China controls around 80% of the world's rare earth production.
As the use of rare earth elements in emerging technologies becomes increasingly significant in today’s modern world, investors are being drawn to ASX stocks involved in the minerals.
At present, China controls the bulk of its production capacity and is dangling it like a carrot in a trade war with the United States.
However, the US isn’t keen to play along and is, instead, looking to other nations to help maintain its supply of these critical minerals.
As the second top producer of rare earth element, Australia is in a prime position to take advantage of the situation, with ambitions to become an international “powerhouse” via its Critical Minerals Strategy.
Federal defence minister Linda Reynolds also recently called rare earth element’s continuity and guarantee of supply an issue of “national importance”.
So, do these minerals really give China the bargaining power? Or, will this be the push Australia needs to up its game and take a larger share of the market?
Rare earth element, also referred to as rare earth minerals, are a group of 17 metals made up of 15 lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium.
Lanthanides are the chemical elements with atomic numbers 57 to 71 on the periodic table and include (in table order): lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium and lutetium.
Rare earth minerals consist of 17 elements from the periodic table.
Scandium and yttrium fall under the same umbrella because they tend to occur in the same ore deposits and have similar chemical properties.
The elements are also often found in minerals with thorium and, sometimes, uranium.
The name itself is deceiving as these minerals are not “rare”, but just rather hard to find in economic quantities and complex to extract, making mineable concentrations less common than most other ores.
According to Geoscience Australia, they have “unique catalytic, metallurgical, nuclear, electrical, magnetic and luminescent properties”.
The group can be divided into three classifications – light, medium and heavy elements.
With resources typically reported as rare earth oxides (REO).