neodymium-iron-boron magnets in 2018, according to the Center for
capacity expected by 2028 is roughly 10,000 tonnes. The arithmetic
describes the gap that the entire post-2025 diversification push is
trying to close.¹
widely cited single figure in critical-minerals policy discussions. It
matters not because it is precise — magnet production data is
notoriously difficult to verify — but because it sets the scale of the
benchmark. Whatever MP Materials and Lynas and the next generation of
non-Chinese producers achieve, they are playing against a Chinese
capacity that was already more than an order of magnitude larger nearly
a decade ago.¹
continued to grow through the 2020s as domestic EV and wind-turbine
manufacturing expanded. The exact current figure is not publicly
available at production-line granularity, but independent estimates put
the scale at 200,000 tonnes per year or higher by 2024. Against that
baseline, a Western cumulative capacity of 10,000-15,000 tonnes by 2028
is a beginning, not a solution.
of three decades of industrial policy, subsidised research and
development, consistent workforce training, and the co-location of
mining, separation, metal-making and magnet-forming in an integrated
geography. The southern provinces of Jiangxi and Ganzhou, in particular,
became effective industrial clusters where the full value chain — from
ionic-clay ore to finished automotive-grade magnets — operated within
relatively compact commercial networks.
the full refining chain. China is the leading refiner for 19 of 20
important strategic minerals, with an average market share of 70
percent. For sintered permanent magnets specifically, Chinese share has
risen to approximately 94 percent.¹ Those numbers describe a structural
position, not a cyclical one, and they cannot be dislodged quickly by
policy declarations or individual project commitments.
magnet it passes through mining, initial concentration, chemical
cracking (for bastnaesite or monazite) or leaching (for ionic clay),
solvent extraction to separate individual oxides, reduction to metal,
alloying with iron and boron, powder preparation, pressing, sintering
and finishing. China holds leading global positions in every single
step.
comes first and is arguably the easiest to replicate — Lynas at Mt Weld,
harder, and only Lynas in Malaysia and a handful of other operations
currently run at commercial scale outside China. Metal-making and
magnet-forming are harder still, which is why MP Materials' Independence
facility and the 10X expansion are so significant: they address the step
of the chain that has been most stubbornly Chinese-dominated.
know-how. Alloy chemistry for automotive-grade magnets must hold
consistent properties across millions of units, and the powder
characteristics that feed into pressing determine the final magnet's
mechanical and magnetic performance. These are not commodity skills;
they are industrial capabilities that Chinese manufacturers have refined
over decades and that Western entrants now have to build from a smaller
base.
imports, it needs to reach roughly 30-50 percent of Chinese capacity
over the medium term. If Chinese capacity sits at 200,000 tonnes per
year, that implies Western capacity of 60,000-100,000 tonnes per year —
a target materially larger than the current pipeline of announced
projects.
Adamas Intelligence's long-term demand projections help frame the gap.
rate of 9 percent through 2035 and 7.5 percent through 2040.² Even if
needs to expand roughly five- to ten-fold to meet the growing Western
share of demand. That is the scale of the industrial build-out required,
and it cannot be completed in a three-year window regardless of how
aggressive the policy push becomes.
step. Serra Verde, Aclara and Meteoric supply concentrate and will
eventually supply separated oxides; they do not (currently) produce
metal or magnets. That mid-chain positioning is the right place to be
for Brazilian producers in the near term — competitive separation
capacity is the first capability the industry has to build — but it
means that the 138,000-tonne Chinese magnet benchmark is only indirectly
relevant to Brazilian operators.
separation output will eventually need to feed into downstream magnet
production somewhere, and the strategic value of Brazilian rare earths
depends on there being non-Chinese magnet capacity that wants to buy
them. MP Materials, ReElement in Indiana, Neo Performance Materials in
natural customers — and each of them benefits from Brazilian supply that
breaks the last remaining dependencies on Chinese intermediate products.
strategy. The Western push to build non-Chinese rare-earth capacity will
not match Chinese scale quickly, and may not match it at all within this
cycle. But the target of meaningful — not dominant — non-Chinese
capacity is achievable, and the combination of MP Materials' 10X
programme, Lynas's integrated build, ReElement's chromatographic
separation, the Brazilian ionic-clay cluster and associated midstream
investments is putting that target within reach by the early 2030s.
than at any time in the past 20 years — and Brazilian producers,
positioned at the upstream end of an increasingly diversified global
supply chain, will be among the most direct and consistent long-term
beneficiaries of that increasingly contested future across the whole of
the global rare-earth industry over the course of the next full decade.
benchmark Western producers ca