BEVs or bust! Good summary phrase.
It's not all about BEVs, of course, or even turbines; more specifically, it's about the DyTb-NdPrFeB magnets that are required to serve these high-value markets.
Without Dy you can't make high performance high value NdFeB magnets and until someone else refines Dysprosium the ex-China magnet making industry is at sole supplier China's mercy.
"OMG, what's the big deal, Dy is just 0.8-1.2% of the magnet!" says a recent poster, trying to throw First Captain a lasso, err, lifeline. But he's being illogical, as everyone here knows. It wouldn't matter if it were 0.001% if you can't make the magnets that matter without it.
Not to mention, all neomagnets have multiple ~1% alloying metals (e.g., Co, Ni, Cu, Al, how about B, etc) added to enhance or protect performance metrics. Do they think they can all be simply dismissed? It would seem so. Note: For EV traction drive magnets, I believe current usage is ~10:1 NdPr to Dy to create magnets with total ~3% Dy).
Bottom Line: In my humble opinion the Dy shortage is increasingly a downside risk for Lynas as it hobbles the magnet market Lynas seeks to support and ultimately depends on.
The underlying logic is not arcane. The need for Dy may be decreasing as researchers move forward, but it currently stands as absolute and that makes sourcing from China an absolute necessity for Lynas's customers: ex-Chinese magnet makers. It is Dy availability not Dy cost that makes the current situation unsustainable.
Is the LYC share price also hobbled? imho, yes. Primarily because more investors would understand an investment thesis based on the refining of the full range of rare earth elements; the one-stop shop. I also suspect the continuing and well-publicized diminution of the ex-China magnet industry (how quickly the mighty have fallen!) is a significant cause for concern and that can be helped by providing secure stable supplies of all elements required to address the major magnet markets and demand growth.
I do not think it is too late but it is late and I am not wanting to wait another three-plus years for the possible US operations to be producing Dy.
Go Dy or Die!
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p.s. So why does First Captain sign his every post with an insult of Jack Lifton (multi-decade REE pundit of Dy-inclusive "basket pricing") that is also a dismissal of the importance of Dysprosium to NdFeB? Is this sensible or just more dumb incivility? You know my answer. I will continue to press my case, so he'd be better off just dumping the stupid signature and finding some other reason to happy-clap himself.
First Captain and Guru of Glib (and his crew of Luddite contrarian supporters) repeatedly dismissed BEVs as "stupid torch battery grid leeches" and derided pro-BEV posters as "happy-clappers singing kumbaya". The "glib factor" was off the charts! The man who thought his beloved 48V MHEV were the Holy Grail for Lynas is now a man without even so much as a horse. The thug who thought everyone else an idiot was himself proved to be; that was satisfying albeit so often the case with uncivil people.
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