get some aussies over there fast!!!, page-13

My opinion is that LYC are in Malaysia for a number of reasons

1. Some government incentives (at the time)
2. Sentiment at the time favoured doing something outside China (because of the potential to restrict marketing of product with quotas etc)
3. The perception that operating costs would be lower than Australia, quicker to develop and closer to markets (like Japan etc).

I seriously doubt the problems faced now are related to the quality of the staff and technical support in Malaysia.

We should all better appreciate the difference between ionic rare earths and rare earths trapped in a rock (like bastnatite?, monazite? Xenotime? Etc)

Ionic material means that the rare earths is loosely bonded to iron/clay particles electrically/magnetically - and simple to seperate.

The other hosts are much more costly and complicated to crack and seperate.

The Chinese produce rare earths from all sources, but the big dollars are made with the ionic stuff.

Any global producers with economic grades can produce a concentrate and send to China for process separation - I think Molycorp (Neo Materials) may even do this for their most complicated valuable heavy magnetic material.

Lynas could have done that, but chose to take on the biggest and go it alone.

A very costly mistake now that all that capital is sunk and they are going to be producing the rare earths that are the most plentiful now and lowest prices.

Any blame for the poor planning, poor execution should sit most fairly at the feet of the senior management .... Not in Malaysia .... in my humble opinion.