Australian Critical Minerals RegisterProject record · 30 September 2026

Lynas Kalgoorlie

Australia's first downstream rare earths processing facility. Everything below is drawn from a named document, with the page it sits on. Where the record is silent, this page says so rather than filling the gap.

Mt Weld mine → Kalgoorlie plant → Lynas Malaysia

Ore is mined and concentrated at Mt Weld, 234 km north. The concentrate is trucked here and put through cracking and leaching, which produces a mixed rare earth carbonate. That carbonate is shipped to Lynas Malaysia for separation into individual oxides. The Malaysian step is outside an Australian register, so it is named here and not assessed.

This is a chemical plant, not a mine. It has no orebody, no ore reserve and no host rock, and the register records none for it. Until 30 September 2026 the two sites were held as a single entry, which meant the register could carry only one coordinate — and the one it carried was the mine.

What the record establishes

Operator
Lynas Rare Earths Limited Kalgoorlie Rare Earths Processing Facility Project, Community Fact Sheet, October 2023, p.2
Status
Fully commissioned and producing Kalgoorlie Rare Earths Processing Facility Officially Opens, p.1
First production
June 2024 quarter Compliance Assessment Report 2025, p.3
Approval
WA Ministerial Statement No. 1181 under the Environmental Protection Act 1986 (WA); Mining Proposal 101853; Works Approval W6567/2021 Compliance Assessment Report 2025, p.3
Approval holder
Lynas Kalgoorlie Pty Limited Compliance Assessment Report 2025, p.3
Location
General Purpose Lease G26/169, 70 Johns Road, Yilkari WA 6430. A 134.9 ha site, 8 km west-south-west of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

The capital cost moved, and both figures are on the record

A$730 million — Community Fact Sheet, October 2023, p.1, when commissioning was described as "well progressed".

A$800 million — Kalgoorlie Rare Earths Processing Facility Officially Opens, p.1, at the opening.

The register holds both rather than replacing the first with the second. A single current figure would read as though the cost had always been A$800 million. The movement between two dated company documents is itself the finding, and a reader is entitled to see it.

What is not on the record

No third-party offtake counterparty is named. The held document does not identify a buyer for this facility's output.

No study is referenced. No Scoping Study, PFS, DFS or other named study appears in the held record for the facility.

No government funding instrument is stated. No grant, loan or guarantee appears in the held document.

No ore reserve, and that is the correct answer. A processing plant has no orebody. This is not a gap in the record; it is what a plant looks like.

Those four are recorded as absences against a named document, not left blank. A blank cell and a silence in the public record are different findings, and this register never renders them the same way.

How to read this

Every figure above carries the document it came from and the page it sits on. Nothing is modelled, estimated or inferred. There is no score, no ranking and no view on whether the project is a good one. The register reports what can be established from the public record and marks exactly where that record stops.

Seventeen facts, four source documents Compiled 30 September 2026