China allocates 1H RE quotas to six large groups

China's ministry of industry and information technology (MIIT) has revealed allocations for the first batch of 2020 rare earths mining and production quotas, which were awarded to the country's six large state-owned rare earths groups.

MIIT in February raised the first batch of mining quotas for this year to 66,000t of rare earth oxide (REO) equivalent, including 56,425t of light rare earths and 9,575t for ion-absorption rare earths. This is up by 10pc from 60,000t in 2019.

China allocated 60,000t for its first batch of rare earth mining quotas in 2019, comprising 50,425t of light rare earths and 9,575t of ion-absorption rare earths. The first batch of rare earths production quotas in 2020 equates to half of the total 2019 mining quota of 132,000t.

Beijing has also allocated 63,500t quotas for smelting and separation products in 2020, up by 10pc from 57,500t in 2019.

The MIIT has only revealed details of the allocations now. The quotas are allocated to provinces, which in turn allocate them to rare earths companies. All of the production quotas have been allocated to China's six rare earth groups, in an attempt to improve oversight of the industry and the implementation of government policy.

Northern Rare Earth obtained 35,375t mining quotas for light rare earths and 30,492t for smelting and separation products, up by around 2pc from 34,625t and 29,741t, respectively from 2019.

Southern Rare Earth was awarded 13,875t mining quotas for light rare earths, up by 40pc from 9,875t from a year earlier. The firm's mining quotas for ion-absorption rare earths are unchanged from last year at 4,250t, while its quotas for smelting and separation products has increased by 50pc from 7,956t to 11,956t.

Chinalco's light rare earth mining quotas rose by 21pc from 5,925t in 2019 to 7,175t in 2020, while its mining quotas for ion-absorption rare earths were unchanged at 1,250t. The company's quotas for smelting and separation products increased by 13pc from 9,690t to 10,940t.

Guangdong Rare Earths received 1,350t mining quotas for ion-absorption rare earths and 5,302t quotas for smelting and separation products, unchanged from 2019.

China Minmetals obtained 1,005t mining quotas for ion-absorption rare earths and 2,829t quotas for smelting and separation products, the same as last year.

Xiamen Tungsten's mining quotas for ion-absorption rare earths remained at 1,720t, while its quotas for smelting and separation products fell by 1t to 1,981t.

MIIT has instructed the six state-owned enterprises to allocate the quotas to their subsidiaries in 20 working days. Any subsidiary will be ineligible of receiving a quota under any of the following circumstances:

• It lacks a mining licence or safety production licence
• It has backward production techniques or separation capacity below 2,000 t/yr REO
• It fails to meet pollution discharge standards or radioactivity protection standards
• It has been shut down for a long time

MIIT has also prohibited the quota awardees from buying or using rare earth ores and concentrates produced by unlicensed mines, and from processing ores via tolling business. Companies using imported rare earth ores must provide complete procedure documents. Recycling companies are not allowed to process rare earth ores and concentrates.

The six groups have also been ordered to report the implementation of the allocations and use of the quotas to MIIT on a regular basis, by filing data in a government-backed track system.