Rare Earths Shortage Expected by 2015 – Experts Gather in Hong Kong

“Rare earths” are a collection of 17 rare chemical elements in the periodic table.

A wide range of gadgets and consumer goods, including the hybrid car and generators for wind turbines consume these little-known elements.

Industry experts are predicting an annual shortage of 44,000 tons by 2015.
In Hong Kong, experts discussed these rare earth metals at the fifth international Metal Events Rare Earths conference.

[Nicholas Curtis, Lynas Corporation, Executive Chairman]:
“Governments have now taken a very strong policy positions on industries they want to stimulate and many of those industries they want to stimulate are green industries. And those green industries require rare earths.”

Over-production and low prices during the 1990s and early 2000s, led most rare earth producers around the world to shut down their operations.

In China, however, rare earth production has increased to about 97 percent of global supplies in 2008, experts say.

But soaring domestic demand has led the Chinese regime to put strict controls on its mining, production and exports.

Wang Yang is a researcher at Baotou Research Institute of Rare Earths in Inner Mongolia, where most of China’s reserves are found.

[Wang Yang, Baotou Research Institute Researcher]:
“China supplies more than 90 percent of global demand for rare earth products. As the non-regenerative features of natural resources it is important and necessary to preserve the valuable resources in China.”

Chinese domestic demand has grown 25 percent every year for the past three years. Now higher-end audio-visual, telecommunications and computer equipment manufacturing industries are producing and exporting the final products rather than just the components or rare earth commodities.

With a reduction in exports from China and continued growth in demand elsewhere, there’s an imbalance between supply and demand.

NDTV