Brazil's Serra Verde starts shipping heavy rare earths to US under 15-year deal

tw04

This is in theory good for everyone. With China using rare earths as a means to control the market as well as exploiting myanmar to mine them, finding a reliable secondary source was vital for national security. Now whether or not Brazil decides to raze the rainforest to fulfill the orders remains to be seen.

maxglute

Just raw/intermediate inputs, not processed HREE. Leached from ionic clay, only economically extractable formation which PRC has ample access (hence dominance), geologically limited outside Asia/Australia (AKA economically extractable heavy rare earth, is in fact, rare). Again, partially processed, looks 2% of global output. Still has to be sent to separation plant for final processing, i.e. someone has to reproduce the entire PRC solvent-extraction stack at industrial scale, which is TBD from USA Rare Earth. This like upstart semi company getting wafers, but have to invent litho machine to print anything - the entire tech stack is Chinese, refined in PRC over last 30 years - needs to be replicated (and improved to US environment standards). USARE has a small batch pilot run, which is TRL5/6, i.e. theoretically where PRC EUV prototype is. This basically PR release about securing dirt.