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United States

Rare Earth Salts (Beatrice, Nebraska)

A private Nebraska company separating rare earths by a patented electrochemical process at a demonstration plant in Beatrice, including terbium recovered from recycled fluorescent-lamp phosphor.

At a glance

Founded

2012 — Founded in 2012 by Dr. Joseph Brewer, now Founder and CTO. The CEO is Aaron T. Dowd.

Headquarters

Beatrice, Nebraska, United States (5331 Element Avenue)

Ownership

Private (Nebraska LLC). The company website names Tomoharu AS (Norway) as 'the largest outside shareholder in RES'. Tomoharu is represented on the board by co-chair Tom Arne Nordvik, managing director and co-founder of BirdieBreeze AS, a Norwegian family office majority-owned by the Moe and Nordvik families. Other board members listed: Paul Garnett (co-chair), Joseph Brewer, Aaron T. Dowd, Øystein E. Larsen, Tim Thietje, Filip Weintraub, Frank S. Schieldrop (the two website pages list different sets). No funding rounds or valuation are disclosed in public sources.

Stage

Developing. A commercial demonstration plant in Beatrice that has sold separated lanthanum (one 17.5 t sale) and, from 2023, terbium and yttrium, and has produced NdPr; a $4.22 million DoD award to expand; no capacity published.

Listing

Private.

Revenue

Not publicly disclosed. This company does not publish revenue and no named third party has published an estimate of it.

Capacity

Each date below links to the document the figure came from. A capacity figure with no source is not on this page.

Narrative

Rare Earth Salts was founded in Beatrice, Nebraska in 2012 and holds US patents on an electrochemical separation method that does not use solvent extraction. At its Beatrice plant, described by the company in 2023 as a commercial demonstration plant, it runs two lines: one recovers terbium, yttrium and europium oxides from recycled fluorescent-lamp phosphor, and the other separates lanthanum, cerium and NdPr from a light rare earth concentrate. The company has published no capacity; its stated output is hundreds of kilograms of NdPr, 'many metric tons' of lanthanum and a single 17.5 t lanthanum sale. In September 2024 the Department of Defense awarded it $4.22 million to expand terbium oxide production from recycled lamps. A University of North Dakota project would make separated oxides and metals at Beatrice from rare earth carbonate recovered from North Dakota lignite; the Department of Energy selected a UND demonstration project for award negotiations in July 2026 without naming RES, and that project's February 2026 environmental finding includes refining at Beatrice. Its chief executive testified to a House committee in June 2025; the company's website names Tomoharu AS as its largest outside shareholder.

Where public sources disagree

• Facility size differs by source. The UND/RES proposal to the North Dakota Industrial Commission (14 Apr 2023) says RES maintains '25,000 ft2 of commercial facility and laboratory spaces.' RES's BusinessWire release (22 Aug 2023) describes a '50,000-square-foot headquarters, commercial demonstration plant, laboratory, and research & development facility.' 50,000 is twice 25,000.
• Scale wording differs within the company's own release. The Aug 2023 BusinessWire headline announces 'Commercial Scale Production' and calls RES 'the only commercially scaled NON-Solvent Extraction (SX) heavy rare earth element separation company in the world'. The same release calls the Beatrice site a 'commercial demonstration plant'. No throughput or annual output figure is given.

Sources

1. Testimony of Aaron T. Dowd, CEO, Rare Earth Salts, House Committee on Small Business — U.S. House Committee on Small Business (Democrats) (2025-06-24)
2. Rare Earth Salts Announces Commercial Scale Production of Heavy & Light Rare Earth Elements Using Breakthrough Technology — Rare Earth Salts / BusinessWire (2023-08-22)
3. Department of Defense Awards $4.22 Million to Increase Production of Terbium and Other Rare Earth Elements — U.S. Department of Defense (via GlobalSecurity.org mirror) (2024-09-09)
4. Pentagon Awards $4.22M to Rare Earth Salts for Terbium Oxide Production — Defense Mirror (secondary) (2024-09-10)
5. The Pentagon's 'Rare Earth' Problem is a China Problem, Too (Walter Pincus) — The Cipher Brief (secondary) (2024-09-17)
6. Recovery and Refining of Rare Earth Elements from Lignite ... (UND proposal to ND Industrial Commission, LRC-102-G) — North Dakota Industrial Commission / University of North Dakota (2023-04-14)
7. Phase I Project Selections for FOA 2618: Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – Rare Earth Element Demonstration Facility — U.S. Department of Energy (2023-03-30)
8. Draft Environmental Assessment - UND Rare Earth Element Demonstration Facilities — DOE / NETL (2024-08)
9. DOE/EA-2247: Final Environmental Assessment (February 2026) — U.S. Department of Energy (2026-02-18)
10. Finding of No Significant Impact for DOE/EA-2247 (UND Rare Earth Element Demonstration Facilities) — DOE / NETL (2026-02)
11. DOE's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation Awards $75 Million to Accelerate Critical Minerals and Materials Recovery from Coal and Coal-Based Feedstocks — U.S. Department of Energy (2026-07-01)
12. Sen Cramer: DOE Selects UND Pilot Project for Rare Earth Elements and Critical Minerals Recovery — Office of Sen. Kevin Cramer (2026-07-01)
13. Battelle, Rare Earth Salts to Produce Coal Ash-Based Rare Earth Oxides Under DOE Project — ExecutiveBiz (secondary) (2017-10-18)
14. Acid Digestion and Electrowinning Processes Demonstrate Recovery of Rare Earth Elements from Coal Fly Ash — DOE / NETL (2020-06-22)
15. Patents Assigned to Rare Earth Salts Separation and Refining, LLC — Justia Patents (2026-04)
16. US10494694B2 - Method for extraction and separation of rare earth elements — Google Patents (2019-12-03)
17. About — Rare Earth Salts — Rare Earth Salts (n.d.)
18. Team — Rare Earth Salts — Rare Earth Salts (n.d.)
19. Rare Earth Salts homepage — Rare Earth Salts (n.d.)
20. Rare Earth Salts Separations And Refining (awardee profile) — HigherGov (secondary registry data) (2026)
21. Beaver Tales: Brewer knows the business of elements — Minot State University (2020-04)
22. Rare Earth Salts selected as the Southeast Nebraska 'Innovator of the Year' by the Nebraska Diplomats — NGage (Southeast Nebraska development group) (2017-11)
23. CEOs Spotlight Challenges Ahead of Emerging U.S. Rare Earth Industry — Alliance for American Manufacturing (secondary) (2025-06)
24. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Rare Earths (heavy) — USGS (2026-01)

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