The world's two biggest rare earths companies outside of China are facing challenges turning rock from their mines into the building blocks for magnets used across the global economy.
“Technical complexities, partnership strains and pollution concerns are hampering companies’ ability to wrest market share away from China”
This is a main reason China has a large market share in the first place. There are a number of rare earth deposits around the world but clean extraction and refining is expensive. China has been willing to go the cheap and dirty route. So everyone let china sell it to the rest of the world cheaper than local deposits could be exploited due to environmental regulations.
There are only three options:
Buy from China. Which may no longer be possible.
Local extraction but more expensive. With supply issues as production ramps up.
Local extraction but the environmental regulations get tossed aside due to National Security. Still likely to be more expensive than china and slow to scale, plus the added joy of pollution.
I’m sure the Chinese would be more than happy to sell but the US needs to learn how to cooperate and share instead of constantly trying to control and dominate. The rest of the world is fed up with America plundering their resources and telling it how to run their affairs. Especially as it can barely run its own
Counterpoint: The Chinese can develop the tech themselves, they obviously have the raw materials. They want to move themselves up the value chain as their labour costs rise, this is the perfect opportunity.
“Technical complexities, partnership strains and pollution concerns are hampering companies’ ability to wrest market share away from China”
This is a main reason China has a large market share in the first place. There are a number of rare earth deposits around the world but clean extraction and refining is expensive. China has been willing to go the cheap and dirty route. So everyone let china sell it to the rest of the world cheaper than local deposits could be exploited due to environmental regulations.
There are only three options:
Buy from China. Which may no longer be possible.
Local extraction but more expensive. With supply issues as production ramps up.
Local extraction but the environmental regulations get tossed aside due to National Security. Still likely to be more expensive than china and slow to scale, plus the added joy of pollution.
I’m sure the Chinese would be more than happy to sell but the US needs to learn how to cooperate and share instead of constantly trying to control and dominate. The rest of the world is fed up with America plundering their resources and telling it how to run their affairs. Especially as it can barely run its own
Counterpoint: The Chinese can develop the tech themselves, they obviously have the raw materials. They want to move themselves up the value chain as their labour costs rise, this is the perfect opportunity.