Australian rare earths: : A healthy alternative to Chinese supply?

• Autores: Industrial Minerals
• Localización: Industrial Minerals, ISSN 0019-8544, Nº. 588, 2016 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Noviembre)
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Having built up its rare earths industry two decades ago, China became and remains the dominant global producer of the minerals, supplying 85-90% of the world's needs. Dudley Kingsnorth, a professor at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia (WA) and a leading expert in rare earths, estimates that worldwide demand for rare earth oxides (REO) was around 146,000 tonnes in 2015 with a market value of $2-4bn.

    That China is not the enemy in the rare earths industry is a message that Kingsnorth is keen to stress. "The scale of illegal mining and production of rare earths [in China] is estimated to constitute 30-40% of total output," he states. "It has led to a collapse in prices, leading to collective losses by the Chinese rare earths industry over the past two years." Due to the guesswork involved in assessing the size of China's illegal rare earths industry, sales and production volumes are difficult to gauge. Around 100-105,000 tpa rare earths are legally produced in China under production quotas. This means that 35-45,000 tonnes are being produced illegally by Chinese suppliers, with another 19,000 tonnes produced (legally) in the rest of the world (see Figure 2). Kingsnorth's estimate for Chinese output is slightly higher than the estimate given by the US Geological Survey (USGS), which put the figure at about 124,000 tonnes in 2015.