"$ we’ll get for NdPr will be substantially high under a TO...

"$ we’ll get for NdPr will be substantially high under a TO agreement than selling on the Chinese spot market"

Sorry but that is simply NOT how the RE mkt works.

Firstly, NO LT contracted customer, China or ROW, taking any significant amount of REO, NdPr particularly, is going to pay you "spot" prices.

Retail to wholesale if you like, and contracted or programmed sales are vitally important to the economics of a continuous flow process such as RE, and not merely NdPr but also the 70% La & Ce that come with it.

Secondly, how do you think the Japanese mag makers compete with China? Their IP advantage has been steadily whittled away by Chinese advances, plus they need to compete with Chinese scale and often "in-house" oxide production.

Japanese are as tough as nails on price, they simply have to be to compete with the Chinese, and the fact that inside China the 13% VAT on NdPr is refunded, outside China it is not.

What they might do is split some portion of that VAT percentage as a minimal premium but a single digit is all you are going to get.

The mystical NdPr prices floating around on PDF's at $80/90kg NdPr until quite recently were always muppet prices, not saying they may not spike there but LT sustainable $60kg seems a reasonable estimate from UBS, equally in & out of China.