China’s decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets has upended the supply chains central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world.

We were working on this several years ago.

Extraction:

lemonde.fr/…/in-the-mojave-desert-the-rebirth-of-…

In the Mojave Desert, the rebirth of the only American rare earth mine

With support from the US government, mine operator MP Materials is reviving the Mountain Pass site. The company is taking advantage of the global appetite for magnets for electric motors and wind turbines.

Those MP Materials guys also do processing.

argusmedia.com/…/2643665-western-re-refining-proj…

Attempts to establish commercial-scale rare earth separation and processing outside China are growing in number and progressing gradually with a view to ramping up output over the next two years.

Mineral resources developers are scrambling to reassess and upgrade their estimates of mineable rare earth element (REE) content as western governments attempt to encourage producers to establish production closer to home. And new efforts to develop high-volume processing capacity outside China — which currently accounts for more than 80pc of global refining — are emerging.

Western countries are well behind China in advancing technical processes to refine REs from raw materials, as they seek alternatives to the highly polluting solvent extraction process. But with China banning the export of RE extraction and separation technologies in December 2023, as well as exports to the US of key electronic metals in December 2024, the impetus is growing to come up with viable Western production.

RE oxides are used in the manufacturing of permanent magnets for electric vehicle (EV) motors, wind turbines and electronics, as well as batteries, lasers, metal alloys, medical devices and military equipment.

Given that latter application, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded more than $439mn in financing since 2020 to support a new domestic supply chain, from the separation and refining of materials mined in the US to downstream production of magnets. In a broader trend towards “friendshoring” of critical material supply, the DoD considers Canada, Australia and the UK as domestic suppliers.

Like the US, European countries are also targeting domestic production in a bid to secure their supply chains.

Projects include the expansion of Nd and NdPr processing capacity at UK-based Less Common Metals (LCM), the addition of NdPr production at Belgian chemical group Solvay at its plant in France in 2025 and French consultancy Carestar’s plan to start production in 2026 of RE oxides from mining concentrates and, later, recycled magnets. REEtec in Norway plans to start a commercial NdPr plant in 2025 and Swedish state-owned LKAB plans to start an RE oxide demonstration plant by the end of 2026. These initiatives are in line with plans across Europe to increase EV manufacturing and renewable energy.

Rare earth mining projects in Africa and Australia are largely targeting supply deals or integrated production in Asia or North America. Miners in Brazil, such as Aclara, are also planning integrated production by developing separation plants close to demand in the US and Europe.

Lemme ask: isn’t China’s dominance on rare earth extraction just because their environmental laws are basically non-existent? Any other country could do that at scale if they really needed to, but it would take time and sacrifice nature.