On December 15, Wall Street published an article entitled "The Road to a Chain Without China's Participation Is Long", written by Jon Edmont. The following is an excerpt from the full text:
It is very difficult to build a ** chain without China's participation. This sometimes means dealing with legless lizards and radioactive minerals.
This is the case with the manufacture of rare earth magnets. Rare-earth magnets are a powerful technology that is important for smartphones and electric vehicles, as well as for jet fighters and wind turbines.
China has dominated every aspect of the rare earth magnet manufacturing process for decades, and it is the only country capable of mass-producing rare earth magnets from start to finish.
Now, with the growing demand for rare earth magnets in the United States and Europe without China's involvement, various companies are piecing together the best chains distributed around the world in an attempt to break China's grip on the market, but with great difficulty.
Two-thirds of the world's rare earths are mined in China, which processes about 85% of the world's rare earth ores and makes more than 90% of the world's rare earth magnets.
Material**: On February 13, workers worked in the production workshop of Baotou Jiangxin Micro Motor Technology, which develops rare earth deep processing industry. (Xinhua News Agency).
New joint ventures can't offer the same inexpensive ** as China's. But the companies say some Western automakers and military manufacturers are willing to pay higher for rare earth magnets with little to no Chinese involvement.
Raheem Suleiman, chief executive of Canada's New Performance Materials, which is trying to build a chain of rare earth magnets outside of China, said: "The gap is huge. ”
Forming a new ** chain is like a game of "connecting the dots into a line". Businesses are piecing together widely distributed networks, and they're hitting hurdles along the way.
Rare earths are mined in the United States and Australia, but cannot be processed on a large scale. Malaysia can process rare earth ores but does not produce rare earth magnets. Japan produces rare earth magnets, but there are no rare earth minerals.
David Merriman, head of research at Project Blue, a UK-based market intelligence provider, said: "Creating a decentralized but distributed chain in friendly countries is perhaps the most likely way to grow. It is indeed important to emphasize that the Chinese are far ahead in this regard. ”
Western companies have limited expertise in rare earth magnet production, and it is often difficult to convince financial funders that their businesses will survive, Merriman said. Due to strict environmental requirements, it is not easy to get a mining area. "There are a lot of difficulties to overcome," Merriman said. ”
Take, for example, the Australian Strategic Supplies Corporation, which has an agreement with a US buyer to supply rare earths without Chinese involvement, and this US buyer wants to produce "Made in USA" rare earth magnets.
The company has a mine in eastern Australia, but environmental regulations require it to relocate the region's rare legless lizards before it can remove rare earths. The company's scientists had to set out to solve this problem, starting with laying floor tiles on inhospitable land a few years ago.
This lizard resembles an earthworm and prefers to live underground. The scientists moved the tiles, and with each few steps, the lizards moved their nests until they left the mine.
In the process of seeking to build a rare earth ** chain that does not contain China, Canadian New Performance Materials has also encountered its own challenges. The company already produces magnets in China, but it set out to build an alternative ** chain to meet the growing demand for rare earths that do not contain Chinese elements.
In addition to some places in countries such as Australia and Vietnam, the company is also targeting mineral sands from Georgia in the southern United States. There is a problem, though: these minerals contain radioactive material.
After this, more processing is required. In the extracted material, different types of rare earths are mixed together and need to be separated. Outside of China, only a handful of companies can do this, and in the U.S., none have been able to do large-scale rare earth separation.