When I was in Australia this summer, we had discussions about rare earths and whether or not we could work with Australia to stand up a facility that would take care of our DOD needs, but a variety of other international needs, as well." This isn't the first proposed dual country initiative to hit the rare earths sector in the last few months. In mid-May, Lynas ( ASX : LYC ,OTC Pink:LYSCF), the largest rare earths producer outside China, entered into a memorandum of understanding with Texas corporation Blue Line to develop a rare earths separation facility in the US. Lynas CEO Amanda Lacaze pointed to advantages for both Lynas and the US, as the former would be able to expand its footprint and the latter would be able to have domestic refining capacity. "This is an exciting opportunity to develop local separation capacity for our customers in the United States and to close a critical supply chain gap for United States manufacturers," she said.