SOLUTIONS DRAWN TO LOUISIANA
Canada-based smart infrastructure solutions company Aclara Resources has announced plans to build the first U.S. heavy rare earths (HREE) separation facility at the Port of Vinton in Louisiana, a shallow-water port located on a navigable waterway in the Lake Charles region community of Vinton, Louisiana, near the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and I-10, eight miles east of the Louisiana-Texas border. The strategic location will allow the company to tap into sustainable feed from ionic clay deposits it expects to secure from Brazil and Chile. Aclara will produce high-purity Dysprosium (Dy), Terbium (Tb) and other restricted HREEs and light rare earths used within advanced technology applications such as EVs and wind turbines. A $277 million investment will see the construction of the facility finished by 2027, with official production in operation by 2028, creating 140 new jobs. The company has said once production begins Aclara is anticipated to supply over 75% of the nation’s requirements of DyTb for EVs by 2028, which is about 14% of China’s DyTb production. This move is designed to establish a vertically integrated supply chain for permanent magnets, supported by the future addition of a metals and alloys plant at the Louisiana site. “Louisiana provides ready access to the key reagents we require, helping ensure operational reliability and lower transportation costs,” said Aclara CEO Ramon Barua. “The state’s highly established chemical industry and skilled workforce made the decision even more compelling. Simply put, Louisiana has everything we were looking for.”
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A FACILITY AGED FOR SUPERINTELLIGENCE
A vacant data center facility in Kansas City, Missouri, is set to transform into an up to 100-megawatt (MW) data center by 2026. California-based developer Lambda is behind the project and will operate the future facility as its sole tenant, as its supercomputer will be used for large-scale AI training and inference by a single customer. “Our Kansas City development perfectly embodies Lambda’s strategy: a prime location for our customers, an accelerated deployment timeline and an unwavering commitment to on-time delivery,” said Lambda Data Center Infrastructure Vice President Ken Patchett. “We believe this success stems from completely rethinking how AI factories should be built and operated.” The first phase of the data center project is expected to cost nearly $500 million, which will introduce the facility’s initial 24MW of capacity early next year. At launch, the data center will feature 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs with plans to double that amount in the future. The company’s official release notes that additional phases are still in the works.
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PREPARED FOR LONG-TERM STABILITY
Global contract development and manufacturing organization Cambrex has announced a $120 million investment boost into its U.S. operations, targeting demands for increased active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production. The new investment lands at the company’s 45-scre manufacturing site in Charles City, Iowa, which previously underwent expansion to include high-potency API and large-scale manufacturing capacity in 2022 (see Site Selection’s conversation with Cambrex CEO Thomas Loewald). Currently, the Iowa plant is the nation’s largest API manufacturing site, producing a diverse range of APIs and pharmaceutical intermediates. The move will allow the facility to increase its manufacturing capacity by 40%, reaching nearly 1 million liters. “Our customers, in partnership with federal and state agencies, are reshoring drug manufacturing in the U.S., the world’s largest pharmaceutical market,” said Loewald. “Local API production is vital for supply chain security and resilience, and Cambrex will play a key role. We are seeing very strong demand from our customers to partner with Cambrex to utilize this expanded capacity.”
Reports compiled and written by Alexis Elmore
