Rare Earth Oxide Prices Continue Slide, But For How Much Longer? – Part Two
Continued from Part One.
But the fall-off in rare earth metals demand is not as marked as the drop in apparent demand suggests.
China has tried to support prices by exporting even less than the allowed quotas. Exports are down 65 percent this year to 11,000 tons for the first nine months of 2011, accounting for only 40 percent of the quota, compared to 50,000 tons in 2008.
Therein lie the seeds of price support, though; if the ministry restricts next year’s exports to this year’s level – their usual practice – then supplies may not be sufficient to meet recovering demand next year and spur a rise in prices again. At current levels, new sources like Mountain Pass and Lynas’ Australian mine and Malaysian refinery will still be profitable.
There is no suggestion prices will fall below economic Western production again, but share prices have already been sharply knocked back as investors realize the peak of last summer was an unsustainable anomaly.
Of course, to treat all rare earths as one is nonsensical. Some rare earths are rarer than others, and restricted supply will be more of an issue for particular metals, but for the time being, they appear to be moving roughly in step with the possibility of further falls before a floor is reached.
Read Part One here.
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Rare Earth Prices will continue decline says TRU Rare
Earth Consultants
: But the price outlook remains high risk factor
for developing western REE projects
TRU Group Inc, Tucson, USA, Toronto ON –
Rare earth metals consultants TRU Group says that recent attempts by Chinese
suppliers to halt the six-month old steep decline in REE prices is likely to
fail even though the latest february export data for rare earth oxides prices
strengthened to US$144,000 per t-REO up significantly over the january figure. Export
price levels in 2012 are still more than three times the average for 2010
before the crisis in supply began as a result of Chinese unexpected export
restrictions. (See accompanying chart). China supplies over ninety per cent of
global rare earths and sets REE prices.
“Predicting
how far prices will fall and when price-stability will return to the market is
complex” says Edward Anderson, President of TRU. “It is not a situation of only
supply-demand balance even when applied to individual strategic rare earths
such as neodymium, dysprosium or praseodymium. For one thing the supply
shortages are artificial as they have been caused only by (reversible) Chinese
Government market intervention”. He said that western REE projects in the
pipeline would not only alleviated any supply shortages but also have a direct
effect dragging prices down as their
product contribution margins appear so strikingly high. Uncertainty in the rare
earth price outlook remains a compelling risk factor for new REE projects, a
factor that TRU will be researching further”.
Anderson announced that TRU will be at the
upcoming Rare Earth Summit May 2012 in San Francisco where he will meet players
in the industry to discuss prices and other matters they may raise.
TRU
Group Inc – trugroup.com – is a leader in rare
earth element engineering, managing, planning and integrating. The TRU Rare
Earth Team with direct hands-on experience in designing, engineering and
operating REE facilities. The firm has undertaken feasibility studies and due
diligence on major REE projects from resource geology, mineral processing,
chemical extraction, oxalate separation and metal refining. TRU Rare Earth Team
has technically and financially simulated numerous rare earth engineering
options and indeed studied and ranked over seventy of the most advanced rare
earth pipeline projects. For more information view trugroup.comrare-earth-news
Contact:
Edward R
Anderson, President & CEO, TRU Group Inc
B.Sc.(Hons)., Dpl.(Marketing Research).,
MBA., FCIArb
anderson@trugroup.com
Cell: 1-520-229-7836