Jack Lifton on Holymoly
Jack Lifton debunks the Lynas and Molycorp rare earth leader myth
Molycorp’s new owners were financial managers with one exception, Traxys, which is a large resources trading company. I believe that they, the new owners of Molycorp, chose to promote the story that military demand for the rare earths was critical, large, and growing.
The fact is that today the world supply of the light rare earths that are the only products of the mining operations of both Molycorp and Lynas is in surplus.
In fact though it has become obvious that the future geography of the global rare earth supply chain will depend on deposits that can produce mid-range (SEGs) and heavy rare earths (HREEs).
I am going to predict that those non-Chinese deposits being developed to produce the most SEGs and HREEs, as a percentage of their total production, have the best chance of also becoming profitable producers of LREEs.
Almost all of the HREE developments can or would produce some LREEs. The critical nature of the HREEs, even in the Chinese domestic markets, makes it likely that SEG/HREE producers will also be able to sell their LREEs to their customers using the time-honored Chinese developed sales method of “if you want dysprosium you must also take neodymium. If you want a better deal or an assured supply then you must take lanthanum as well.”
Molycorp’s original business model took no account of HREEs; this flaw has dogged the company all along. Acquiring (or as seems more and more likely being acquired by) Neo materials gave Molycorp some Chinese HREE processing capability but no HREE new material sourcing capability whatsoever. For whatever reason this flaw has not, even now, been fixed although it could have been easily fixed many times. It is probably now too late, financially, for such a fix to rally the market.
investorintel.com/rare-earth-intel/...-rare-earth-leader-myth/
It is too late for such a fix, is it??