Intro.
It wasn’t too long ago that I posted about the under-the-radar rare earth stock REalloys (ALOY). (click here ! to read about it)
Even before the dust has settled, there is another news article on ALOY with a bit more in-depth delve into its value chain that will come into prominence in time to come, something I strongly believe.
Afterall, wasn’t it Mr Buffett who mentioned many times over - "Never invest in a business you cannot understand" no ?
Hope you will enjoy the below verbatim deep-dive.
Where is Cleveland, Ohio, Euclid ?
In Euclid, Ohio, just outside Cleveland, sits a facility that most people would drive right past without a second look. (see above)
Inside that facility, work is being done that could reshape America’s position in one of the most critical supply chain battles of modern times.
The company behind this work is $REALLOYS INC(ALOY)$.
They are responsible for turning rare earth oxides into the defense-grade metals and alloys that go into the permanent magnets found in everything from fighter jets to missile guidance systems.
ALOY does not have the name recognition of the billion-dollar rare earth miners that tend to get most of the attention.
The rare earth problem facing the West has never really been about mining.
Rather it's about what happens after the material comes out of the ground and that's where ALOY operates.
The company’s Euclid facility, built on more than 40 years of specialty metals expertise, is currently the only site in North America with a proven track record of delivering heavy rare earth metals, alloys, and magnets to US government and commercial partners.
It has existing contracts with:
-
The Department of Defense (DoD).
-
The Department of Energy (DoE).
-
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
ALOY anchors a vertically integrated supply chain that they built from mine to finished magnet, all of it designed to operate without any critical reliance on China.
Why ALOY Matters.
To understand why this facility matters, one has to appreciate & understand a problem that most of the rare earth conversation gets wrong.
Rare earths are not actually rare. They exist in mineable quantities across Canada, the United States, Brazil, Greenland, and elsewhere.
The main issue is that the West handed over its rare earth processing capability to China roughly 40 years ago, and China now controls approximately 90% of global rare earth refining and magnet production.
That means virtually every rare earth magnet in Western defense systems, vehicles, and industrial equipment traces back to Chinese processing.
Missing In Action.
The part of the supply chain that’s missing in the West is not the mine.
It’s the processing - a series of technically demanding steps where raw materials:
-
Gets separated into individual rare earth elements.
-
Converted into high-purity metals at extreme temperatures.
-
Alloyed to precise specifications for use in magnets.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has identified this metallization step as the least developed and most difficult capability to rebuild outside China.
It requires deep, accumulated operating expertise that takes years to develop and cannot simply be purchased.
That is the gap that ALOY’s’ Euclid facility was designed to fill.
While most Western rare earth companies remain focused on mining or early-stage separation, ALOY handles the conversion step that CSIS identifies as the hardest to rebuild.
Oxide goes in. Defense-grade metal and alloy come out, where the chemistry is held to tolerances that defense and industrial customers consistently require.
ALOY, Head of R&D, Andy Sherman has iterated:
-
ALOY’s objective is not to compete with mining.
-
It’s to make mining matter.
-
Without the ability to convert raw material into qualified, usable inputs, all the mining in the world does not reduce dependence on China by a single percentage point.
What ALOY Built ?
ALOY stands out in this space not because of one facility or one partnership.
It is because the company has assembled an end-to-end supply chain that covers every stage from raw feedstock to finished magnet, that is something that simply does not exist at a comparable scale anywhere else in North America.
Upstream.
The company owns the Hoidas Lake rare earth project in Saskatchewan and has secured feedstock agreements with partners in Kazakhstan, Brazil, and Greenland, giving it access to diversified, non-Chinese sources of raw material.
Midstream.
ALOY has partnered with the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC), that has built a Rare Earth Processing Facility in Saskatoon designed from the ground up to operate without any reliance on Chinese technology, equipment, or critical consumables.
They hold an exclusive 80% offtake on the facility’s production, which is targeting first commercial output in late 2026 to early 2027.
At full capacity, the facility is expected to produce approximately:
-
525 tonnes per year of neodymium-praseodymium metal.
-
Roughly 30 tonnes of dysprosium oxide.
-
15 tonnes of terbium oxide,
This makes it the largest source of heavy rare earth oxides outside China.
What Else ?
Another thing worth mention about the SRC facility is the technology behind it.
When China blocked the export of rare earth processing technology in 2020, SRC designed and built its own systems from scratch.
Result.
The processing facility is an AI-driven operation that runs the entire separation process with 6 people (only).
This compared to the roughly 80 workers a comparable Chinese facility would require.
The AI system monitors approximately 5,000 data points on a millisecond basis.
According to SRC, it produces higher-purity metals with greater efficiency than conventional methods.
Downstream.
This is where The Euclid, I first mention at the start of the post comes into the picture.
The Ohio facility takes the refined materials and converts them into metals, alloys, and magnets that defense and industrial customers actually use.
The expertise behind that operation spans over 30 years of applied development in specialty metals, including 10 years of focused collaboration with (a) US national laboratories and (b) the Defense Logistics Agency.
ALOY acquired the capability through PMT Critical Metals, a company that brings with it not just equipment and infrastructure, but decades of accumulated process knowledge that cannot be easily replicated.
Knowledge Matters More Than Capital
One of the things that makes the rare earth space different from most industries is that the primary barrier to entry is not money. It’s time and expertise.
Defense and industrial customers don’t simply buy rare earth metals on the open market.
They qualify specific suppliers through a rigorous, multi-year process in which material is tested, incorporated into components, stressed, retested, and evaluated again after changes in scale.
Any variation in chemistry, microstructure, or processing conditions can reset the clock entirely.
Once a supplier is qualified and integrated into a program, switching can be a technical and regulatory undertaking that nobody takes on lightly.
This creates a competitive dynamic very different from most markets.
Companies that get qualified first tend to stay qualified, because defense platforms are designed to operate for decades, and suppliers are chosen early and rarely replaced.
Each successfully qualified alloy then both adds revenue and reduces the friction and time required to qualify for the next program, creating a compounding advantage over time.
ALOY’s Euclid facility has already crossed the most important threshold:
-
It has demonstrated that it can produce rare earth metals and alloys domestically to the specifications that real customers require.
-
The hardest part, proving the process, has already been done.
Now it's about (1) expanding capacity and (2) locking in long-duration programs where material supply is committed for years.
To be a worthy competitor, catching up would mean simultaneously:
-
Secure non-Chinese feedstock.
-
Build commercial-scale separation capability.
-
Develop metallization technology.
-
Complete the multi-year qualification process with defense customers.
Industry estimates suggest a minimum timeline of 3 to 7 years for a credible challenger, under the assumption that potential challenger has strong execution and significant capital.
And even then, ALOY could already be locked into the programs that matter most.
The 2027 Deadline
The timing of all this is not accidental.
On 01 Jan 2027, updated US defense procurement rules under DFARS will take effect that will restrict the use of Chinese-origin rare earth materials in qualifying weapons systems.
The restrictions extend across the full supply chain, from mining and refining through separation, melting, and production.
The deadline creates an immediate, concrete need for domestically sourced, defense-compliant rare earth metals and magnets.
Every contractor currently relying on Chinese-sourced materials will need a qualified alternative.
The list of available companies that can deliver compliant heavy rare earth material by that date will be extremely short.
The Good news !
ALOY appears to be the only company that can actually take heavy rare earth oxides all the way to finished metals for magnets in North America ahead of the 01 Jan 2027 deadline.
Phase 1 production (thru the SRC partnership) has been timed to align with the regulatory shift, and the Euclid facility already has the operational foundation to process that material into defense-grade output.
Phase 2 plans call for significantly larger capacity later in this decade (2020 - 2029).
This include, yearly capacity of :
-
Approximately 200 tonnes dysprosium metal, up from current 30 tonnes, a +666.67% output increase.
-
45 tonnes of terbium metal, up from current 15 tonnes, a +300% output increase.
-
Up to 20,000 tonnes of heavy rare earth permanent magnets.
If ALOY is able to produce at that scale, it would go from being a critical niche supplier to one of the biggest rare earth producers outside China.
ALOY’s Backers & People.
The credibility of any company making above kinds of claims ultimately comes down to (a) who’s backing it and (b) who’s involved.
On that front, ALOY has assembled a roster that’s hard to dismiss.
The Backers.
-
The US Export-Import Bank has issued a $200 million letter of intent (LOI) to support ALOY’s supply chain development.
-
The Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) covering technology transfer and potential financing support.
These deals represent institutional commitments from the type of organizations expected to conduct extensive due diligence before putting their names on the line.
The People.
ALOY’s board reflects a similar level of seriousness.
-
Chairman Stephen S. DuMont serves as President of GM Defense.
-
General Jack Keane (Ret.), a 4-star general and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, recently joined as a designated director.
-
Former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and former Canadian Ambassador to the US David MacNaughton are directors that brings deep expertise in defense, policy, and cross-border industrial strategy.
The board's composition is significant.
When a company works at the intersection of national security and government policy, such a Board (team) assembled, signals a commitment to long-term operations at the highest level.
Time to Buy ?
After all that has been said, the question is “time to buy ALOY” ?
Here’s my take.
ALOY was listed on Nasdaq on 25 Feb 2026 via merger with Blackboxstocks Inc with a start price of $17.91 /share.
Stock's price was driven up to a peak of $25.88 on 04 Mar 2026, following a 02 Mar 2026 announcement of a contract between US Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and ALOY.
The euphoria was short-lived, following ALOY’s Fri, 06 Mar 2026 announcement of a secondary public offering of 2.7 million shares at $18.50 /share, that was much lower than ALOY’s stock price of $21.69, at that time.
Naturally, ALOY fell by a massive -19.32% in a single day, as investors sold shares to lock in profits and the impact of the Middle East conflict sets in. (see below)
As of 31 Mar 2026
ALOY shares have moved in line with broader market sentiment, falling as low as $9.26 /share.
On Tue, 31 Mar 2026, Trump speculated that Iran war could end in 2 to 3 weeks, giving US market the much-needed optimism booster,
US 3 major indexes rose between +2.49% and +3.83%, while ALOY rose by +2.41%.
ALOY ($9.76) is still trending way below its simple moving averages (SMA) of 20-day SMA ($13.95) and 50-day SMA ($13.41) but is marginally higher than its 200-day SMA ($9.08).
All this points to a short-term downtrend but approaching a critical long-term support level, the 200-day line acting as a last-stand barrier for long-term bullish sentiment.
ALOY’s MACD line (-1.31) and Signal line (-0.70) are below its Zero line. With the former below the latter, it indicates a strong bearish trend as the short-term moving average is falling faster than the longer-term average.
ALOY "marginal" divergence (-0.70) suggests the initial, panic-selling phase may be slowing, but not yet reversing.
As mentioned in my Tuesday post (click here ! to read), I am sitting out this short trading week. I want the peace of mind of knowing that when US strike delay expires on Mon, 6 Apr 2026, the peace in Iran still holds.
Seeing that stability would give me the confidence needed to return to the US market. What about you ?
Latest ALOY News.
This just in . (see below)
On 01 Apr 2026, Reuters reported that ALOY and US Critical Materials Corp have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to build a fully domestic supply chain for the key materials in the US, in line with Washington's aims to reduce reliance on China.
Under the agreement, ALOY will secure up to 10% offtake from the US Critical Materials-owned Sheep Creek rare earth deposit in Ravalli County, Montana.
According to US Critical Materials, the Sheep Creek deposit contains high concentrations of elements such as dysprosium and terbium, that are used to power high-performance permanent magnets in F-35 fighter aircraft, missile guidance systems and radar platforms.
The 2 rare earth elements are part of ALOY’s Phase 2 (see above) upscale production target; in its bid to become the critical niche supplier as one of the biggest rare earth producers outside China.
Now, that’s something to celebrate about, no ?
Remember to check out my other posts. (See below). Help to Repost ok, Thanks.
Must Read: Click on below titles to access. Repost to share, Like as encouragement ok. Thanks.
-
Do you think 06 April 2026 will come to pass peacefully en route to eventual peace restore’?
-
Do you think you will give ALOY a 2nd look and invest in its ‘bright’ future?
If you find this post interesting, give it wings! ️ Repost and share the insights ?
Do consider “Follow me” and get firsthand read of my daily new post. Thank you.
Comments