New plans submitted for £150m rare earth minerals processing plant in Yorkshire

Developer Pensana aims to produce around 4,500 tonnes of oxides per year, which are used for magnets in wind turbines and electric vehicles.

Plans for a processing facility to the north west of Saltend Chemicals Park were approved by East Riding Council last April.

The facility is now earmarked for 35 acres of farmland less than half a mile away to the north east. The new site is adjacent to the chemicals park, and east of Paull Road, and the land is allocated for industrial development in the Local Plan.

According to documents online, once the initial facility is up and running, the plan is to then build an extra metals production unit on the same plot “to facilitate the next stage of magnet metal production”.

Electric cars need roughly a kilogram of magnet, while a 260m wind turbine can use around seven tonnes.

It is hoped that in future the plant will be powered using hydrogen from the proposed Equinor Blue facility.

In a recent interview, chairman Paul Atherley said it was “incredibly exciting to be bringing back this kind of manufacturing to the UK, to be tapping into a chemical engineering DNA that exists in the Humber, in the northeast of England”.

He said they were going back to the days when the UK imported raw materials from around the globe and turned them into value-added products.

Once up and running, it should create around 90 new full-time jobs and 30 part time jobs.

The application also seeks permission to store up to 6,555 tonnes of hydrochloric acid, up to 5,769 tonnes of sodium hydroxide and up to 139 tonnes of oxalic acid.

The main processing buildings will stand up to 18m high.

Pensana was approached for a comment.