Demand for rare earth magnets has risen faster than expected as the Covid-19 pandemic eases, but more needs to be done to make the industry sustainable, Australian firm Lynas Rare Earths' vice-president of downstream operations, Pol Le-Roux, told delegates at this week's Metal Events 17th International Rare Earth conference in London.
"A short-sighted approach will never be effective," Le-Roux said, highlighting the potential pitfalls ahead. "You have to improve your cost positions all the time. That is how you persist through a downturn and that is how you earn the respect of your customers," he added. But the structural issues in the industry run far deeper than that.
Lynas Rare Earths is the only major integrated producer outside China. The company' processing and separation plant in Malaysia, which is supplied with concentrate from its Mount Weld rare earth mine in Western Australia, has been operating at around 75pc of its 26,000 t/yr capacity for separated rare earth products since June 2020 to adapt to Covid restrictions and the uncertain outlook.
Despite this, the company produced 5,461t of neodymium-praseodymium oxide — the main input for neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) rare earth permanent magnets — in the financial year ended 30 June, up from 4,656t a year earlier. Demand for electric vehicles is accelerating and along with it the demand for NdFeB magnets, which offer the most efficient way of converting electrical energy into motion. Global electric car sales rose by 140pc year on year in the first quarter of this year, according to the Paris-based IEA.
"In this environment where demand is higher than expected, we need to increase our production as quickly as possible," he said. "I cannot give you the precise figures but we are targetting a 15-20pc share of the global market and this is higher than we initially planned. But we also need to prove to the world that this is a clean industry and an industry that controls its environmental impact," he added. Lynas was founded in 1983 by Australian businessman Nick Curtis to be a non-Chinese producer with the highest environmental practices and standards in the world.
One of the biggest barriers to the development of a truly global industry today is the lack of new magnet manufacturing capacity in the US and the EU. "The switch to electric vehicles is happening now, we need to make a decision on developing capacity now. We cannot wait," he said. Le-Roux also highlighted another problem severely affecting a number of industries — the global shortage of engineers.
By Caroline Messecar
