why is the lamp in malaysia instead wa?, page-6

Lynas project was intially meant to be located in Shandong China but during 2006 China put forward a policy restricting export of rare earth from China , thus this policy affected Lynas project as it becomes unable or have restriction to export its production
So then , Lynas went through the whole process of investmentsite search . They have looked at Abu Dhabi ,Australia and various locations in Malaysia . The evaluation results indicated all positives are for Kuantan as it has all the infrastructures , skilled labour and most important of all the important chemicals like Acid and alkali and lime they are all within miles of Kuantan town.
The cost of shipping of rare earth concentrate ( about 33000 t phase 1 ) is minimal so it is not a concern. The most important is the availability of process chemicals eg acid/alkali /lime etc etc which are not easily available in Australia and if available will be 3-4 times the cost of acid supplied in Malaysia