Thread: China Corners 97% of Market for Rare-Earth Metals

China Corners 97% of Market for Rare-Earth Metals


by Washington's Blog
Global Research, June 4, 2009
Washington's Blog


China has cornered 97% of the world market for rare earth metals, according to Byron King (the Times Online puts the number at 95%, and the Financial Times puts the number at "over 90%").

What are rare earth metals? Most people define them as including the following 17 metals:

Cerium
Dysprosium
Erbium
Europium
Gadolinium
Holmium
Lanthanum
Lutetium
Neodymium
Praseodymium
Promethium
Samarium
Scandium
Terbium
Thulium
Ytterbium
Yttrium

Some people also include some or all of the Actinide Series elements as rare earths. The Actinides include:

Actinium
Americium
Berkelium
Californium
Curium
Einsteinium
Fermium
Lawrencium
Mendelevium
Neptunium
Nobelium
Plutonium
Protactinium
Thorium
Uranium

As the Times Online notes:

"The weight and magnetic properties of rare-earth metals have made them important for wind turbines, essential to hybrid cars, and indispensable if the world ever hopes to covert to fully electric vehicles..."

Don Burbar, the chief executive of Avalon Rare Metals, said: "The crux of the matter is that there are now a lot of technologies that can't work without rare earths, and China is currently in effective control of the global supply. China has positioned itself to retain control, and meanwhile politicians around the world do not appreciate how the supply side of green technology works."

As mining analyst John Kaiser writes:

"In the case of rare earth oxides, we're looking at a situation where the Obama Administration would like to see clean energy replace gasoline-based energy in transportation fuel. The Chinese are thinking along similar lines because they don't want to be dependent on foreign oil supplies any more than the United States does. Rare earth oxides go into these super magnets that are a key part of these hybrid and electric cars. The Japanese, the Europeans, and North American carmakers would like to commercialize the production of hybrid cars, but they are afraid to do so because all the rare earths right now come out of China . And China has said "we would like all the manufacturing to be done in China and we'll sell it to the rest of the world." Well, that puts everybody at the mercy of China . So now there's a scramble afoot to look for these deposits outside of China and never mind that China could flood the market with their rare earth oxides. The end users are thinking we need to have security of supply for these rare earth oxides so we're not at the mercy of political machinations by a country like China . And see this article from the New York Times on China's buying spree in Australia.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=13853

And if we have to go to war with China again like Korea and Viet Nam, China will win if we don't shape up our thinking on this fast.

W

This being the first time I have heard anything along this line I am skeptical.

Originally Posted by Ratbstard

This being the first time I have heard anything along this line I am skeptical.

Well there is some truth to it in that rare earth materials are needed for the supermagnets used for green power. And it could be China makes most of these magnets and thus has most of the raw materials.

But there is no way all of these rare earth materials originate in China, there has to be numerous deposits in lots of other countries. It could be the Chinese mine them cheaper, but if they cut off the supply I am sure there would be other sources outside China, they would just cost more to mine.

Australia, Nourishing China’s Economic Engine, Questions Ties


By MICHAEL WINES
The New York Times
Published: June 2, 2009


SYDNEY, Australia — If outlanders tend to associate Australia with kangaroos, broad-brim leather hats and an opera house, many Australians are different. They think of iron ore and bauxite, copper and coal, nickel, gold and uranium, a trove of mineral riches that is their nation’s birthright and the bedrock of its prosperity.

Which explains much of the breast-beating that has ensued since the Chinese announced plans this year to buy a big chunk of it.

Since three state owned Chinese companies said they would buy stakes in Australia’s storied mining industry totaling $22 billion — as much as China’s entire investment here in the last three years — some of this nation’s 21.3 million people have reacted with aggrieved nationalism.

The government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, which generally favors the sales, has been savaged as naïvely cozy with China, a view some in his own military appear to share. Opposition politicians have flogged the specter of an Australian future more or less as a giant open-pit mine in which the locals toil, but Beijing takes the profits.

“It’s the Communist People’s Republic of China, 100 percent Communist-owned, buying up sections of the country and minerals in the ground which they will then sell to the Communist People’s Republic of China,â€

China’s rare earth monopoly threatens global suppliers, rival producers claim


By Cole Latimer, Jieun Kim, Mia Tahara-Stubbs & Yumin Wang

Published: May 29 2009


This article is provided to FT.com readers by mergermarket—a news service focused on providing actionable, origination intelligence to M&A professionals. www.mergermarket.com


The Chinese acquisition of stakes in Australian rare earth miners Lynas Corporation and Arafura Resources has “caught the rest of the world sleeping,â€

China, Japan on collision coure over rare-earth metals


Leo Lewis | May 28, 2009
Article from: The Times


JAPAN'S increasingly frantic efforts to lead the world in green technology have put it on a collision course with the ambitions of China and dragged both government and industry into the murky realm of large-scale mineral smuggling.

Rare-earth metals are crucial to the fututre of battery-powered cars Picture: Bloomberg
The robust international trade in illegally mined, quota-busting rare-earth metals highlights China's near monopoly on the raw materials for environmental technology - a 95 per cent dominance of world supply that is likely to become more widely noticed as China tightens its grip.

The weight and magnetic properties of rare-earth metals have made them important for wind turbines, essential to hybrid cars, and indispensable if the world ever hopes to covert to fully electric vehicles.

One mining company president told The Times that governments that had promised a way out of economic turmoil with bold schemes to subsidise green cars, solar panels and other environmental technology had "spoken without understanding the upstream of modern products".

Don Burbar, the chief executive of Avalon Rare Metals, said: "The crux of the matter is that there are now a lot of technologies that can't work without rare earths, and China is currently in effective control of the global supply. China has positioned itself to retain control, and meanwhile politicians around the world do not appreciate how the supply side of green technology works."

In Japan, the world's biggest importer of rare-earth metals, more than 10,000 tonnes per year about a fifth of the country's total annual consumption are thought to enter the country through a thriving black import network without which Japan would already be in a severe supply crisis, a senior government official said.

China has been lowering its export quotas for rare-earth metals by about 6 per cent annually since the start of the decade, with Japan expected to be allotted only 38,000 tonnes in 2009. Toyota and Honda alone will consume about that quantity and experts in Australia have predicted a wider global supply crunch within three years as demand surges beyond existing refinery and extraction capacity.

But rare-earth specialists at two of Japan's largest trading houses said that loopholes and smuggling substantially raise the quantities of rare metals that enter Japan each year. Kazunori Fukuda, deputy director of the non-ferrous metals division at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, said: "If the Chinese export quota limits were the reality of what comes into Japan each year, we would be even more worried than we already are. All green technology depends on rare-earth metals and all global trade in rare earth depends on China."

Ginya Adachi, from the Japanese Rare Earth Association, said that China's dominance of rare earths would serve the developed world with a rude shock about global trade: Japan, America and Europe must now realise that some markets are not real, but political. But he added: "The Chinese Government wants full control but it doesn't have it. It is not in control of the rare-earths market in the same way that OPEC is in control of oil. Local miners will sell even if the government tries to control the price or the quotas."

The Japanese Government has begun looking for alternative supply sources in Vietnam and elsewhere; rare earths are not as rare as the name suggests. There are potential supplies around the world, but prospective miners in Australia and the US are experiencing financing difficulties and as soon as new facilities have emerged in Asia and elsewhere, Chinese companies have quickly become majority investors.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/bu ... 96,00.html

While China currently produces 95% of the worlds rare earth supply, the metals are also found in the US, Indonesia, Australia and South Africa.

Rare earth metals are needed for the manufacturing of wind turbines, plasma televisions, mobile phones, hybrid car batteries meaning the Chinese monopoly could shift the high-tech manufacturing industry bases from Japan and Korea to China.