Rare Earth Stocks

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Molycorp Says Surge in Rare-Earth Prices Is `Sustainable' on China Cuts
By Elisabeth Behrmann and Susan Li - Oct 28, 2010 2:45 AM ET

Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Mark A. Smith, president and chief executive officer of Molycorp Inc., owner of the world’s largest non-Chinese deposit of rare-earth metals, talks about demand for the minerals. Rare-earth prices have jumped after China, the source of more than 90 percent of worldwide supplies, cut its second-half export quota. Smith speaks from Denver, Colorado, with Susan Li on Bloomberg Television's "First Up." (Source: Bloomberg)

Molycorp Inc., owner of the world’s, largest non-Chinese deposit of rare-earth metals, said the surge in prices is sustainable because of production and export cuts by China, the world’s biggest supplier.

“I don’t believe that there is a bubble,” Mark A. Smith, president of the Greenwood Village, Colorado-based company, said in an interview with Susan Li on Bloomberg Television’s “First Up.” “These prices are absolutely sustainable and that’s really based upon the very simple facts of supply and demand.”

Prices of rare earths, used in the manufacture of disk drives and smart bombs, have climbed as much as sevenfold in the past six months as China in July reduced its second-half export quota for the minerals by 72 percent. Molycorp aims to restart a mine in California in the second half of next year and produce about 20,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides by the end of 2012.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, warned in April of “vulnerabilities” for the military because of the lack of domestic suppliers of rare-earth materials used in weapons systems. The Pentagon is studying how to secure future supplies, and its report is due to Congress this month.

Vietnam, which has emerged as a potential new source for Japanese companies including Toyota Motor Corp., won’t sell rare earths in raw form, the Thanh Nien newspaper reported, citing the Department of Geology and Minerals. Instead the country aims to export more valuable processed rare earths.

Radioactive

While the elements aren’t as rare in nature as the name implies, they are difficult to find in profitable concentrations, expensive for Western producers to extract and are often laced with radioactive elements.

China has come to dominate the market because it has been able to produce the elements more cheaply and with fewer environmental restrictions than its competitors.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on China to clarify its rare earth policy, following a meeting with her Japanese counterpart, Seiji Maehara, that touched on the subject in Hawaii yesterday. The “entire world” has to seek alternative supplies of the metals, she said.

China won’t use rare earths as a bargaining chip, Zhu Hongren, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said today at a briefing in Beijing. The Chinese government has said it is reducing exports as part of a drive to improve efficiency in the industry and reduce environmental damage caused by mining.

Strong Fundamentals

“The Chinese are only exporting 30,000 tons of material to the rest of the world right now and the rest of the world needs 50,000 tons of this material a year,” said Molycorp’s Smith. “We don’t see the fundamentals of this changing anytime in the near future. The demand is like I’ve never seen it in 25 years in this business.”

Lynas Corp., a rare earths developer based in Sydney, estimates the global rare-earth market this year at $7.8 billion, or about a week’s sales at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Still, China’s cutbacks have raised political tension because of the strategic importance of the metals used in Toyota’s Prius hybrid cars, Research in Motion Ltd. BlackBerrys, alternative energy generation and weapons.

The price of lanthanum oxide, used in hybrid batteries, has risen more than sixfold since second quarter to $50 a kilogram, according to Lynas Corp.’s website. Vehicles like the Prius contain about 10 kilograms of rare earths.

Alternatives

Japan’s Nidec Corp., the world’s biggest maker of motors for hard-disk drives, will start making motors for industrial machinery that don’t need rare-earth metals to reduce reliance on the materials, the Nikkei newspaper reported today. Production of motors that don’t use permanent magnets and don’t require rare earth metals will start in 2012, it said.

Molycorp rose 9.6 percent to $38.56 in New York yesterday after the U.S. House of Representative’s Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon said he will seek to pass a measure that would boost rare-earth mining. The stock has tripled since the company raised $394 million in a July initial public offering.

Rare earths, a group of 17 metals including neodymium, lanthanum, cerium and europium, have industrial and national- security uses, such as in petroleum refining, fiber-optic transmission, computer disk drives, and military radar and missile-guidance systems.

To contact the reporter on this story: Elisabeth Behrmann in Sydney at [e-mail]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Hobbs at [e-mail]