Europe moves closer to rare earth magnet supply chain

Political initiatives in the US and Australia have gained a lot of attention in the rare earths markets in recent months, but a small project in Norway — Secreets — could be the first to develop a mine-to-magnet supply chain outside China.

Norwegian private-sector rare earth separation technology developer Reetec has built and commissioned an industrial-scale demonstration plant in east Norway for separating light and heavy rare earths contained in the 650,000 t/yr of phosphate rock processed by Norwegian fertilizer producer Yara. The concentrate contains around 0.3-1pc of rare earth elements, which Yara does not remove.

Reetec operated a pilot plant for four years to test its separation technology before building the demonstration plant that is now operating in test mode. The company was unable to provide a commercial launch date.

The scale of the project is small and would only cover a fraction of global demand. But if successful it would create the first supply chain for the production of permanent rare earth magnets outside China for many decades.

The US defence department closed a tender at the end of last year for the construction of a plant to separate heavy rare earths. And the Australian government announced in November that the country's rare earth mining projects will become eligible for financial support from the defence export facility.

The rare earth NdFeB permanent magnets needed by the automotive, electronics, renewable energy and industrial sectors contain mainly the light rare earths neodymium and praseodymium and a small amount of the heavy rare earths terbium and dysprosium. Light rare earth oxides are produced commercially outside China, but not heavy rare earth oxides, making it impossible to diversify the magnet supply chain away from the world's largest producer.

The light and heavy rare earth oxides produced by Reetec will be turned into metals and alloys by UK-based Less Common Metals and then made into magnets by Germany's Vacuumschmelze.

The Secreets project, a partnership between Retec, Yara and Norwegian research institute Sintef, received €12.5mn ($14mn) from the EU Horizon 2020 innovation fund.

By Caroline Messecar