Halleck Creek pilot plant advances rare earth project in Albany County

American Rare Earths is accelerating its Halleck Creek pilot plant to produce pre-production concentrate, a move that could bring processing work to Laramie and keep more rare earth value in Albany County. For a project west of town, that shift matters because it is where mineral potential starts to look like an actual industry, with technical jobs, construction work, supplier demand and the possibility of future tax revenue.

The company said on April 1 that it was speeding up the pilot plant program, and on April 2 it identified Jaye T. Pickarts, P.E. as the engineer leading the process. American Rare Earths also said its Wyoming Rare (USA) Inc. subsidiary secured a facility at the Western Research Institute in Laramie on Dec. 20, 2024, giving the project a local base for the next stage of work. The company has said it intends to keep initial pilot-plant processing in Wyoming.

That step follows a multi-year push that began with promising rare earth finds on the Albany County site in 2023. By September of that year, the company said it would continue exploring its Wyoming resources. The wider state context is significant too: the Wyoming Energy Authority says Wyoming holds one of North America’s largest deposits of rare earth elements and critical minerals, materials used in more than 200 products, including electronics, magnets, defense systems and clean-energy technologies.

The scale under review has also grown. In an updated scoping study dated March 7, 2025, American Rare Earths laid out development and production schedules for 3 million-ton-per-year and 6 million-ton-per-year production rates. The company has publicly said it is aiming for production in 2029, a timetable that would still require financing, engineering, permitting and proof that the ore can be processed cleanly and consistently at larger scale.

For Albany County, the question is whether Halleck Creek becomes more than a deposit on paper. A pilot plant can show whether the company can separate product efficiently, handle impurities, and build a process that supports a larger operation. If it works, the payoff could extend beyond mining jobs to trucking, maintenance, road use, local contractors and a deeper industrial footprint near Laramie. If it does not, the county is left with exploration activity but no lasting processing base.

The pilot phase is the first concrete test of whether Albany County can capture more of the rare earth value chain instead of sending raw material elsewhere.