The recent reduction in Chinese rare exports quotas coupled with the interruptions to rare earths supply to Japan from China have made diversity of supply a key issue in maintaining the sustainability of the many supply chains within which rare earths play a critical role. In the resultant self-serving panic created by the promoters of some nascent rare earths projects, the issues associated with the development of a rare earths project have been underestimated.
However, the ‘norm’ is that it may take between seven and twenty years to develop a project.
For example, the Mt Weld rare earths deposit, Western Australia, was discovered by Molycorp in 1970, detailed development studies were undertaken by Ashton Mining from 1990 to 2000; but production will not commence until 2011 under the stewardship of Lynas Corp.
The rare earths market is small (approximately $2-3bn pa) and highly specialised, such that the major...