The rare earth industry: a world of rapid change

Abstract

The People's Republic of China today plays an important role in the rare earth (RE) industry. It controls the major part of the reserves and has the monopoly for supplying ionic concentrates of unique composition. At the end of the 1980s a price war started among Chinese domestic producers that led to an important price decrease of most RE products on the international market. This pricing situation is detrimental to the whole RE industry, both inside and outside China. A key question is to foresee the state of the RE industry 10 years hence. We forecast during this period an overall growth rate of demand between 4% and 6% per annum thanks to the fast-rising demand in some newly industrialized countries. At the end of the century Asia will be the biggest RE consumer. The relative importance of the three main applications for non-separated rare earths, i.e. catalysis, metallurgy and glasses-ceramics, will not change very much. In contrast, the need for separated products, whatever the purity, will grow faster than the RE industry average. Some applications such as “magnetism” will gain a share, while the “phosphor” application will grow modestly.