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Pensana PLC on Friday posted a wider loss for the first half of financial 2026, but maintained an upbeat view on the demand backdrop for rare earth minerals. The London-based mineral developer targets rare earths for use in electric vehicles and wind turbines, and is aiming to create ‘mine-to-magnet supply chain’. Its largest shareholder is the Angolan Sovereign Wealth Fund, and its main project is the Longonjo mine in Angola. During the six months ended December 31, Pensana’s pretax loss widened to $3.3 million from $2.9 million on-year. Attributable loss per share widened to $4.5 million from $3.2 million, while basic and diluted loss per share widened to $1.07 from $1.00. The company remains pre-revenue. It booked administration expenses of $4.7 million in 2025, up from $2.5 million in 2024, while finance costs rose to $725,908 from none the year prior. Pensana swung to a net foreign exchange gain of $321,588 from a loss of $704,864 the previous year. The company’s shares fell 2.4% to 89.40 pence each on Friday morning in London, having more than tripled over the past year. Construction of the Longonjo mine is progressing ‘at pace with commissioning scheduled for 2027’, Pensana noted. It is planning a drill programme to lift Longonjo’s resource estimate above one billion tonnes. The site’s mineral reserve has an average grade of 3.04% total rare earth oxide, containing 139,000 tonnes of neodymium and praseodymium oxide for a mine life of over 20 years. Longonjo’s current finance package amounts to $268 million and the project is owned by Pensana’s majority-owned subsidiary Ozango. Funding discussions with the Export-Import Bank of the United States are ‘advanced’, with around $160 million in debt funding for Longonjo on the line. This comes after Pensana in October backed out of plans to build a £250 million rare earths refinery in the UK, as US state financing beckoned. Pensana had intended to process rare earths from third-party suppliers and from Longonjo at a facility near Hull, on which contractor John Wood Group PLC began construction in 2022. It has since abandoned this plan, shifting its gaze to the US. Pensana Chair Paul Atherley told Alliance News in October: ‘Neither the capital market nor the government support is currently available in the UK.’ The US is looking to boost domestic rare earths production, in an attempt to reduce its reliance on China, currently the dominant producer. ‘Our engagement with US-based magnet producers has further intensified, particularly in relation to heavy rare earth supply. This has led to the identification of an enhanced heavy rare earth recovery stream [which] would position Pensana as one of the significant producers of heavy rare earths in the Western market,’ Pensana said on Friday. ‘This combination of increased heavy rare earth production potential and the substantial scale of the Longonjo orebody, positions Pensana at the centre of the emerging US-focused rare earth supply chain. It also highlights the strategic significance of the project as it enters a period of intensive construction over the next twelve months, ahead of the 2027 US ban on the use of Chinese-origin rare earth magnets and materials in defence systems.’ In parallel, Pensana has secured $165 million in funding from Cascade Natural Resources, which it sees as ‘a significant inflection point in the company’s development’. The funding will support work at Longonjo, satisfy conditions for other debt financing facility, progress co-products such as heavy rare earth oxides alongside magnet metals, and finance plans to list on New York’s Nasdaq Stock Market, Pensana said. It added that rare earth demand from several end-markets is trending in its favour, reinforcing ‘the strategic relevance of establishing large-scale, secure and transparent rare earth supply chains aligned to Western industrial policy priorities.’ Copyright 2026 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
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