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Russia to invest US$1b in rare earths production
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Russia will invest US$1 billion in rare earths production by 2018 in a bid to become less dependent on China, which controls more than 90 percent of global supply of the elements used in sectors including defense, telecommunications and renewable energy.
Rostec and IST group, an investment company belonging to Russian tycoon Alexander Nesis, have agreed to invest US$1 billion in rare earths production by 2018, they said in a statement yesterday.
Rostec, a state industrial and defense conglomerate, aims to cover Russian demand for these raw materials by 2017, the company added.
“The (Russian) President and the government have set a task to expand rare earths production as Russia’s stocks are almost depleted,” a source in Rostec said yesterday.
TriArkMining, a joint venture between Rostec and IST, has won the right to acquire 82,653 tons of monazite concentrate, stored in warehouses of state-owned Uralmonatsit in the Sverdlovsk region of Russia’s Urals.
The JV plans to extract about 40,000 tons of rare earths from the monazite concentrate stored in the warehouses over the course of seven or eight years starting from 2015, the companies said.
The stock is rich in heavy rare earths, such as dysprosium and terbium, crucial for high-power magnets needed by the auto, defense and clean energy industries.
Heavy rare earths are scarcer than cerium and other light rare earths, making them much more valuable.
Russia consumes about 1,500 tons of rare earths per year and annual demand may reach 6,000 tons by 2020, Rostec said.
Rostec, which has eight companies producing a wide range of defense products, sees rare earths as a strategic raw material.
China will cap rare earth production at 93,800 tons for 2013 as part of efforts to rein in unlicensed production in the sector, it said last week.
“Russia accounts for only 2 percent of the world’s rare earths production. Without new projects, its share in world output would fall below 1.5 percent in the coming years,” Sergey Chemezov, Rostec’s chief executive, said in the statement.
“Besides that, Russia’s high-tech industry will be protected against fluctuations in the rare earths global market.”
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