Critical minerals investment company TechMet has secured a further equity investment of $50m from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to support its focus on critical minerals.
The latest commitment from the US Government’s development finance institution brings its total investment in TechMet to $105m.
The company’s valuation is now more than $1bn.
In 2020, the DFC made an initial $25m investment in TechMet.
TechMet is planning to use the latest tranche to exercise its option to invest $50m into the Phalaborwa rare earths project in South Africa.
In exchange, TechMet will take between a 15% and 33% direct equity interest in the project, which is being developed by Rainbow Rare Earths.
This is dependent on the project’s final project economics.
TechMet and DFC have been working together to assess the Phalaborwa project, which uses US extraction technology to produce rare earth metals by reprocessing historic phosphate mining waste dumps.
TechMet founder, chairman and CEO Brian Menell said: “The signing of the additional funding commitment from the DFC signals the growing appreciation of the imperative to ramp up critical metals supply chains if the world is to move away from fossil fuels and achieve its climate change goals.
“The US Government backing puts TechMet at the forefront of this global effort to responsibly scale production of these metals, which are essential for clean energy technologies such as EVs and renewable energy storage.”
During 2022 and 2023, TechMet invested more than $250m into critical metals projects across North and South America, Europe, and Africa.
DFC CEO Scott Nathan said: "Today's announcement builds upon existing DFC support for TechMet to develop more diverse, resilient, and sustainable critical mineral supply chains.”
TechMet said that a commitment letter for the additional financing was signed with the DFC CEO Scott Nathan on 3 December at the UN’s Climate Change Conference COP28.
