Tomahawk missiles are coveted by militaries around the world because they can hit a target 1,000 miles away. That accuracy is possible because their fins use powerful magnets made of samarium — a rare-earth metal that can tolerate high heat.
When China put restrictions on some rare-earth exports this year, it cut off the supply of samarium to American defense contractors that sell to Raytheon, the maker of Tomahawk missiles. Samarium is processed almost exclusively in China, where more than 85 percent of the world’s rare-earth magnets are made.
A carefully orchestrated deal involving two European companies gave U.S. defense contractors access to a new source of samarium, allowing production to continue for now. But that supply — made from material that had been sitting in a factory in France since the 1970s — is limited. Now the Trump administration is racing to develop a new source before the European stockpile runs out.
China began requiring export licenses for samarium and six other rare-earth metals in April after President Trump rolled out tariffs against China and several other nations. A spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in an email that the export controls had been instituted to “defend world peace.” Foreign companies that use samarium for military purposes are no longer allowed to buy it.
“No defense contractor will be able to use the same path to buy samarium metal that we’ve used in the past,” said an executive for one of Raytheon’s suppliers, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “You’re on the naughty list. You’re not getting that material.”
Most rare-earth magnets are made of neodymium, which is used in everyday applications such as cellphones, auto parts and electronics. But the defense industry requires samarium-cobalt magnets, which can withstand extreme heat.
The stakes for finding alternatives are enormous. Unless new sources of samarium or a substitute material can be found, American manufacturers won’t be able to build fighter jets or precision-guided missiles. They may be forced to sacrifice precision if they can’t get the right magnets, said Aisha Haynes, a former Defense Department official responsible for supply chain issues.
China is still restricting the rare earth elements that the US needs to produce its own permanent magnets and other products even after President Donald Trump reached a deal with his Chinese counterpart in October to lift restrictions on the supplies, according to market participants.
More than a dozen consumers, producers, government officials and trade experts said that while China has boosted deliveries of finished products — primarily permanent magnets — the US industry remains unable to acquire the inputs needed to make those items on its own, a key priority for the administration.
TOKYO, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Japan will conduct test mining of rare-earth-rich mud from the deep seabed off Minamitori Island, some 1,900 kilometres (1,180 miles) southeast of Tokyo, from January 11 to February 14, the head of the government-backed project said on Tuesday.
The operation will mark the world’s first attempt to continuously lift rare-earth mud from a depth of around 6,000 meters on to a vessel.
Tokyo, like its Western allies, is seeking to secure stable supplies of critical minerals as China, the dominant supplier of rare earths, tightens export controls.
“One of our missions is to build a supply chain for domestically produced rare earths to ensure stable supply of minerals essential to industry,” Shoichi Ishii, program director of the Cabinet Office’s national platform for innovative ocean developments, told reporters.
The Japanese government is pressing ahead with a national project as part of broader efforts to strengthen maritime and economic security.
The January test will focus on connecting the deep-sea mining system and confirming its ability to lift 350 metric tons of rare-earth mud per day. Environmental impacts will be monitored both onboard and on the seabed throughout the operation.
No production target has been set, but if successful, a full-scale mining trial will be conducted in February 2027.
The government-funded project has spent about 40 billion yen ($256 million) since 2018, Ishii said, though estimated reserves have not been disclosed.
Two new initial resources for Canada Nickel’s (TSX-V: CNC; US-OTC: CNIKF) sulphide deposits in northern Ontario now make its Timmins Nickel District the largest undeveloped nickel base in the country and among the largest globally by contained metal.
The Bannockburn deposit hosts 63 million indicated tonnes grading 0.28% nickel for 180,000 tonnes of contained metal, and 129 million inferred tonnes at 0.27% nickel for 340,000 contained tonnes, the company reported Thursday.
Midlothian holds 595 million inferred tonnes grading 0.28% nickel for 1.68 million tonnes of nickel.
Those resources bump the total contained nickel across the company’s eight projects by about 12% to 20.9 million tonnes.
Globally, the Timmins District tops The Metals Company’s (Nasdaq: TMC) resource for its seabed Clarion-Clipperton Zone project that hosts an estimated 15.5 million contained tonnes of nickel and other critical metals.
The four decades that China spent building dominance in the small world of critical minerals is proving frustratingly hard to overcome.
Energy independence was for decades a fantasy in the US, until the advent of a new kind of oil production technology in the early aughts changed the rules of the game. Thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling, the US overtook petroleum heavyweights such as Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s top oil producer, no longer at the mercy of mercurial trading partners.
Today, President Donald Trump’s White House is chasing a similar dream—this time with rare earth elements, the hard-to-pronounce metals that underpin much of modern technology. But unlike with shale oil and gas, it’s extremely unlikely the US is going to be able to innovate its way out of this profound deficit anytime soon.
Washington must move even faster to bolster critical minerals projects and offset Beijing’s grip on the world’s supply of the building blocks for electronics, weapons and a range of other goods, three U.S. mining and refining executives said on Thursday.
The push underscores how Washington’s surging support this year for the sector – including taking stakes in mining companies and guaranteeing a price floor for the only U.S. rare earths mine – is falling short of what industry leaders say is needed amid intense Chinese competition.
Executives from Perpetua Resources, American Rare Earths and Westwin Elements told the Reuters NEXT conference in New York that the U.S. government should release a comprehensive minerals plan, pressure Indonesia to trim nickel production, and speed up the time for the U.S. Export-Import Bank and other agencies to approve loan funding, among other steps.
Presently, there are a few small Indian companies engaged in manufacturing rare earth magnets. The industry needs a big push to feed the new generation of industries – from electric vehicles to fighter aircraft engines, wind turbines, and laptops to mention a few. Lately, it has come into a big focus as the world is moving towards electric vehicles. Rare earth magnet is a crucial component of electric vehicles (EVs). Fortunately, India has large rare earth deposits. Globally, it ranks third after China and Brazil.
The demand for rare earth magnets in India is expected to increase sharply in the coming years, driven by the expansion of EV manufacturing, increasing electronics output, defence production, industrial automation and renewable energy generation. For the present, the country uses rare earth magnets to the extent of 4,000 tonnes per year, mostly through imports. Among the companies currently manufacturing rare earth magnets in India are: IREL (India) Limited, Permanent Magnets Limited, Ashvini Magnets Private Limited, Star Trace, Eriez Magnets, Kumar Magnet, Sonal Magnetics, A to Z Magnet Mfg. Co. and Pragati Enterprises. The demand for rare earth magnets is projected to double by 2030. Lately, China has imposed restrictions on exports. Earlier this year, China slapped export licenses for seven types of rare earth elements and derivative products.
Canada is entering a pivotal era, one in which leadership in critical minerals will determine our economic resilience and national security as global supply chains shift away from dependence on China.
Nickel is at the centre of this race and one of the resources in which Canada can once again become a global leader. The federal government’s referral of the Crawford Project to the Major Projects Office makes it clear that Ottawa understands the importance of what is unfolding in northeastern Ontario.
Rare earths company MP Materials is partnering with the US military and Saudi Arabia’s flagship mining company to build a rare earth refinery in the Kingdom, in a move that aims to diversify the global critical minerals supply chain.
Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Maaden) and the Pentagon will create a joint venture to process rare earth materials from Saudi Arabia and other parts of the world to supply the US and Saudi manufacturing and defense sectors.
North Americans and Europeans need reliable processes to refine both light and heavy rare earth metals.
The processes currently available in North American and Europe to refine light and heavy rare earth elements do not meet the economic and environmental standard.
Prior to going into mining in unexplored part of the world:
1. We need immediate research and development to improve the existing technologies.
2. Build refineries in the existing mines with infrastructure using developed technologies.
3. Take the price control of the Rare Earth Elements by tariffs or other means until the local refineries optimize the refining processes and operating cost.
We do not want to send the concentrate to another country to do final refining.
Process Development:
“Two different rare earth elements may be fractions of an angstrom different in diameter — that means it’s very difficult to separate using physical means. The processes that are used right now … can be 100 steps,” Chrisey said, also noting that the procedure can be very expensive and environmentally hazardous due to the chemicals used to separate and purify the metals.
Molycorp was struggling to stay solvent. Those new innovative technologies? They didn’t generate significant revenue or work as designed. By 2013, the company’s revenues were in free fall.
Molycorp’s most profitable assets being transferred to Chinese-linked Neo Materials, where he formerly served as CEO. Molycorp’s final remaining husk declared bankruptcy in 2014. Unsurprisingly, the majority of Neo Materials’ revenue-producing operations are now in China. To make matters worse, the Mountain Pass mine was purchased out of bankruptcy by a consortium that included a Chinese-owned firm.
Mountain Pass was now sending U.S.-mined rare earth concentrate to China for processing. The dream of a one-stop American rare earths solution was over, and the private sector had little appetite for reviving it.
Crucial innovation is also needed to break China’s stranglehold on the sector without sacrificing environmental quality, industry analysts said, with concerns over current processes’ toxic waste impeding projects.
Technical complexities, partnership strains and pollution concerns are hampering companies’ ability to wrest market share away from China, which according to the International Energy Agency controls 87% of global rare earths refining capacity.
Late last year, U.S.-based MP said it was commissioning refining equipment near its California mine as part of an intricate calibration process that has so far not succeeded, leaving the company reliant on China for refining and thus nearly all of its revenue.
The town of Mountain Pass, California, is home to the largest rare-earth element mine in the U.S. Its story began in the 1940s, when prospectors went searching for uranium.
The U.S. contains potential sources for many of them, and powerful voices in politics and business insist that the country must exploit them. But despite skyrocketing demand for the energy-critical elements, would-be domestic producers just can’t compete with global forces. This then is a story of comprehensive failure — but not the obvious one. Molycorp’s impending demise reflects failure by politicians and the media to understand how weak China’s grip on the metals market really is, and failure by Wall Street to understand the most basic dynamics of supply and demand, and failure by Silicon Valley to distinguish between hype and hard numbers.
China’s refining expertise has allowed the country to engineer rare earths prices at different stages in the processing chains to its advantage, including low prices for finished products, to inhibit foreign competition.
Beijing for years has allowed imports of lightly processed rock known as rare earths concentrate for refining. The strategy helps ensure prices that incentivize other countries to dig new mines but not build processing plants.
China plans to prohibit non-state companies from mining rare earths, further tightening its control over a strategic sector that has emerged as a battleground in its trade war with the US. The government said only large state-owned groups can mine, smelt or separate the minerals and proposed banning private firms from the activities, according to draft rules issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
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