Hi Ttroy, So what do you think china is doing with the all the...

Hi Ttroy,

So what do you think china is doing with the all the HREO supplied in any shape or form.

You think they're buying it off MP at $22.5usd/kg to do nothing with it? I mean economics 101 - they're buying it and commercialising it.

You can only commercialise a MREC by extracting the valuable stuff out which is done my separating the REO's. hence my post on the LYC forum Post #:65100256 with supporting cited resources to back that opinion up that it's feasible but not as cost competitive. hence the discussing as to why IAC's currently supply 95% of global HREO because it's more cost effective to separate these items than it is than buying pure hard rock MREC-seg and trying to separate it. My assumption is they're buying this stuff for peanuts and adding it to the blend to fill the gap. But that the economics to run a whole plant on nothing but that type of supply, well we havent seen it.

So in short, why are they buying it unless they're turning it into value add products.
i.e. refining/separating etc etc. They're not buying over there to not use it.

That amount for MP and i'd guess for LYC is still in the supply curve irrespective of the form in which is exists. If it's not we can postulate that below.

LYC may be stockpiling. At ~ 0.09% and ~0.4% recoverable in the SEG we're talking 20T Tb at their 16000TPA output in Fy21 for example. So they can stockpile Mt Weld for 15 years to meet 1Y of demand.

And before you go down the path of mentioning Duncan. Here's the figures here at 0.26% Tb even if you fed all of that material at the same feed rate to produce 16000T of TREO we're talking 41T of Tb. Post #:65076901 so only 9 years of stockpiling Duncan running LYC at current full rate.

So yes they might be stockpiling now (not sure they would have been previously) - but it's inconsequential to what's required to meet demand.

Globe will need more rare earths period and mostly the HREO. This isn't an us vs them thing either both will benefit - so will most of the REO producers. But NdPr will be more competitive and thus those will revenues biased to HREO will have the sharpest uplift to revenues.

In short, if the supply demand curve is even remotely accurate - globally a lot more Tb Dy will be required. If you want to debate adamas's forecasts take it up with them. (BTW i do agree most forecasts are best guesses but presumably better than yours or mine).

SF2TH