Frustrated Lynas Rare Earths takes Kalgoorlie power outage issues to WA Government as production suffers

Lynas Rare Earths is in urgent talks with the State Government after complaining of unsustainable outages at its Kalgoorlie refinery that have put the miner about a month behind production schedule. The Gina Rinehart-backed miner told investors on Tuesday that there had been “significant power disruptions” at the $780 million heavy-duty cracking and leaching refinery that turns ore mined at its Goldfields Mt Weld mine into a rare earth carbonate. The material is then shipped to a separation facility in Gebeng Malaysia where it is split into heavy and light rare earths, as well as other subsets crucial in magnets used electronic manufacturing, military and medical equipment. A rise in outages in November added to a “significant increase” in power failures in 2025, according to the miner, despite inking a deal with Western Power that it claims “ensured access to cleaner power in lieu of costly, emissions-intensive diesel generators.” Energy supply is a key issue in the region and blackouts are becoming increasingly common as an overloaded grid struggles to bear the demands of the region’s significant mining and processing operations. Residents and businesses in the town were left without power for several days during the peak of summer in January 2024. The frequent outages caused so much lost time for Lynas that it is staring down a substantial production shortfall for the quarter, though a quantum is yet to be specified. “In November, outage frequency and duration have been at a level that has led to significant lost production of Mixed Rare Earth Carbonate (MREC),” it said in an Australian Securities Exchange update. “Whilst the Kalgoorlie team is working hard to recover the lost production, it cannot reach the Malaysian facility in time to be processed to finished goods within the quarter.” Scheduled shutdowns during the quarter means Lynas’ Malaysian operations can’t pick up the slack. Lynas is putting pressure on the State Government to fix the problem and is “working constructively” with them and Western Power to find the cause of recent outages and improve power availability to the Lynas plant. Energy Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson confirmed the Government was working closely with Lynas and other major users to reduce interruptions and improve reliability. “Western Power will complete local equipment upgrades in coming weeks, building on key upgrades to the transmission network that feeds the area,” Ms Sanderson said. “At the same time, the development of a new, common-use electricity network, the Goldfield Regional Network, is being investigated to meet growing industry demand in the longer term.” Some miners have taken matters into their own hands and source their own power solutions. Northern Star Resources purchased a 110MW power station from fellow gold major Newmont for $113m back in 2021, and Gold Fields is aiming to run 70 per cent on renewable power by 2030 through a 35MW solar farm and a 42MW wind farm. Lynas is working on 24MW of wind capacity and 6.35MW of solar to power mining operations at Mt Weld, which is separate to that of the Kalgoorlie factory. At a Chamber of Minerals and Energy visit last week, Lynas executive general manager Chris Torrisi told media that the WA Government had the biggest and fastest levers to pull in sorting ongoing power issues. “Western Australia really needs to improve the power of its electricity supply. We’ve had blackouts in Kalgoorlie, we had a five-day blackout last summer for the entire city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, I mean really, we need to work on that,” he said. The Kalgoorlie plant was linked up back in 2021 to the Eastern Goldfields Load Permissive Scheme, which enables access to network capacity when it’s available and curtails supply when it is not, according to Western Power. “When required, ELPS customers are automatically notified that they need to reduce their ELPS load within set times, ensuring other existing customer services are not put at risk,” former Western Power chief Ed Kalajzic said at the time. Lynas shares closed the day off 0.13 per cent at $15.02. The US has been trying to build western-aligned supplies of rare earths so to avoid reliance on China, the world’s biggest rare earths refiner by far. Efforts to do that were made concrete last month when Australia and the US both pledged to spend at least $US1 billion each in the next six months on advancing new projects mining and refining the commodity. Lynas as the largest touts itself as the only reliable supplier of both light and heavy rare earth oxides outside of China.