LYNAS WANTS TO CONTRIBUTE TO COMMUNITY, NOT DESTROY IT

KUALA LUMPUR, June 25 (Bernama) -- Australia's Lynas Corporation Ltd, which
is embroiled in a controversy regarding its proposed rare earth plant in Gebeng,
says it wants to be a positive contributor to the community and not be seen as
coming into the country and damaging to it.

Executive Chairman Nicholas Curtis, who did not expect the "storm to be much
bigger than anticipated", told Bernama that he welcomed constructive engagement
with the concerned parties over the issue as there has been too much
misinformation.

It was reported that the controversy over the construction of the RM700
million (US$233 million) rare earth oxides plant by Lynas Malaysia Sdn Bhd at
Gebeng Industrial Estate, was sparked following claims that it would emit
radiation detrimental to public health. Gebeng is a small town and main
industrial area in Kuantan, Pahang state. The town is located near Kuantan Port,


Curtis agreed that Lynas had failed to engage actively with the community.

"I guess I take some accountability for not having expressed our position
strong enough, we thought we had done enough to weather the storm by engaging
with the regulators on what we need to do to get approval when the obligation
proved it's more than that to the community," he said.

He said the government had acted responsibly by not compromising on the
issue of health and safety.

"We do not want to produce any community damage. We want to make sure that
the industry is safe. We have not communicate effectively in the issue," he
added.

He said the actual rare earth business was very good for the future as it
led to the making of material for the use of science and technology, including
green technology, and was a good industry for Malaysia towards achieving its
Vision 2020.

It is understood that rare earth is the key element in technologically
advanced gadgets, in the making of wide variety of products including catalytic
converters, wind turbines, hybrid car batteries, disk drivers, mobile phones and
flat screen displays.

As such, the actual business itself has enormous potential to be a platform
for creating the next value chain of industry to be built here.

"There is this exciting opportunity to build a cluster of high technology
industry which is critical for other industries like automotives, electronics in
line with the 2020 plan," Curtis said.

He said Malaysia was a good place to come and invest and Gebeng had the
neccesary infrastructure for a heavy industry.

"We made a choice to come to Malaysia. We already made the choice to look
at Australia and also other places such as China. As we are in a global business
we chose Malaysia because the infrastructure is better developed and the
regulations are very clear," he said.

Curtis said the Malaysian standards are known to be the tightest in the
world, requiring a licence for any material that had any level of radiation.

The company also chose to come to Malaysia despite knowing the community's
reaction towards the Asian Rare Earth (ARE) incident of Bukit Merah in the early
nineties.

"We felt the regulatory environment had knowledge of the risk and
professional level here is high, so we are able to engage effectively with the
regulators. We also knew that our material is fundamentally different from Bukit
Merah," he added.

The company had previously emphasised that the raw material it will source
from Mount Weld in Australia is not the same as that processed at Bukit Merah.

The tin mining tailings processed at Bukit Merah contained high levels of
thorium, which was the source of the radiation, while Lynas uses raw material
that has naturally low levels of thorium, that is 50 times lower than the tin
tailings used by Asian Rare Earth.

"We don't want to be damaging to the community, we want to be a positive
contributor and care for the community," Curtis said, assuring that the safety
aspect was very much upheld by Lynas.

Lynas announced in April that construction of Lynas Advanced Materials
Plant (LAMP) had reached the 40 per cent stage and was on target for completion
by September 2011.

However, widespread public concern about the safety of the project had led
to the appointment of an independent panel of international experts to review
all health and safety aspects of the project.

The expert panel appointed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
made a site visit from May 29 to June 3 and its report would be submitted to the
government by the end of this month.

Curtis said Lynas would fully abide by the judgement of the IAEA and the
company would always demonstrate that it was truthful to what it had been
saying.
-- BERNAMA