Speaker 1: China has a near monopoly on rare earths, accounting for
Speaker 1: close to sixty percent of global mining and over ninety
Speaker 1: percent of processing. And importantly, China is using its dominant
Speaker 1: position as a bargaining chip in their negotiations with the US.
Speaker 2: When President Trump announced Liberation Day tariffs, China immediately retaliated
Speaker 2: by restricting supply of rare earths, causing companies like Forward
Speaker 2: to halt production. The US has also issued several directives
Speaker 2: around rare earths, including an investigation that could yield more tariffs.
Speaker 2: So what are these minerals, why are they so important
Speaker 2: to global trade and production? And how did China come
Speaker 2: to dominate this space?
Speaker 1: You're listening to Age Eccentric from Bloomberg Intelligence.
Speaker 2: I'm John Lee in Hong Kong, and I'm Katydmitrieva, also
Speaker 2: in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: Here to discuss everything related to rare earths is Curtis More,
Speaker 1: senior vice president at Energy Fuels, a major uranium miner
Speaker 1: that also produces rare earths. He's dialing in from Denver. Curtis,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hi, it's great to be here. Curtis, give us.
Speaker 1: A one oh one. What exactly are rare earths.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm happy to do so. So, rare earths are
Speaker 3: essentially the second to last line on the periodic table.
Speaker 3: It is a series of metallic elements. It starts with
Speaker 3: lanthanum and goes through syrium and praiseodemium and neodymium, also
Speaker 3: including a yettrium and scandium. And they have just a
Speaker 3: wide variety of important uses in a host of clean
Speaker 3: energy technologies, other advanced technologies, military and defense technologies, and
Speaker 3: other applications like that.
Speaker 2: So what are they if you can just describe because
Speaker 2: my understanding is, you know, rare earths are critical minerals,
Speaker 2: but you know, rare earths are a bit of a
Speaker 2: misnomer because they're actually pretty widely available on Earth. It's
Speaker 2: just getting to them and getting to them in large amounts.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is correct. There's a lot of i'd say
Speaker 3: confusion between rare earths and critical minerals, and some people
Speaker 3: tend to use those two terms interchangeably. That is not
Speaker 3: totally accurate. One way to think about it is that
Speaker 3: rare earths are critical minerals, but critical minerals are not
Speaker 3: necessarily rare earths, And it's also correct that it's a
Speaker 3: misnomer that rare earths are rare in the Earth's crest.
Speaker 3: They are actually quite common. But finding rare earths and
Speaker 3: economically viable and accessible deposits is somewhat rare. And then
Speaker 3: to actually extract those and process those minerals into usable
Speaker 3: materials and products, that's extremely rare. And that is where
Speaker 3: China absolutely dominates the global market right now.
Speaker 1: And how did China come to dominate this space, because
Speaker 1: from understanding, you know, the US used to mine and
Speaker 1: refine where Earth's maybe say twenty years ago. So tell
Speaker 1: us the roadmap of how China came to be so dominant.
Speaker 3: Well, again, I'm only speculating here, but I give China
Speaker 3: and Chinese companies a lot lot of credit. I think
Speaker 3: that they saw the future about thirty years ago. They
Speaker 3: saw an area where the United States was kind of
Speaker 3: stepping back from global markets, and I think a lot
Speaker 3: of Chinese companies realized that there was an opportunity there,
Speaker 3: a market opportunity based upon where certain technologies were headed
Speaker 3: at that time, and so there was a vacuum that
Speaker 3: got opened up by the United States, and Chinese companies
Speaker 3: smartly stepped in to fill that vacuum. And so over
Speaker 3: the last twenty or thirty plus years, Chinese companies have
Speaker 3: expended a lot of resources and a lot of there's
Speaker 3: been a lot of training, a lot of technology development
Speaker 3: in rare mining and processing, and as a result, Chinese
Speaker 3: companies have really taken a dominant position. I mean, I'll
Speaker 3: tell you the mining of rare this is kind of
Speaker 3: the easy part. You know, digging rocks up out of
Speaker 3: the ground or extracting the minerals out of the ground,
Speaker 3: that's kind of the easy part. But turning those minerals
Speaker 3: into you know, say separated rare earth oxides or rare
Speaker 3: earth metals or alloys or magnets or other advanced materials,
Speaker 3: that's really the hard part. And that takes a lot
Speaker 3: of technical know how and a lot of capital to
Speaker 3: build the facilities that are needed to perform those functions.
Speaker 3: And China has just really made it a priority and
Speaker 3: as a result, they hold a dominant position today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really took decades, right, Like you had that
Speaker 2: component in particular, So it's the digging, it's finding it,
Speaker 2: and then it's refining it as well. And they also
Speaker 2: happened to invest or have ownership over some of the
Speaker 2: world's biggest rare earth deposits. So like in Inner Mongolia
Speaker 2: there's the world's largest rare earth deposit, and it's an
Speaker 2: autonomous region of China, and so they've got some control
Speaker 2: over it. Like how much of this is just luck
Speaker 2: and you happen to have it in your own backyard?
Speaker 2: And how much of it is actually investment in government
Speaker 2: sponsorship and going out and finding perhaps friend showing for example.
Speaker 2: And I guess what I'm getting at is can other
Speaker 2: countries like the US replicate this.
Speaker 3: I would not say it was luck. I think it
Speaker 3: was foresight. Honestly. I think they saw this opening in
Speaker 3: the global markets, and they saw where a lot of
Speaker 3: advanced technologies were going, and so they made a concerted
Speaker 3: effort to go secure the resources to build out the
Speaker 3: refining and processing capacity, to make the investments that are
Speaker 3: necessary to create that capacity. Education, you know, in training
Speaker 3: and workforce, you know, investments just across the spectrum. You know, again,
Speaker 3: rares are not that rare. You know, sure there's better
Speaker 3: deposits in certain areas, and yes, if you're blessed with
Speaker 3: a good deposit in your nation, that's I guess maybe
Speaker 3: that's a small amount of luck, but it takes more
Speaker 3: than luck to achieve a dominant position in this industry.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say that other countries like the
Speaker 3: United States and in Europe, Japan, South Korea, I think
Speaker 3: there is a roadmap there for those countries to follow,
Speaker 3: but it's also not going to happen overnight. There's been
Speaker 3: a great deal of investment. This has been a multi
Speaker 3: decade effort by China and Chinese companies, and I don't
Speaker 3: think other countries are probably going to solve that or
Speaker 3: achieve that level of success overnight.
Speaker 1: So how many years are we talking about codis, you know?
Speaker 3: I mean, I've often heard it said that the United
Speaker 3: States kind of globalized a lot of our supply chains
Speaker 3: over twenty or thirty years, and it may take twenty
Speaker 3: thirty years to completely deglobalize it on things like critical minerals. Now,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I totally buy into that timeframe, but
Speaker 3: it is a matter of years. And there's been a
Speaker 3: number of challenges that Western rare earth companies have encountered.
Speaker 3: There have been efforts to try to rebuild these supply
Speaker 3: chains over the last several years that generally have not
Speaker 3: been particularly successful. Now we are seeing I think the
Speaker 3: level of support from the US government that is likely required.
Speaker 3: There was the deal done with MP Materials a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago. That's kind of the level of support
Speaker 3: that it's going to take to try to catch up.
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the big advantages that Chinese companies
Speaker 3: have over US companies is that they already have their infrastructure.
Speaker 3: They already have their refining and processing facilities and manufacturing
Speaker 3: facilities already built. They've already got the vertical integration figured out,
Speaker 3: and really that's just a way to lower costs and
Speaker 3: to become more efficient, and so to be able to
Speaker 3: replicate that in the West is it's going to take
Speaker 3: a little bit of time and quite a bit of investment.
Speaker 3: Now there are some again, some bright spot there, I
Speaker 3: mean MP Materials, they're on a great path. I think
Speaker 3: energy fuels were on a good path. But it's going
Speaker 3: to take a long time to be able to match
Speaker 3: what China has put together, just in.
Speaker 2: Terms of the infrastructure. I mean, we've seen the Trump
Speaker 2: administration take a number of steps the Section two thirty
Speaker 2: two investigation that might add more tariffs on critical minerals
Speaker 2: or rare earths. We've also seen this push starting in
Speaker 2: March of this year to agencies to seek the development
Speaker 2: of this in the US. What else does the US
Speaker 2: government kind of need to do to start this process
Speaker 2: of you know, what's the roadmap? What do they need
Speaker 2: to do for companies like you and other peers to
Speaker 2: sort of start developing this within the US.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, again, I think the MP Materials deal
Speaker 3: that was announced a couple of weeks ago is a
Speaker 3: pretty good roadmap. Some of the aspects of that deal
Speaker 3: were things like price floors to essentially guarantee that companies,
Speaker 3: especially in their early stage, are able to preduce use
Speaker 3: these advanced rare earth materials. And again, this isn't just
Speaker 3: apply to rare it's I think this applies to all
Speaker 3: critical minerals things, you know, other things like you know,
Speaker 3: antimony and germanium and gallium and the whole spectrum there.
Speaker 3: That's one of the challenges that Western companies have in
Speaker 3: trying to compete with much more mature industries like they
Speaker 3: have in China. You know, typically when you're just starting
Speaker 3: out in an industry like this, your costs are just
Speaker 3: simply higher. You haven't achieved those efficiencies and that those
Speaker 3: competencies that are required, so you know some of the
Speaker 3: price floors. I think that's a good way to approach it.
Speaker 3: You know, low interest loans, grants, you know, government funding
Speaker 3: to build out facilities, you know, government funding to help
Speaker 3: train workforce and to build up an industry. And it'll
Speaker 3: probably take you know, at least five or ten years
Speaker 3: to build up a mature industry that can compete with
Speaker 3: Chinese companies. I will say that those types of investments
Speaker 3: and those types of efforts in the West I think
Speaker 3: have not really occurred in the past. But it sounds
Speaker 3: like Western governments are waking up to what is the
Speaker 3: magnitude of what is really required here.
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Speaker 1: and share. Curtis just for the benefit of the listener.
Speaker 1: The US Department of Defense invested in MP Materials. I
Speaker 1: think the figure was like four hundred million dollars, and
Speaker 1: this is the deal that we're referring to. It became
Speaker 1: the largest sharehold of MP Materials, and let's be frank,
Speaker 1: it had an amazing impact on the share price of
Speaker 1: this company. I think it almost tripled, and your company
Speaker 1: as well. Your stock price really ramped up as well.
Speaker 1: Is this what it takes? Like, does it really need
Speaker 1: the government support to build up the US rare eers infrastructure?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not sure it takes actual government ownership.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it was just more the injection
Speaker 3: of capital into MP Materials. And I think maybe the
Speaker 3: US government or the DoD was, you know, looking to
Speaker 3: maybe get a return on taxpayer money. If you're going
Speaker 3: to invest, you know, hundreds of millions or billions of
Speaker 3: dollars into a company rather than just give a private
Speaker 3: company money, well let's see if the taxpayer can get
Speaker 3: a return on it. I mean, again, I can't get
Speaker 3: into their heads. I don't know what their thought was there,
Speaker 3: but that seems to make sense to me. I have
Speaker 3: my concerns about government ownership or becoming a major shareholder
Speaker 3: in a company. I'd prefer that to not be the case.
Speaker 3: But again, you know, if that's the way to get
Speaker 3: the funding that the government has available, you know we
Speaker 3: as a company would certainly be open to it.
Speaker 2: So MP Materials has the only active rare earth mind
Speaker 2: in the US. It's really tough to build, as you said,
Speaker 2: build out the infrastructure in the US for this. At
Speaker 2: the same time, this directive from Trump in March, this
Speaker 2: executive order to produce more domestically, I mean, is it
Speaker 2: possible to have more minds this of MP.
Speaker 3: Well, first you need deposits, right, I will say, and
Speaker 3: this may be somewhat controversial statement, but the US has
Speaker 3: okay rare earth deposits, but not not exceptional rare earth deposits.
Speaker 3: And there's a variety of efforts to try to build
Speaker 3: out these minds in the United States. But the truth
Speaker 3: is is that I think we can take a page
Speaker 3: out of China's book, and you know, you don't have
Speaker 3: to produce everything in country. It's okay if you're importing
Speaker 3: minerals or raw materials from other countries, just like China does. Right,
Speaker 3: And you're right, MP Materials has I'd say kind of
Speaker 3: the main rare earth mind in the United States. You know,
Speaker 3: our company, we're actually receiving rare earth ores from Florida
Speaker 3: and Georgia. In the United States, we're actually approaching rare
Speaker 3: earth production from a quite different standpoint. We're looking to
Speaker 3: actually obtain rare earth minerals from other minds that these
Speaker 3: are rare earth minerals that are produced as a byproduct
Speaker 3: of other mining, primarily type tenium mines actually, which is
Speaker 3: a different way to look at it. And actually, you know,
Speaker 3: China does this. Chinese companies do this. We estimate that
Speaker 3: probably ten or fifteen percent of China's rare earth industry
Speaker 3: is supported in the same manner that we're going about this,
Speaker 3: where we're getting these monozite and xenotime minerals from heavy
Speaker 3: mineral sand operations. I mean, that's kind of one of
Speaker 3: the dirty little secrets I guess I could say about
Speaker 3: rare earths is that not only are they not rare,
Speaker 3: but they're actually already mined all over the world as
Speaker 3: a byproduct of other mining. And honestly, rare earth minds
Speaker 3: that are just single commodity rare earth mines where all
Speaker 3: they do is rare earth honestly at a bit of
Speaker 3: a competitive disadvantage versus other minds that maybe produce a
Speaker 3: number of commodities from the same deposit.
Speaker 2: And you're getting these U said, from Florida and Georgia.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, So these are essentially titanium and zircon mines
Speaker 3: is what they are. Now. Most titanium and zircon, i'd say,
Speaker 3: are kind of boring industrial materials. I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: want to minimize them. And of course there are high
Speaker 3: tech and very critical uses for titanium and zircon and
Speaker 3: zirconium and things. But you know, most titanium goes into
Speaker 3: paint and pigment and you know, mix your your paper
Speaker 3: white and things like that. Most zircon goes into just
Speaker 3: you know, ceramics, you know, like tile in your kitchen
Speaker 3: and things like that. And there's a, you know, a
Speaker 3: robust global market for titanium and zircon and those types
Speaker 3: of minerals. But right alongside those titanium and zircon minerals
Speaker 3: are other minerals that are full of rare earths, primarily
Speaker 3: monozite and xenotyme, and those are some wonderful rare earth
Speaker 3: minerals because they have really good concentrations of the light,
Speaker 3: the middle and the heavy rare earths. And you hear
Speaker 3: a lot about those categories in the rare earth industry.
Speaker 3: And that might be another rare earth one on one
Speaker 3: lesson here, But whenever you hear about light rare earths,
Speaker 3: people are primarily talking about neodymium and praiseodemium or ndpr.
Speaker 3: Those are the light rare earths that are used in magnets,
Speaker 3: and these magnets are used primarily in electric vehicles, in
Speaker 3: hybrid electric vehicles, advanced robotics, certain wind energy technologies. Of course,
Speaker 3: military and defense. You'll also hear about heavy rare earths.
Speaker 3: There's two main magnet heavy rare earths, that's urbium and dysprosium.
Speaker 3: That's TB and d Y and again you create these
Speaker 3: very powerful magnets, neodymium magnets. They are used in those applications.
Speaker 3: There are other heavy rare earths, you know, things like
Speaker 3: lutetium and yetrium and others that have important military and
Speaker 3: defense technologies, and those are the ones that are on
Speaker 3: the export control list that the Chinese government put in place.
Speaker 3: That's urbium and dysprosium and yttrium, samarium, gadolinium. Those are
Speaker 3: kind of the middle rares, sometimes categorized as heavies, but yeah,
Speaker 3: the main uses are magnets and some other applications and Curtis.
Speaker 1: When China restricted some of the supply of the rare earths,
Speaker 1: we saw companies hope production and it was notable that
Speaker 1: Ford had to cut back production in one of their plants.
Speaker 1: How much supply does the US have right now and
Speaker 1: how quickly will it run out if China were to say,
Speaker 1: you know, tun off the taps.
Speaker 3: You know that. I don't know. I know it's not infinite.
Speaker 3: As an American, I know I hope that the US
Speaker 3: military has enough. I presume they have enough foresight to
Speaker 3: have stockpiles to get them through. But in terms of
Speaker 3: like a Ford or a General Motors, or even a
Speaker 3: Kia or Hyundai or Mercedes, yeah, I don't know. But again,
Speaker 3: the fact that Ford had to shut down a plant,
Speaker 3: that's very telling. I do know that there is a
Speaker 3: lot of effort out there by these companies to try
Speaker 3: to procure rare earth materials that don't come from China,
Speaker 3: And honestly, the sources are very limited. I mean you
Speaker 3: have you know, MP Materials, which is producing DPR oxide
Speaker 3: that's the light magnet rare earth oxide. And I think
Speaker 3: they're up to two thousand or twenty five hundred metric
Speaker 3: tons of NDPR oxide per year. And just for context,
Speaker 3: a typical electric vehicle needs an additional say half a
Speaker 3: kilogram to kilogram of NDPR oxide per vehicle, you know,
Speaker 3: so if you're producing say two thousand tons of dpr ocid,
Speaker 3: that's enough for say two to four million evs per
Speaker 3: year or hybrid evs per year, just kind of for context.
Speaker 3: And so Linus is a company out of Australia that
Speaker 3: is the largest non Chinese producer of rare earth oxides
Speaker 3: in the world. They mine in Western Australia. They do
Speaker 3: some early processing also in Western Australian. I think they
Speaker 3: do the separations in Malaysia where they also produce NDPR oxide.
Speaker 3: I saw that they recently started production of d y
Speaker 3: oxide or disprosium oxide, which was a big achievement for them.
Speaker 3: We're going to be producing a pilot scale d Y
Speaker 3: oxide here in the next few weeks. That's a big deal.
Speaker 3: It's a big accomplishment because China really has dominance in
Speaker 3: the heavy rare earth market, which is what disprosium oxide is.
Speaker 3: It's one of the heavies. But besides that, you get
Speaker 3: down to processing. You know, you have you know, companies
Speaker 3: like Neo Performance Materials. They're a Canadian company that has
Speaker 3: a processing plant in Estonia, and some other plants in Thailand,
Speaker 3: I believe, and ownership and some Chinese plants. There's Japanese
Speaker 3: and Korean companies that do a rare earth metallization and
Speaker 3: aling and magnet making for their customers. But it's still
Speaker 3: a bit of a nation industry at this stage. When
Speaker 3: you get down to the especially the oxides and the
Speaker 3: rare earth metals and alloys and magnets and that sort
Speaker 3: of thing. Again, that's really where China has the dominance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Curtis, you make several good points. I mean you're
Speaker 2: really underscoring some of the issues here, right because critical
Speaker 2: minerals rare earth's quite dispersed. I mean, yes, China has
Speaker 2: the monopoly, but you know there's Canada, there's Greenland, Australia,
Speaker 2: other places that are producing this stuff refining it. Southeast
Speaker 2: Asian countries that are also there's mines there the DRC
Speaker 2: of course with mines. Now, by twenty thirty, the US
Speaker 2: is projected to hold less than two percent of global
Speaker 2: critical minerals, and that compares to thirty one percent for China.
Speaker 2: So it's not clear that the US at this point
Speaker 2: can really ramp up their own production of this stuff.
Speaker 2: So how important is it that the US really tries
Speaker 2: to as opposed to maybe like ramping up production at home,
Speaker 2: also does things like friend shoring or forming those kinds
Speaker 2: of trade deals to try to get the rare earths
Speaker 2: from friendly countries, because that seems like important, but it's
Speaker 2: kind of the opposite is being done now with tariffs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I one hundred percent agree with you. Look,
Speaker 3: you know, the United States is blessed with a lot
Speaker 3: of minerals, but we don't have the best deposits of
Speaker 3: every critical mineral in the world. And frankly, some of
Speaker 3: the efforts to say produce like rare earth's out of
Speaker 3: say like coal waste or something I think is frankly stupid.
Speaker 2: Wait why is it stupid?
Speaker 3: It would be insanely expensive. You know, So you run coal,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, you burn coal on a plant,
Speaker 3: and yeah, you have coal ash and coal waste, and yeah,
Speaker 3: sure there's rare earths in it, but it's wildly expensive
Speaker 3: to try to extract those trace concentrations of rare earths
Speaker 3: out of things like coal waste. I think again, you know,
Speaker 3: rares aren't rare, but to be able to find a
Speaker 3: deposit that's that's even remotely competitive globally. That's what's hard.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, if you have unlimited money, sure you
Speaker 3: can produce rares out of probably seawater, but that doesn't
Speaker 3: make any sense. And again, at the end of the
Speaker 3: day as well, these end users, whether you're a Ford
Speaker 3: or a GM or a Mercedes or a Hyundai or whoever,
Speaker 3: I think they're willing to maybe pay a little bit
Speaker 3: more for non Chinese wearers, but you know they can't
Speaker 3: pay three, four, five, ten times more for their wearers
Speaker 3: than they could otherwise get from China. I mean, they
Speaker 3: have their own competitive pressure points, right. You know, they
Speaker 3: can't start paying more for all these components in their vehicles,
Speaker 3: they will rapidly become uneconomic. So again, I think it's
Speaker 3: very important for the United States to mine our good deposits.
Speaker 3: We do have good deposits of rares in certain critical minerals.
Speaker 3: But we also have to recognize that we don't have
Speaker 3: everything here, and yes, we do need to do more
Speaker 3: friend shoring and mining and processing, you know, with our allies,
Speaker 3: not using our allies, but partnering with our allies.
Speaker 1: And you know, President Trump has been really focused on
Speaker 1: where It may be a reason why he's shown so
Speaker 1: much interest in Greenland because he doesn't have enough of
Speaker 1: reserves in rares.
Speaker 3: Well, look, earths are not rare. I'm sure Greenland has
Speaker 3: rare earths, but I don't think Greenland is going to
Speaker 3: be producing rare earths anytime soon. Now, maybe in twenty
Speaker 3: thirty forty years. That could be you know, a place
Speaker 3: that's a source of a good source of rares. But
Speaker 3: there's better, i'd say, more accessible deposits. You know, Greenland
Speaker 3: has very little infrastructure. It'd be pretty expensive to produce
Speaker 3: rares up there right right now.
Speaker 2: Anyway, you mentioned the infrastructure, the high costs, and one
Speaker 2: other thing that we haven't really talked about is the
Speaker 2: environmental impact and the quality of jobs. It just strikes
Speaker 2: me that you know, there's been a shift in manufacturing,
Speaker 2: for example, to hire higher skilled manufacturing. A lot of
Speaker 2: it has become less dirty, more clean, But mining, especially
Speaker 2: mining of rare earths and critical minerals, is not one
Speaker 2: of those. I mean, the reality is you have to
Speaker 2: dig for them. I wonder if it makes sense for
Speaker 2: the US to prioritize opening more of these kinds of
Speaker 2: minds and creating these kinds of jobs, you know, is
Speaker 2: it something that people want to do?
Speaker 3: Look, mining, no matter what you're mining, you're digging it
Speaker 3: up out of the ground. It's just the nature of mining.
Speaker 3: Now there's some efforts to maybe try recycling and all that,
Speaker 3: but honestly that's quite expensive as well. Though I think
Speaker 3: it'll get better traction as the years go on. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think in the United States there is
Speaker 3: an openness to having you know, mines open at certain
Speaker 3: locations where the minerals are. You know, there are good jobs.
Speaker 3: There are people here that are willing to do those
Speaker 3: jobs for sure. I mean, you know, look, we're a
Speaker 3: miner of uranium, for instance. We have a good skilled workforce.
Speaker 3: It's a very good paying job to be a minor
Speaker 3: in the United States.
Speaker 2: How much is it, like, how much could I make
Speaker 2: if I if I joined your company and started mining.
Speaker 3: You know, six figures, including you know, health insurance and
Speaker 3: deafists starting plan and all that. Yeah, and some of
Speaker 3: our miners are highly educated, but some of them don't
Speaker 3: have a high school degree. So I mean it's it's
Speaker 3: a good job. Now again you get paid a lot
Speaker 3: because it's very difficult work and it's dangerous. Look, I
Speaker 3: mean mining is dangerous. I mean it's a lot safer
Speaker 3: than it used to be. But that's something that people
Speaker 3: need to recognize as well, that the mining of today
Speaker 3: is not the mining that was done one hundred or
Speaker 3: two hundred or even thirty years ago. Right, it's constantly improving.
Speaker 3: Health and safety and environmental standards are better today than
Speaker 3: they've ever been. And you know, mining can be done
Speaker 3: very responsibly and very you know, relatively safely. So there's
Speaker 3: certainly an openness in the United States to do more.
Speaker 1: Of it, Curtis, just to pursue what Kati was mentioning.
Speaker 1: There's this perception that mining and processing where earth is
Speaker 1: very dirty is not very environmentally friendly. And that's also
Speaker 1: this perception that that's why China has been successful because
Speaker 1: I've got a lower standards environmentally than say the US.
Speaker 1: Do you agree with this narrative.
Speaker 3: Somewhat. I would say that many of the videos and
Speaker 3: pictures I've seen of let's say, modern Chinese rare earth production,
Speaker 3: it looks quite good and it looks quite clean and safe.
Speaker 3: Now again, if you go back thirty forty fifty years,
Speaker 3: I'm sure it was less so. Well, it was probably
Speaker 3: less so elsewhere in the world too, when it comes
Speaker 3: to rare earth processing. Now, look, mining is essentially digging
Speaker 3: rocks up out of the ground, and that is what
Speaker 3: it is, right. You know, you can reclaim it and
Speaker 3: it's fine, and it's it can be done completely responsibly
Speaker 3: in an environmentally friendly manner. The processing, you know, you're
Speaker 3: having to use chemicals and other reagents and things like
Speaker 3: that to purify and refine and extract these elements. I
Speaker 3: think some of the older practices were quite damaging. I
Speaker 3: do know that there is some that goes on today
Speaker 3: in certain parts of the world that is not very good,
Speaker 3: but it's not inherently damaging to the environment or dangerous
Speaker 3: or toxic. You know, for instance, everything we do at
Speaker 3: our processing facility in the United States, it's done in
Speaker 3: a contained plant. There's all kinds of protections to ensure
Speaker 3: there's not leaks or you know, exposures of any kind
Speaker 3: to our workers. We have state of the art, say
Speaker 3: tailings facilities where the waste goes. These are triple lined
Speaker 3: with leak detection and groundwater monitors to make sure that
Speaker 3: there's not any sort of pollution to the surrounding environment. Again,
Speaker 3: you can do it in ways that are not environmentally
Speaker 3: friendly or in ways that are unhealthy and unsafe, but
Speaker 3: you can also do them in very clean and protective ways.
Speaker 1: And could us just before I let you go, you know,
Speaker 1: rare earth has really come to the forefront of you know,
Speaker 1: especially like media Attenson. I'll be frank, I don't even
Speaker 1: think I realized what rare earths were like, say two
Speaker 1: years ago, Like is this a growth industry? Like what's
Speaker 1: the demand outlook like for rare earth producers and refinance
Speaker 1: like yourself over the next few years.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's pretty exceptional. Actually, Again, as we see more
Speaker 3: electrification happening around the world, whether you know, in mobility
Speaker 3: electric vehicles now like in the United States and Europe,
Speaker 3: I think electric vehicle consumer adoption has been a little
Speaker 3: slower than what people would have expected, so that has
Speaker 3: not grown as quickly as some may have thought, but
Speaker 3: for instance, hybrid electric vehicles, those need just as many
Speaker 3: rare earths as a pure electric vehicle. These rare earths
Speaker 3: are used actually in the drive trains, essentially the motors
Speaker 3: that provide power to the wheels in these vehicles. It's
Speaker 3: not used in the batteries or anything like well, summer
Speaker 3: used in the batteries, but the main use is in
Speaker 3: the drive trains. That's seeing good growth. I think that
Speaker 3: once we have a couple more technological breakthrough and battery technologies,
Speaker 3: I do think that evs could see real good consumer
Speaker 3: adoption because at that point, I think you could see
Speaker 3: performance of evs be the equivalent of internal combustion engines
Speaker 3: in terms of power and range and towing capacity and
Speaker 3: hauling capacity and that sort of thing. Another big growth
Speaker 3: industry is robots and advanced robotics. What creates a lot
Speaker 3: of those very fast, precise and strong movements and robots
Speaker 3: is rare earth magnets, and some forecasters projected that advance
Speaker 3: robotics is going to overtake evs and hybrid evs and
Speaker 3: mobility in the next say five to ten years. In
Speaker 3: terms of demand, I think that the demand growth picture
Speaker 3: is extremely strong for rare earths, so it's an exciting
Speaker 3: place for us to be in energy fields right now.
Speaker 2: Curtis, it was a great discussion. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining us.
Speaker 3: You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to Asia Centric from Bloomberg Intelligence. I'm
Speaker 2: Katidomitriva in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: I'm John Lee, also in Hong Kong. This podcast was
Speaker 1: produced and edited by Clara Chen And You can listen
Speaker 1: to all our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Ready Listen.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.