Rare-earths plants are popping up outside China

Mint

19-05-2025

GOINIA, Brazil—In a warehouse deep in Brazil's savanna, machines churn through piles of red clay to produce chalky rocks packed with metals critical for making electric cars, smartphones and missiles.
But what is particularly precious about these minerals is their intended destination: They are bound for the U.S., not China.
China mines some 70% of the world's rare earths, the 17 metallic elements primarily used in magnets needed for civilian and military technologies. But its 90% share of processing for rare earths mined around the world is what really concerns officials from other countries working to secure their supply.
'China is a formidable competitor," said Ramón Barúa, chief executive of Canada's Aclara Resources, which is opening a rare-earths mine to supply a processing plant it plans to build in the U.S. Aclara said it plans by August to decide where in the U.S. to build its plant for separating rare-earths deposits into individual elements.
It also has a buyer lined up. Aclara signed an agreement last year to supply rare earths to VAC, a German company that is building a factory in South Carolina with $94 million in Pentagon funding to make magnets for clients including General Motors.
'We're seeing a tsunami of demand," Barúa said.
Aclara aims to extract and process both light and heavy rare earths from its plants in Brazil and Chile.
Geopolitical tension is fueling interest in Brazil's minerals. After the U.S. set new tariffs on China last month, China tightened restrictions on the export of rare-earth materials, worrying U.S. manufacturers including Tesla and redoubling their hunt for non-China alternatives. Exports of rare earths restarted this month for some companies.
'Hopefully, we'll get a license to use the rare-earth magnets," Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on the company's April earnings call.
Brazil has the world's second-largest rare-earth reserves after China, some 21 million tons, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That represents more than a fifth of known global reserves—and more than 10 times those in the U.S.
Brazil is also rich in a scarcer subset of heavy rare earths, including dysprosium and terbium, silvery metal elements that stop magnets from losing their strength at high temperatures. They are important in electric vehicles, where magnets power the motor even as it heats up.
Despite its huge reserves, Brazil has been a small player in rare earths because of its complex mining regulations and the difficulty of attracting financing from companies willing to confront entrenched Chinese competitors.
Costs to mine and process Brazilian rare earths are estimated to be around three times China's, meaning Western buyers would likely pay a substantial premium for Brazilian minerals. Only a few companies outside China have mastered rare-earth processing, and the learning curve is steep.
While it can't beat China on prices, Aclara says that its mining processes are more eco-friendly.Brazil has the world's second-largest rare-earth reserves after China.
Brazil is mapping potential rare-earths deposits and searching for traces of them in waste from other mines, said Alexandre Silveira, the country's minister of mines and energy.
'This potential presents a significant opportunity," he said.
Brazil's first big rare-earths mine opened last year some 90 miles west of the town of Nova Roma, where Aclara plans to produce. Backed by Denham Capital, a Boston-based private-equity firm, the project is one of the few outside Asia to produce dysprosium, terbium, neodymium and praseodymium—elements used to create high-power magnets. But the mine is contracted to ship most of its production to China.
The U.S. has dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars over the past five years to reviving rare-earth processing plants and magnet factories closed during decades of Chinese dominance.
President Trump declared a national emergency in 2020 over U.S. dependence on foreign critical minerals, including rare earths, and has made the sector a priority since returning to office.
Europe has worked to reduce its reliance on China. The European Union aims to process 40% of the critical raw materials it needs and has agreed that no outside country should supply more than 65% of Europe's annual consumption of a list of designated materials that includes rare earths.
After opening a pilot plant to perfect the refinement process near Goiânia, Aclara plans to invest some $600 million to complete work on a larger plant next to the mine in Nova Roma to start full production in 2028.
The plant will partially process the rare earths, creating rare-earth carbonates: white rocks containing all the elements that will be separated into individual elements in the U.S.
A German company building a U.S. magnet factory has agreed to buy rare earths from Aclara.
While Aclara can't compete with China on price, it markets its mining practices as more environmentally friendly.
Brazil's record on mining is far from perfect. The collapse of a tailings dam owned by iron-ore miner Vale killed 272 people in 2019, four years after another dam it owned jointly with BHP Group ruptured.
Even so, Brazilian regulations are tighter than regulations are in China. Aclara's mining process also poses fewer risks, analysts said.
China typically mines rare earths by drilling holes into clay and flushing out rare earths with ammonium sulfate solution, a common fertilizer. The process is relatively cheap, but risks contaminating surrounding soils and the water supply.
Instead of following suit, Aclara plans to excavate its clays from depths of up to some 30 meters, or nearly 100 feet, and transport them to the plant for treatment.
'Their clay is right at the surface, so you don't have to dig deep," said Erik Eschen, CEO of VAC, the company planning to buy rare earths from Aclara.
Sacks of clay inside an Aclara plant await processing into rare-earth concentrate.
The residual clay is washed and returned to the ground, eliminating the need for tailings dams. Lugging truckloads of earth that typically contain less than 3 pounds of rare earths in each ton is expensive. But it reduces contamination at the site of the mine.
'The attention to environmental concerns is the biggest difference between what is done in China and what Aclara plans to do in Brazil," said Jon Hykawy, a rare-earths expert who recently inspected Aclara's pilot plant and mine.
Write to Samantha Pearson at [e-mail] and Jon Emont at [e-mail]