Your HF Plant Still Can't Buy American Fluorspar
The Utah mine that is supposed to end 100 percent US import reliance on fluorspar commissioned a plant in July and named August 15 as its production date. The plant that started makes metallurgical grade for steel mills, a 20,000 tonne import line. The acid-grade plant behind the Defense Logistics Agency contract is still a construction site, and the prospectus filed on September 4 withdrew the delivery date.
There are two fluorspar plants on the same 48 acres outside Delta, Utah.
One of them has been powered up since July. The other is the one your HF supplier would care about, and it is still a construction site.
The US Geological Survey published its 2026 fluorspar summary in February carrying the same domestic line it has run for years: no significant US mine production reported since 1995, and net import reliance of 100% in every year from 2021 through 2025.
And then a sentence that reads like a countdown.
"A second company continued construction of a fluorspar mine and lumps-processing plant in Utah, with completion anticipated by yearend."
USGS names nobody.
Ares Strategic Mining Inc. is a Utah fluorspar miner with a mine and a lumps plant, and on September 4 it filed an amended shelf prospectus with the SEC that spends several pages on what it has not done yet.
This desk wrote the import side of this chain on September 13, when Mongolian and Thai tonnes turned up in the US acid-grade book from a standing start. Today is the other half of that sentence.
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