In the latter part of March 2011, the Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources published details of the 2011 rare-earth production quotas. It was widely reported that the quota consisted of 93,800 t of rare-earth oxides (REOs), made up of 80,400 t of light REOs (LREOs) and 13,400 t of heavy REOs (HREOs).
The Ministry also published further detail of the quota allocations by province / region, as they have done for prior two years. Here is the breakdown:
| 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | ||||
| Province / Region | LREOs (t) | HREOs (t) | LREOs (t) | HREOs (t) | LREOs (t) | HREOs (t) |
| Inner Mongolia | 46,000 | 0 | 50,000 | 0 | 50,000 | 0 |
| Fujian | 0 | 720 | 0 | 1,500 | 0 | 2,000 |
| Jiangxi | 0 | 7,400 | 0 | 8,500 | 0 | 9,000 |
| Shandong | 1,500 | 0 | 1,500 | 0 | 1,500 | 0 |
| Hunan | 800 | 0 | 1,500 | 0 | 2,000 | 0 |
| Guandong | 0 | 1,500 | 0 | 2,000 | 0 | 2,200 |
| Guangxi | 0 | 200 | 2,000 | 0 | 2,500 | 0 |
| Sichuan | 24,000 | 0 | 22,000 | 0 | 24,400 | 0 |
| Yunnan | 0 | 200 | 0 | 200 | 0 | 200 |
| Sub-totals | 72,300 | 10,020 | 77,000 | 12,200 | 80,400 | 13,400 |
| TOTAL | 82,32089,20093,800 | |||||
Source: Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources
What’s interesting here is that while Inner Mongolia is still the designated primary source for LREOs, Sichuan and the other production areas make up over 35% of the total for proposed LREO production, slightly up from previous years.
Note also that these are the official production numbers, not taking into account the significant uncontrolled / illegal production that takes place.
We got deleted off of Rare Metal Blog, but I am very much looking forward to your article regarding your discussions with Dr. Chen. Thanks very much Gareth.
Hi Gareth – I am wondering about the roadmap and the scenarios in it for RE applications. In particular I am interested in the availability of HREEs for generators of wind turbines. I understood that China has planned 330 GW of wind turbines in the next 5 years, requiring 60000 tons of Nd and an unspecified tonnages of Dy. Can you enlighten us on the impact this has on the other RE applications, notably BLDC motors in vehicles and public transport. Best Regards Henk
@Henk Mol: I’m looking into this even as we speak. In the last couple of months many buyers of Nd-Fe-B magnets have experienced massive price increases, very extended lead times and other problems in procuring these magnets.
Hello Gareth,
Can you say anymore about these procurement difficulties? If not by mentioning companies, can you elaborate on which industries are encountering the greater problems?
Thank you,
GoBucks
Hi Gareth,
it’s said last week the Chinese government decided to shut down 3 official RE-large mines in the South of China in order to have an even better control about the quota allocations by province.
In addition, they will also introduce a new RE-export license tax quotum, which means that once a product contains over a certain x% of RE, the exporting company needs to pay a license tax, what HS-codes it will concern is unclear to me, but did you also hear about these new developments?
Please have a look at http://www.spacemart.com/reports/China_slaps_export_quota_on_rare_earth_alloys_999.html
and let me have your thoughts opinion on this.
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