ReElement Technologies Corporation, a minority holding of American Resources Corporation (NASDAQ: AREC), has commissioned its first commercial-scale germanium production column at its Marion, Indiana, refining facility, according to a company statement.

The column represents the largest chromatography unit ReElement currently intends to deploy across its owned facilities and future partner locations. The commissioning confirmed that the company's chromatography-based separation and purification platform can scale from laboratory and pilot production to commercial operations without organic solvents, which are commonly used in conventional solvent-extraction processes.

The Marion facility is being developed around four initial Phase I production lines covering germanium, gallium, light rare earth elements and heavy rare earth elements. Initial commercial production targets include germanium, gallium, neodymium, neodymium-praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, gadolinium, yttrium and samarium. A planned Phase II expansion would add production lines for lithium, cobalt, nickel and tungsten.

The company said facility development remains under budget and ahead of the schedules established in its original construction and commercialization plans.

"This demonstration validates that our technology is not only scientifically proven — it is commercially scalable," said Mark Jensen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ReElement Technologies. "It confirms the modular refining-first architecture we have spent years developing and significantly reduces the technical risk associated with expanding our platform across multiple products, production lines and locations."

ReElement said it is actively evaluating feedstock partnerships, toll processing arrangements, joint ventures and strategic co-location opportunities across the rare earth, semiconductor, aerospace, defense and battery-material industries. The company's immediate focus is completing commissioning of the Marion facility's remaining Phase I production lines.