Australia was trying to take the domination of China

Commercial correspondent in Asia in Eneabba

Drive three o’clock in northern Perth and you will arrive in Eneabba – sterile and sorry, just the strange hill in the distance.
It is a mining territory in Australia-Western. Buried in this vast land is a massive pit, full of what looks like mounds of virtue of dirt.
But appearances can be misleading: this pit is home to a stock of million tonnes containing critical minerals, better known as Terre Rares, which are crucial for making electric vehicles, wind turbines and defense equipment.
And Australia is betting big on this discovery with a billion dollars to a mining company to extract these metals – and disturb a supply chain that China has monopolized.
Will the bet pay?
China’s rude on rare earths hit the house with US President Donald Trump’s trade wars. When Beijing has restricted exports, a powerful negotiation currency in pricing negotiations, it has sent manufacturers to the world in their war rooms. China, they achieved with alarm, had the power to stop their factories.
Ford even interrupted the production of its popular explorer SUV for a week in one of its Chicago factories – a daring decision while attacking Trump prices.
A month later, CEO Jim Farley revealed that the break had been triggered by a shortage of rare earths, admitting that the company always had trouble guaranteeing a reliable offer. “It’s daily,” Farley told Bloomberg TV.
Beijing has since agreed to let minerals and rare earth magnets flow to the United States, which has attenuated the bottleneck.
But without an American trade agreement, fear is that the disturbance can return.
“The West has abandoned the ball – it is reality. And China was long -term. It saw the benefit and was willing to invest in it,” explains Jacques Ekssteen, president of extractive metallurgy at Curtin University.
Why rare earths count
The expression “rare earths” – referring to 17 elements on the periodic table which are light, super strong and resistant to heat, making them useful in small electric motors – is something improper.
“Rare earths are neither rare nor rare. Gold is rare, but it is not a critical material,” said Professor Eksteen.
The rare earths are however essential. Take the average electric vehicle-there may be rare land-based motors in dozens of components, lateral mirrors and wipers and braking sensors.
The problem is therefore not the amount, but the fact “somewhere in the supply chain, you have one or perhaps some countries controlling this bottleneck,” adds Professor Eksteen.
In the 1990s, Europe and France in particular had a prominent rare land industry. Today, almost all of these minerals come from China, which has spent decades to mine and refine on a large scale.
China now represents more than half of the world farm of rare land and almost 90% of treatment.
The United States is obtaining 80% of its imports from rare land from China, while the European Union is based on China for around 98% of its supply.
“China has since deliberately and openly sought to control the market in order to support their downstream manufacturing and defense industries,” said Dan McGrath, head of rare land for Iluka’s resources, between us around the vast Eneabba site of the company.
But Mr. McGrath and Iluka hope to have a breach in this control – even if it was not necessarily in the initial plan of the company.

For decades, Iluka has been operating zircon in Australia – a key ingredient in ceramics and titanium dioxide used in pigmentation of paint, plastics and paper.
It turns out that the by -products of these mineral sands include dysprosium and terbium – some of the most sought -after rare earths.
Over the years, Iluka has built the stock and is now worth more than $ 650 million (440 million pounds sterling).
It was the easy part, however. Treatment or refining is another question.
“They are chemically very similar, so trying to separate them requires a large number of steps,” said Professor Ekssteen.
“In addition, you have residues and waste that you have to deal with this industry, and it is problematic. They often produce radioactive matters. This has a cost.”
And this is one of the reasons why the Australian government ready Iluka at $ 1.65 billion ($ 1 billion; 798 million pounds sterling) to build a refinery to meet the demand for rare earths that he sees increased by 50 to 170% by the end of the decade.
“We expect to be able to provide a significant proportion of Western demand for rare land by 2030. Our customers recognize that having an independent, secure and sustainable supply chain outside China is fundamental for the continuity of their business,” said McGrath.
“This refinery and Iluka’s commitment to rare earth activity is an alternative to China.”

But the refinery will take another two years to build and put itself online.
“Without the strategic partnership that we have with the Australian government, a rare Earths project would not be economically viable,” said McGrath.
A strategic necessity
China’s recent desire to activate and deactivate the Rare Land offer has prompted business partners to diversify their suppliers.
Iluka says that because car manufacturers, for example, plan their production for years in advance, already presents requests when its refinery is put online.
Rare earths are essential for green transition, electric vehicles and defense technologies – making their control an urgent national priority.
“The international market open in critical minerals and rare earths is a mirage. It does not exist. And the reason why it does not exist is because there is a supplier of these documents and they have the means to change when the market goes, whether in pricing or supply,” explains Madeleine King, the Minister of Resources of Australia.
Canberra considers government intervention as necessary to provide an alternative supply and help the world count less on China.
“We can either sit and do nothing about this … or we can intensify the responsibility for developing a rare land industry here that competes with this market,” adds Ms. King.
But there is something that Australia will have to face when it invests and works to extend a rare land industry – pollution.

In China, environmental damage after years of treatment of rare earths have led to chemicals and radioactive waste that infiltrates navigable channels – cities and people carrying the scars of decades of bad regulations.
With rare earths, it is not so much about the mining imprint, rather the treatment which is a dirty company – because it implies extraction, leachate, thermal cracking and refining which produce radioactive components.
“I think there is no metal industry that is completely clean … Unfortunately, it is sometimes a question of choosing your poison,” explains Professor Eksteen.
“In Australia, we have mechanisms to manage this. We have a legal environment and a framework to work with this to at least face it in a responsible manner.”
In the past, the EU has accused China of using an “quasi monopoly” on rare land as a negotiation currency, in armament to undermine competitors in key industries.
The block – which houses hundreds of car manufacturers who so desperately need rare land – said that even if China had loosened restrictions on supplies, the threat of the supply chain remains.
Even if the construction of a whole new industry will take time, Australia seems to have a lot to do in the rare Earths race, because it tries to be a more reliable and cleaner source.
And the one who – especially – is independent of China.
Jaltson’s additional reports are Chammar
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