The U.S. Department of War announced $135.6 million in new equity investments this week aimed at shoring up America's access to alumina and other critical minerals, splitting the money between a Louisiana refinery that is the nation's only source of domestically produced alumina and an Alaska mining venture sitting on some of the world's richest copper deposits. The bulk of the new money, $100 million, is going to Atlantic Alumina Company (ATALCO), which operates the Gramercy, Louisiana refinery. The remaining $35.6 million completes a previously announced investment in Trilogy Metals, a company developing mineral deposits in northwest Alaska.
According to Dallas Express, the ATALCO deal takes the form of a preferred-equity investment and comes on top of a $400 million commitment the War Department has already made to the facility. ATALCO's existing investors are putting in another $350 million of their own, with an additional $50 million expected within 75 days, bringing the total federal and private commitment to $800 million if that additional tranche is completed. The Gramercy refinery converts imported bauxite ore into refined alumina, which is then processed into aluminum used in military aircraft, vehicles, weapons, electronics, defense systems, and a wide swath of civilian manufacturing and infrastructure.
Why the Pentagon Needs This One Refinery
Gramercy is not just any alumina plant — it is the only one left in the United States, a distinction born of decades of industrial offshoring that shuttered the country's other alumina refineries. The site was originally commissioned in 1957 on a 3,300-acre Mississippi River tract under Kaiser Aluminum, later operated as Noranda Alumina, before being rebranded as ATALCO, according to the company's own ATALCO history. Per the same Dallas Express report, officials said the facility currently supplies sufficient alumina to support roughly 60% of War Department demand and accounts for about 55% of total U.S. alumina demand, with roughly 99.3% of its output flowing to national-security subsectors.
War Department officials said financial and operational pressures would likely have forced the refinery and its affiliated mining operations to close without the near-term investment, the Dallas Express report notes. The department requires approximately 200,000 metric tons of metallurgical aluminum annually, and it projects that planned production increases — including ATALCO's plan to return to 1.2 million metric tons of alumina production annually — will support aluminum output equivalent to 142% of projected demand by 2029. The investment is expected to preserve roughly 875 jobs tied to the ATALCO operation, including about 530 refinery workers in Gramercy, and the Gramercy plant supplies manufacturing operations as far afield as Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi, and aluminum smelters in Kentucky and South Carolina.
The new investment is a follow-on to a $450 million strategic partnership the War Department struck with ATALCO and Concord Resources back in January, which included $150 million in preferred equity to establish the first primary gallium production circuit at an American refinery, according to a Business Wire report. Gallium is a key mineral used in military radar and semiconductors. Separately, the Gramercy site is also home to more than 30 million tons of stockpiled bauxite residue, or “red mud,” a caustic byproduct that has drawn $96.9 million in combined federal grants — $29.9 million from the War Department and $67 million from the Department of Energy — to processor ElementUSA for extracting rare earth elements, gallium, and scandium from the waste, per GlobeNewswire.
An Alaska Copper Bet, and a Road Fight
The other piece of the announcement, the $35.6 million investment in Trilogy Metals, is tied to mineral deposits in Alaska's Upper Kobuk district, which the War Department describes as containing one of the world's highest-grade undeveloped copper deposits, according to the Dallas Express report. The Bornite project within that district also holds additional copper, cobalt, and germanium resources. In exchange for its money, the federal government received penny warrants representing an additional 7.5% of Trilogy Metals, on top of an earlier 10% direct ownership stake, giving Washington a combined 17.5% economic position in the company. Trilogy Metals develops the district through Ambler Metals, a 50-50 joint venture with Australian mining company South32.
Access to that district hinges on the proposed Ambler Road, a 211-mile industrial route that would connect the mineral district to Alaska's Dalton Highway. The Bureau of Land Management reissued a 50-year right-of-way grant for the road after President Trump, in October 2025, directed federal agencies to issue the necessary authorizations and approved an appeal supporting the project — a move that reversed the Biden administration's earlier rejection of Ambler Road, per the Dallas Express report. Officials project that district and road development could create roughly 500 long-term mining jobs and more than 2,730 construction jobs, and could generate more than $1.1 billion in Alaska state revenue.
That federal green light has not ended the fight over the road. A federal judge in July rejected a lawsuit brought by conservation groups seeking to block the government from conveying land to Alaska to support the road's construction, according to the Anchorage Daily News. But Alaska Native regional corporations Doyon, Limited and NANA Regional Corporation declined to renew land-access agreements with state developers in 2023 and 2024, blocking access across roughly 10 to 12 miles of the proposed haul road, as reported by The Alaska Current. That land-access standoff remains unresolved even as federal court and executive approvals move forward.
Part of a Broader Pentagon Pattern
The War Department frames both investments as part of a broader strategy of taking direct ownership positions — preferred ownership units, common shares, or warrants — in companies producing materials vulnerable to overseas supply disruptions, rather than relying solely on grants or tax incentives. Downstream processing and manufacturing tied to these efforts could occur in Texas, Arizona, Utah, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, the Dallas Express report states. The legal basis for these equity stakes traces to Title III of the Defense Production Act of 1950, expanded by Executive Order 14241 in March 2025 to delegate direct investment authorities to defense and development agencies, according to the Baker Institute.
The ATALCO and Trilogy Metals deals are not isolated moves. In March, the War Department awarded $27 million in Title III funds to U.S. Antimony Corporation to expand antimony extraction and refining in Montana and Alaska, according to the Department of War. Antimony is vital for military munitions and battery technologies. Federal analysts cited by Meridian 535 Strategies point to raw material bottlenecks as a major constraint on defense production, noting that China controls roughly 60% of global critical mineral extraction and up to 90% of downstream processing capacity. Notably, ATALCO hired Meridian 535 Strategies, a firm led by a former Raytheon lobbyist, in September 2025, shifting its federal advocacy from tax credits and tariffs toward Defense Department critical minerals funding just months before the Pentagon's equity commitments arrived.
The push to lock critical minerals inside the domestic industrial base extends beyond equity stakes. In August, President Trump invoked Section 101 of the Defense Production Act to enact a 386-day export ban on U.S. tungsten scrap and lithium-ion battery waste, or “black mass,” forcing that material to be processed domestically rather than shipped to overseas processors dominant in those markets. Taken together, officials say the strategy is meant to protect taxpayer capital while funding industrial facilities and mineral projects the War Department considers important to national security.
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