in 2019, with operations covering both mining and downstream separation processing. Its flagship assets include the Longonjo NdPr Project and the Coola Exploration Project in Huambo Province, Angola, approximately 300 km from the Atlantic port of Lobito, as well as a rare earth oxide processing center at the Saltend Chemicals Park in Hull, Yorkshire, UK. According to Pensana's JORC-compliant ore reserve report, the Longonjo project has total proven and probable reserves of 21.54 million tonnes, including 139,457 tonnes of neodymium praseodymium oxide, with a mine life exceeding 20 years. The project adopts open-pit mining with a designed annual processing capacity of 800,000 tonnes of raw ore, and a tailings-to-ore stripping ratio of only 0.25. Pensana is also concurrently advancing drilling at the Coola Exploration Project to verify whether the area contains high-grade deposits that could extend the raw material supply for the Longonjo processing plant.
In terms of production capacity planning, Phase I of the Longonjo mine is designed to produce 20,000 tonnes per year of high-purity mixed rare earth carbonate, expandable to 40,000 tonnes per year by the fourth year. The mine is adjacent to the Lobito railway corridor, and products will be transported 273 km by rail to the Port of Lobito for export. Notably, the project specifically includes a heavy rare earth recovery circuit targeting an annual output of over 122 tonnes of dysprosium and terbium, positioning it to become one of the largest heavy rare earth producers in the Western world. The project's funding structure comprises a $165 million strategic investment from Cascade Natural Resources as the equity base, along with $160 million in debt financing from ABSA, guaranteed by the US Export-Import Bank (US EXIM) with political and commercial risk insurance. Offtake agreements cover Toyota Tsusho, US-based ReElement Technologies, and the German-American joint venture VAC/eVAC Magnetics, reaching automaker customers including Tesla, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW.
Currently, all major earthworks and test piling at the project site have been completed, the concrete batching plant is operational, and manufacturing of long-lead process equipment is progressing as planned, with approximately $135 million in total capital expenditure formally committed through procurement. Pensana expects the next 12 months to represent the peak period of main construction intensity and is preparing for a Nasdaq listing to broaden access to the US capital market. As the first production milestone approaches, the Longonjo project is poised to provide a critical raw material source for Western electric vehicle and wind turbine permanent magnet motor supply chains, offering an alternative to China.
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