Japanese Rare Earth Manufacturers Worried That Rare Earth Quotas Will Accelerate Their Transfer to China

Japanese manufacturers worried about China's restrictive rare earth export quotas may have found a way to resolve their own supply concerns – turning production to China.

On the 16th, Reuters reported that Japan's major rare earth alloy producer Showa Denko recently announced that its Chinese joint venture production will increase by 50% to 3,000 tons per year; Hitachi Metals also began to consider the production of neodymium magnets to China and the United States. The market expects that no other country except China will supply large amounts of rare earth before 2013, so Showa Denko and Hitachi Metals may indicate that technology manufacturers have moved out of Japan in large numbers.

In this regard, former Vice President of the China National Nonferrous Engineering Design and Research Institute, Wang Guozhen, said yesterday that “If Japan can exchange for high-end magnetic material production technology, it is welcome for Japan to transfer rare earth downstream application products to China.” Global reserves 35%. However, China's rare earth downstream application technology has been at the low-end level.

Yesterday, Lu Ming, a rare earth analyst at Baichuan Information, said that this move was mainly due to the abundance of rare earth resources in China, including the rare heavy rare earths in other countries. The main raw materials for magnetic materials are germanium, cerium and some medium and heavy rare earth elements. Rare earth magnets are mainly used in hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles.

According to Wang Guozhen, Japan’s magnetic material production technology leads the world, and every year it absorbs most of China’s rare earth content, especially medium and heavy rare earths, because high-end magnetic materials require the addition of medium and heavy rare earth elements such as lanthanum and cerium, and These elements are exactly what China is currently strengthening its control over.

“China is targeting foreign investment to obtain valuable technology for joint ventures between rare earth resources and Chinese companies,” Reuters quoted a Japanese trading company executive as saying. “It is clear that Japan’s technology for producing high-end magnets is a goal.” For example, for mixing There are currently only three Japanese companies that produce precision magnets for power cars.

However, the effect of China's attempt to use resources for technology over the years is not obvious. "If they only bring in low-end technology, China will certainly not do it." Wang Guozhen said.

Contrary to Japan's exploration of the downstream production of rare earths, Australia’s plans to shift away from the upstream smelting and separation of rare earths are temporarily suspended.

According to the “People’s Daily” report on the 16th, the Malaysian government decided to suspend Australia’s Linas’ plan to build the world’s largest rare earth smelter, due to environmental issues. The rare earth plant has a planned annual production capacity of 22,000 tons, which can meet about 1/3 of the global demand.

According to Wang Guozhen, due to restrictions on environmental protection in Australia, although Australia has a relatively abundant rare earth resources (mainly light rare earth), it is forbidden to build a rare earth smelting separation plant in China.