Who We Are
Grimstone Mining, LLC (Grimstone) was formed in 2017 by Gene Ricciardi and Joel Cornfield in order to acquire and reclaim the coal to be found in GOB (refuse) piles. Over the past few years Grimstone has amassed one of the largest inventories of owned and/or controlled gob piles in West Virginia with an estimate volume that exceeds 100 million tons of carbon and Rare Earth Elements. Grimstone has partnered with High Country Mining, lead by Woodrow Church and Darren Spencer as lifelong skilled miners, with family in the coal business for generations, to handle the ongoing reclamation operations.
Our Product And Market Demand
Our focus is to reclaim these GOB piles for the purposes of extracting Rare Earth Elements for a variety of energy uses in high demand. While rich in usable coal from earlier mining operations, each of our 15 owned sites contains between 30 – 70% recoverable low-volatile, low-sulfur, high-BTU Bituminous coal. The current technologies make it possible to recover this product in an economically advantageous fashion with little to no life-safety risks and which allow us to purify this waste today. Grimstone currently has completed three projects and has two projects ready to begin covering an estimated total of some 8,000,000 -10,000,000 tons of product, with another ten permits in various stages of completion. It is our goal to have a minimum of four open projects at a time which will allow us to deliver 150,000 tons or more of product per month to multiple buyers.
Significant Inventory of Carbon, Elements and Minerals
The Shortage of Rare Earth Elements in the USA
Grimstone is focused on becoming a leader in the extraction of Rare Earth Element (REE) and Critical Minerals (CE) into a concentrate form. This is a growing concern in the USA being vital to energy independence and the continued advancement of technology. Our partners in this process have developed one of the most environmentally friendly element and mineral extraction processes in the world. This will minimize the use of aggressive reagents such as acids (harmful solvents and residual clean up). The process is also designed to work well without excessive thermal heating, to reduce the cost and make the process sustainable throughout the extraction process, and lower energy consumption to contribute to fighting climate change. Most of the conventional REE and CE extraction methods are energy-intensive and would be extremely environmentally challenging for operations in the United States.
Fully Domestic Carbon,
Rare Earth Elements,
and Critical Mineral Operations
Grimstone's selected one of its 15 owned sites contained an estimated 50 million tons (+/-) of GOB coal, ash, clay, and slate rich in elements and minerals as the location for its extraction plant. The processing of all RE and CE extraction will be at one centralized location, with and a start to finish operation entirely based in the USA. This allows Grimstone to maximize efficiency in reducing costs for both raw materials and the REE and CE extraction process. Our Architects and Engineering Services have begun with the permitting of our site along with the Phase I design concept of the element extraction plant. When fully completed, our extraction plant is anticipated to cost approximately $400 million dollars, providing much needed employment and a significant boost to the local economy.
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