July 11, 2026 - Ramaco Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ: METC, METCB) is a metallurgical coal producer that has spent the past three years building a second business line around rare earth and critical mineral exploration at its Brook Mine near Sheridan, Wyoming. Ramaco Resources operates four active met coal mining complexes in Central Appalachia, producing roughly four million tons a year, alongside the Brook Mine, which remains at the exploration stage.

Ramaco Resources is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky, with operational offices in Charleston, West Virginia and Sheridan, Wyoming. The company’s core business is low-cost metallurgical coal for steelmaking, mined across four complexes in southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia with roughly 900 employees. Randall W. Atkins is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Jeremy Sussman serves as Chief Financial Officer.

Ramaco Resources acquired the Brook Mine land in 2011 for around $2 million, originally intending to mine it for thermal coal. A 2018 evaluation with the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) identified rare earth and critical mineral concentrations in the coal-bearing strata, and in 2023 Ramaco announced what it describes as a major unconventional REE deposit. According to Ramaco’s own Brook Mine disclosures, the resource is hosted in soft carbonaceous strata rather than hard rock, which the company says avoids the radioactive byproducts common to many hard-rock REE deposits. This is a company characterisation rather than an independently confirmed geological finding.

The Brook Mine broke ground on 11 July 2025, an event Ramaco Resources and federal officials, including then-Energy Secretary Chris Wright, described as the first new rare earth mine in the United States in more than 70 years and the first new coal mine in Wyoming in over 50 years. A pilot oxide processing plant adjacent to the mine began construction in October 2025 and is targeted for operation in mid-2026, designed to process several tons per day of feedstock into rare earth and critical mineral oxides.

Per the company’s Q1 2026 SEC filing, Brook Mine is formally classified as an exploration stage property. Ramaco Resources states that any inferred mineral resources may or may not convert to higher-confidence resources or reserves, and that development timing depends on completed test work, engineering studies, and federal, state and local permitting. Ramaco has raised its base case annual oxide production estimate to 3,414 short tons, up 175% from the 1,240-ton figure in Fluor’s original preliminary economic assessment, which itself put post-tax net present value at approximately $1.2 billion (8% discount rate, 38% IRR) against initial capex of $473 million before a 22% contingency.

Ramaco Resources’ target product slate from Brook Mine is high-purity gallium, alumina and quartz for the semiconductor sector, plus scandium oxide and mixed rare earth carbonate (MREC) sold to third-party processors. Unlike a fully integrated miner-to-magnet model, Ramaco Resources does not plan to run its own separation facility for the bulk of its rare earth output. Two non-binding offtake memoranda of understanding support this: one with Mulberry Industries (December 2025), covering customized oxide blends including samarium, NdPr, yttrium, gallium and dysprosium/terbium for magnet manufacturing in Georgia, and one with REalloys Inc. (NASDAQ: ALOY, May 2026), under which REalloys would separate Ramaco’s MREC at its Saskatchewan Research Council facility while Ramaco supplies scandium oxide directly for REalloys’ Ohio metallisation line.

In October 2025, Ramaco Resources signed an umbrella Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the DOE’s NETL, tying Brook Mine development into the department’s multi-laboratory METALLIC critical minerals program. Financing has been active: an August 2025 public equity raise brought in roughly $200 million, and the company’s credit facility was subsequently amended and extended to 2030 with a bank syndicate including KeyBank, Truist, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Ramaco Resources is currently the subject of active securities litigation tied to Brook Mine. On 23 October 2025, short seller Wolfpack Research published a report alleging Brook Mine was a “hoax,” citing drone footage it said showed no active digging in the months following the July groundbreaking and interviews with mining industry sources sceptical of the project’s economics. METC shares fell around 10% on the day of the report. Several law firms subsequently filed securities class actions, consolidated around Henning v. Ramaco Resources, Inc. et al. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, covering purchasers between 31 July and 23 October 2025 and alleging Ramaco overstated mining progress at Brook Mine. Ramaco Resources has stated it has meritorious defenses to all claims. The litigation remains unresolved and is a live risk factor for the stock independent of the underlying resource question.

Ramaco Resources sits apart from peers pursuing conventional hard-rock REE deposits. Its coal-hosted geology, DOE research partnership, and dual offtake structure with Mulberry Industries and REalloys give it a different risk and revenue profile than a fully integrated developer such as USA Rare Earth, or an established operating producer such as Energy Fuels. Within the broader push to build a domestic supply chain outside China, Ramaco Resources’ scandium and gallium output is a notable complement to the North America rare earth project pipeline, though Brook Mine’s exploration-stage status and the pending litigation mean it remains materially earlier-stage and higher-risk than operating producers. Scandium in particular, tracked on REM’s scandium price page, and gallium, tracked on the gallium price page, are both named by Ramaco as priority Brook Mine outputs.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Corporate status, financing terms and litigation described above are subject to change without notice.