The World of REEs

There has been a few posts of late discussing LYC business, growth, competition, downstream demand etc. Since I've collected and collated a large amount of data, I thought I share this to act as a base for discussions regarding these topics. There is a lot of data, but I hope it will be of interest to some. This post is focusing on the flow of REEs, while I can disseminate similar data for the downstream magnet market, if of interest.

First, looking at LYC exports by weight and value:

From this, we can draw some conclusions, of which (IMO) the most important is: we ship our products to a great range of countries (a), but 4 destinations comprise 94% of the value (b). Looking at the average selling price (ASP) for these destinations, the hierarchy is Thailand>Vietnam>Japan>>China. We can assume (from the ASPs) that the vast majority of our Nd/Pr goes to the first three.

Looking at these individual countries:





In Thailand and Vietnam we are 'dominating'. Here the imported NdPr oxide (a-b) and other REEs gets converted into metals, and subsequently most of it is shipped to Japan (c-d). Hence, for LYC this pretty much means 'all roads lead to Japan'.

As for Japan:



Japanese REE imports ARE increasing, but China is still playing a big role, and IMO HRE from our future US operations has the ability to push LYCs share much higher. Currently, LYC market share in Japan is ~30% of oxides, and ~50% of metals (via Thailand/Vietnam).

China's REE greed is becoming more evident in the past few years, which may by also mean Japan will have to turn more to LYC:




China has vastly increased its import of REE (concentrates/oxide; a-b), while exports of metals are flat or going down (c-d), depending on timeframe.

What can we make of all of this? Well, the world of REEs is getting more and more complex, but for now we can say that LYC has a significant presence, yet have a large segment to grow in, particularly in Japan. In this matter we may be aided by geopolitics, but also by the Chinese greed for REEs (i.e. they will export less). But, IMO ROW currently needs LYC HRE processing asap, which would allow Japan & ROW do be further de-coupled from China.

Apart from that, growth of the downstream segments is obviously what will put pressure on demand. Magnet data indicates there is an upward trend in Japan and ROW that 'should' translate to further LYC product demand.

note: I've tried to verify data as much as possible (e.g. export one end, import the other), but there are some minor discrepancies as some countries are more opaque that others..