China Official Says No Plans to Cut Rare Earth Quotas
China Official Says No Plans to Cut Rare Earth Quotas
Doug Kanter/Bloomberg
Workers handle neodymium ingots before they are crushed at Neo Material Technologies Inc.'s Magnequench Tianjin Co. factory in Tianjin, China.
Workers handle neodymium ingots before they are crushed at Neo Material Technologies Inc.'s Magnequench Tianjin Co. factory in Tianjin, China. Photographer: Doug Kanter/Bloomberg
China has no definite plans to cut its export quota for rare earths next year, a senior official at the department responsible for the minerals said at a conference in Xiamen today.
“There is no such thing,” Jiang Fan, deputy director general of the department of foreign trade at the Ministry of Commerce, told Bloomberg News. “I haven’t heard any policy that China will reduce rare earth exports by 30 percent next year.”
She was responding to a China Daily report that rare earth export quotas for 2011 would be cut by as much as 30 percent.
China cut its export quota of rare earths, metals used to make parts of hybrid cars, missiles and televisions, by 40 percent this year to boost prices and reduce pollution.
Export prices of some rare earths oxides have surged as much as tenfold this year from 2009, according to the website of Lynas Corp., which is building a rare earth project in Australia. Cerium oxide, which is used in automotive catalytic converters, has jumped from $7.49 a kilogram in the second quarter, to $40 as of Oct. 18, according to Lynas Corp.
China’s medium and heavy rare earths reserves may last 15 years to 20 years at the current rate of production, possibly requiring imports, the Ministry of Commerce said on Oct. 16.
Rare earths are 17 chemically similar elements, including neodymium and dysprosium. The oxides are used in the production of equipment for General Dynamics Corp.’s M1A2 Abrams tank and Aegis SPY-1 radar made by Lockheed Martin Corp.
China has the largest share of worldwide reserves, about 36 percent, and the U.S. is second, with 13 percent, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
--Xiao Yu. With assistance from Feiwen Rong in Beijing. Editors: Alan Soughley, Andrew Hobbs
To contact the Bloomberg News staff on this story Xiao Yu in Xiamen at yxiao@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Hobbs in Sydney at ahobbs@bloomberg.net.
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