Pursuits
Billionaire Bets on Rare-Earth Metals After Uralkali Exit
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Billionaire Alexander Nesis made a fortune from gold, silver and banking. His next target: producing rare-earth metals from material discarded as Russia developed an atomic bomb in the 1940s.
Nesis’s ICT holding company is in a venture with state-owned Rostec to fast-track production of rare-earths, using thorium-bearing concentrate kept stockpiled for more than 60 years. The partners also plan to bid for Tomtor in the Siberian republic of Yakutia, a deposit that has more than 150 million metric tons of ore containing rare-earths and is among the largest in the world, Nesis said in an interview in Moscow.