Vale Studies Rare Earth and Gold Recovery From Mining Waste

Brazilian miner Vale is studying the potential to recover rare earth elements, gold, and other valuable minerals from mining waste, extending efforts to extract more value from material that has already been mined.

Rafael Bittar, Vale’s executive vice president for technical affairs, said the company is carrying out research in Brazil and other countries to determine whether additional minerals contained in tailings and other waste streams can be recovered economically.

The work remains at an early stage, although Vale has said preliminary findings are encouraging. No commercial production target, investment commitment or timetable for recovering rare earths or gold from the material has yet been announced.

The initiative builds on a much more established part of Vale’s circular mining strategy: the recovery of iron ore from materials that would previously have been treated as waste.

Vale produced 26.3 million metric tonnes of iron ore from waste and tailings in 2025, according to figures reported earlier this year. That was more than double the 12.7 million tonnes recovered through similar processes in 2024 and exceeded the company’s previous expectation of around 20 million tonnes.

Vale has set a longer-term objective of obtaining 10% of its iron ore production from materials previously classified as waste by 2030. It has also produced more than 3 million tonnes of sand from mining residues since 2023.

The company’s 2025 annual reporting provides further evidence of how reuse is being incorporated into its mining operations. At the Gelado project in Pará, for example, Vale plans to recover more than 40 million tonnes of pellet feed and sinter feed by 2038 from tailings stored in dams. The company has also been expanding dry processing and other technologies designed to reduce dependence on conventional tailings storage facilities.

Rare Earths Add a Strategic Dimension

Extending this approach to rare earth elements would introduce a different economic and strategic dimension.

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements used across electronics, industrial equipment, aerospace, defense systems and a growing range of energy technologies. Some of the most strategically important, including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, are used to manufacture high-performance permanent magnets found in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and other advanced equipment.

The International Energy Agency says demand for these magnet rare earth elements has doubled since 2015 and is expected to rise by another third by 2030 under current policy settings.

Supply chains are also highly concentrated. China accounted for around 60% of mined magnet rare-earth production in 2024, according to the IEA, but its position becomes considerably stronger further downstream. The country represented around 91% of refined production and 94% of global sintered permanent magnet manufacturing.

That concentration has increased interest among governments and manufacturers in alternative supplies, recycling, and new processing capacity. Chinese export controls introduced and expanded during 2025 also demonstrated how disruptions in rare-earth supply can affect automotive and other manufacturing industries.

Brazil is emerging as one of the countries that could contribute to greater diversification. The IEA expects additional rare-earth mining capacity outside China over the coming decade, with Brazil among the countries contributing to new supply.

However, expanding mining alone does not create a complete domestic rare-earth industry. Separation, refining, metal production and magnet manufacturing require specialized facilities and technical capabilities. The IEA identifies these downstream stages as some of the largest constraints on efforts to diversify the global supply chain.

For Vale, recovering rare earths from existing mining residues could potentially provide another source of material without requiring an entirely separate conventional mine for every unit of production. It could also improve the economic value generated from material already extracted and reduce the volume ultimately treated as waste.

Whether those benefits can be realized at commercial scale will depend on mineral concentrations, recovery rates, processing requirements, and costs.

Circular Mining has Environmental Trade-Offs

Waste reprocessing can have important sustainability advantages, particularly where usable minerals can be recovered from existing stockpiles or tailings facilities.

Recovering additional material can reduce the amount of new waste requiring storage and allow companies to obtain more saleable product from resources that have already been disturbed by mining. For companies with large historical tailings inventories, secondary recovery can therefore form part of broader resource-efficiency and circular-economy strategies.

Vale has particular reasons to reduce its dependence on tailings dams. Its approach to tailings management has been substantially strengthened following major dam failures in Brazil, and the company has invested in filtration, dry processing, waste reuse and the decharacterization of upstream dams. Vale reported that 81% of its iron ore production currently does not depend on dams.

Rare-earth recovery, however, should not automatically be regarded as environmentally benign simply because the source material is mining waste.

Rare-earth minerals can be difficult to separate because of their similar chemical characteristics. Depending on the mineralogy and process used, extraction and separation can require significant chemical treatment, energy and water, and can generate additional residues requiring careful management. The IEA has highlighted the need for stronger environmental standards as global rare-earth production expands.

The environmental case for any future Vale project would therefore depend on the complete processing route and not only on the fact that the original feedstock comes from waste.

From Waste Liability to Secondary Resource

Vale’s research illustrates a broader shift taking place across the mining sector. Materials historically regarded only as liabilities are increasingly being reassessed as potential secondary mineral resources.

Rising demand for critical minerals strengthens that incentive. Global demand for key energy minerals has been growing at close to 10% annually in recent years, considerably faster than demand for conventional base metals, according to the IEA. Rare earth demand is being supported by electric vehicles, renewable energy, industrial automation and digital infrastructure.

Secondary recovery will not eliminate the need for new mines. The quantities, grades and accessibility of minerals contained in individual waste deposits vary significantly, while commercially viable separation remains technically demanding.

But where the economics and environmental performance are favorable, mining waste could become a complementary source of critical minerals while simultaneously improving resource efficiency.

For Vale, the immediate question is whether rare earths, gold and other elements identified in its waste streams occur at concentrations sufficient to justify commercial recovery.

If the research progresses beyond the current study phase, it could broaden the company’s circular mining model from recovering additional iron ore to extracting higher-value and strategically important minerals from the same historical material.

Source: www.reuters.com