Rare earths
China bought 77,000 tons of rare earths abroad this year. Laos just froze the next mine.
Customs data out on 14 October show China imported about 1.76 tons of rare earths for every ton it exported through September. A week earlier Laos froze new rare earth approvals and set 2030 for ending raw ore exports, while Serra Verde's China contracts in Brazil run out at the end of 2026. The heavy rare earths behind the magnets in AI cooling hardware are getting harder to buy as raw ore.
Brasília says Lynas will build one of the biggest rare earth separation plants outside China. Caldeira's US$498 million budget does not include it.
Mines and Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira told MINING.COM that Lynas has presented plans for an oxide separation plant in the Poços de Caldas region, and BNDES is weighing finance. Lynas's own filings still call Brazilian processing a possibility. The gap between those two positions is what Brazil's new minerals council will have to price.
Brazil's mining deals hit US$5.9 billion in 2026. The council that now approves control changes has no deadline.
Alvarez & Marsal counts US$8.2 billion of disclosed mining M&A in Brazil since January 2025, with two rare earth deals carrying 42 percent of the value and Chinese buyers about 30 percent. Five deals worth US$3.6 billion were still open at the cutoff, and Lei 15.506 gives the new CIMCE approval power over changes of control with no statutory clock.
Lynas pays 68 percent over market for Brazil's biggest ionic clay deposit. The step that turns it into magnet feed is still a study.
On October 1 Lynas agreed to buy Meteoric Resources for A$968 million, taking the Caldeira project in Minas Gerais five months after USA Rare Earth took Serra Verde. Brazil now hosts both flagship ionic clay assets outside China and still has no commercial heavy rare earth separation. Brasília is debating whether to tax the export of exactly what these mines will ship.
Washington offers to fund Brazilian rare earth refining. The one producing mine pays royalties on the cost of digging.
US embassy sources told MINING.COM on September 28 that Washington is open to backing local processing. Brazil's mining agency has never published a reference price for rare earths, so Serra Verde's royalty base is its own mining cost. Minaçu has collected R$3.1 million since 2024.
A Goiás drill hole returned rare earths, niobium and tantalum. The same province's niobium complex has been Chinese-owned since 2016.
Rare Earths Americas reported first Homer-A assays on September 23: dysprosium and terbium in near-surface clay, plus niobium, tantalum and scandium zones, across 2.15 square kilometres of a 35 square kilometre magnetic anomaly. Read it as a district, not a hole. Goiás also holds CMOC's Catalão complex, an INB uranium block carrying tin and tantalum, and the only ionic clay rare earth mine outside Asia.
The West Aimed at the Magnet. China Moved to the Part Around It.
JL Mag is targeting 60,000 tons of magnet capacity and a business selling finished robot rotors. MP Materials' largest planned plant is 10,000 tons. Magnet shipments to the US fell 21 percent in August, three days before Xi lands in Washington.
Beijing spent June blocking MP Materials. It may spend the autumn owning a piece of it.
Reuters reports state-owned China Rare Earth Group wants control of Shenghe Resources, which holds 3 percent of MP. Shenghe denies it. Brazil's Pela Ema, three weeks inside a US parent, is the asset that makes the question urgent.
Brazil has fewer than 50 people who can separate a rare earth. It needs 500 by 2040
The ANM said so on September 18, days after Lula sanctioned the critical minerals policy. China enrolls more than 500 students a year in rare earth degree programs across at least 11 institutions. The new law funds a research network and a PD&I levy. Neither compresses a training clock one former industry chief executive puts at three years per hire.
Saudi Arabia announced a heavy rare earth resource with no grade. Washington had already agreed to fund the refinery.
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman used the IAEA General Conference to disclose 110 million tonnes of ore at Jabal Sayid, with no grade and no contained metal. The US agreed to finance 49 percent of the Saudi separation plant last November, and dysprosium and terbium are still on China's control list.
Brazil's biggest rare earth project started detailed engineering before it found the last US$280 million
Viridis named its EPCM contractor on September 11 and approved US$3 million to begin design work ahead of a final investment decision it has not taken. The debt that pays for construction is still unsigned, and the separation plant intended to take the output sits in France.
Beijing sanctioned the auditor. The shipments stopped on their own.
MOFCOM Order No. 2 put the Responsible Business Alliance on China's countermeasure list on August 5. Chinese suppliers began refusing US rare earth orders without being ordered to. The truce that expires November 10 never covered this channel, so the September 24 summit cannot extend it.
Washington promised Nairobi it backs local processing. Five days earlier it offered $750 million to a Louisiana separation plant
A senior State Department official rejected the extract-and-ship model in Kenya on September 9. On September 4, EXIM signalled up to $750 million toward a Port of Vinton facility built to separate South American rare earths. The DFC's entire committed African rare earth book is $62.8 million.
Brazil's best heavy rare earth project pays 34 percent of its gross revenue to Louisiana. EXIM just offered to fund the invoice
Aclara's Carina feasibility study books a US$314.4 million annual separation fee payable to a plant at the Port of Vinton that has not been built. On September 4 the company disclosed a US Export-Import Bank letter of interest for up to US$750 million toward building it.
The West's heavy rare earth chain now runs Malawi to Kazakhstan to France. Governments set the price.
Lindian and Carester signed a binding 20-year offtake on September 2 for separation capacity at Stepnogorsk. The pricing clause is the story: payabilities are indexed to whatever floor France, the US or Japan puts under the market. Brazil is not on the route.
A Rare Earth Magnet Plant Just Asked Korea for 750 Megawatts
Evolution Metals agreed principal terms with KEPCO to take its Pohang site from 130 MW to 750 MW. The midstream that is supposed to break China's magnet grip now bids for the same power blocks as the data centers that need the magnets.
Brazil's rare earth claim map is 42 percent foreign. The processing gate is still unwritten
AP and Reporter Brasil reviewed all 2,727 ANM rare earth exploration applications through June. Australia leads with 695, the US follows with 347, China has filed none. The bill that would condition access on domestic processing has read AGUARDANDO DESPACHO since May 8, per the Senate's own record checked on August 20.
Erbium broke ranks with the whole rare earth basket. It sits in the amplifier, not the magnet.
European erbium prices rose about 50 percent since the start of June while 13 of 19 tracked elements fell in August. Erbium's demand base is fibre-optic amplification, and China's suspension covering it lapses November 10.
Brazil Drills a New Heavy Rare Earth District and Floats a Gallium Play
While the majors' deals grab headlines, Brazilian Rare Earths declared a 9 kilometre Monte Alto district and is spinning out a bauxite-gallium company, the raw inputs the AI buildout still sources through China.
China's rare earth exports fell. Its magnet shipments hit records.
Beijing throttled the oxides and metals the West cannot yet make, cut those US shipments to zero in May, and squeezed Japan, while shipping more finished magnets than ever. The chokepoint moved downstream.
IEA puts a $6.5 trillion price tag on China's rare earth chokepoint
Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026 quantifies the downstream damage if Beijing's October 2025 export controls take full effect. The year-delay clock runs down while refining concentration climbs.
Washington funds the mines. Japan and Korea buy the oxide.
The Financial Times' read of MP, Energy Fuels, and Phoenix Tailings finds most US-funded rare earth output crossing the Pacific because domestic magnet capacity is a 2027 story. Serra Verde and Brazilian monazite face the same gap.
Rare earth exports enter Beijing's whistleblower era
MOFCOM Announcement No. 26 opened a public reporting window for strategic mineral export violations on July 1. Paired with a June germanium prosecution and Japanese detentions, dual-use exports are now criminal-liability terrain.
The samarium gap in the US rare earth strategy
MP Materials' 10X plan solves neodymium. Samarium, the mineral behind US missile magnets, isn't in it. Brazilian monazite is one of the few off-China alternatives.
Germany brings its rare earth fund to Brasilia: six projects, one magnet plant, and a bet on Brazil over China
Foreign Minister Wadephul joined MME, BNDES, and ApexBrasil for an embassy event that put MagBras and six exploration companies in front of German capital. The message: Berlin wants partnership, not just purchase.
Tooele and Norra Kärr: heavy rare earth processing locks in around China's November clock
In the same week, the Pentagon picked Tooele Army Depot for U.S. dysprosium and terbium processing, and Sweden cleared Norra Kärr for a 25-year mining lease. The new ex-China heavy rare earth axis is taking shape, with a Brazil-shaped hole in it.
RARA11: rare earth ETF debuts on the B3
Investo brings Brazilian investors direct access to the index that rises when the contest for critical minerals heats up.
Beijing names MP and USA Rare Earth. Brazil's Serra Verde walks into the trade war.
MOFCOM added the two US rare earth majors to its export control list on Monday. USA Rare Earth's pending $2.8 billion takeover of Brazil's Serra Verde, the only producer outside Asia of all four magnetic rare earths at scale, now sits inside an active retaliation cycle.
G7 Évian wrote a 60 percent rare earth ceiling. Canada's 13 new bilaterals skipped Brazil.
The Évian declaration sets the first hard numerical target on rare earth source concentration. Canada walked away with 13 new bilateral deals worth more than $5 billion. None landed in Brazil.
Pentagon puts $1 billion on the rare earth midstream. Brazil's June was another deposit week.
Phoenix Tailings' Freedom Facility lands $500M conditional from the Office of Strategic Capital plus $500M of private capital, targeting 2028. The same week, Resouro logged a $1B Tiros PEA in Minas Gerais and the DLA inked a five-year ferro-niobium stockpile with CBMM. Three signals about who is funding which step of the mine-to-magnet chain.
China's rare earth tape clears 252.8 and Brazil's Serra Verde leaves the open market
CREIA's index hit 252.8 on June 15, heavy rare earths leading. Five weeks earlier the only scaled non-Asian heavy producer signed a 15-year offtake to a U.S. government vehicle. Commerce closed $1.6 billion in CHIPS capacity on June 3.
From Alto Paranaíba to Évian: Brazil's critical minerals moment accelerates
A TDK-backed battery giant takes a direct stake in a Brazilian REE-niobium project while Lula pitches the same geology to G7 leaders. Two events, one week, and a signal that Brazil is no longer a bystander in the supply chain chess game.
The watch item answered itself: USA Rare Earth buys Serra Verde for $2.8 billion
On April 20, USAR put $300 million in cash and 126.849 million shares on the table for the only producing rare earth mine outside Asia that delivers all four magnetic elements. The deal is the closest answer the West has to dysprosium and terbium without going through Ganzhou.
Pentagon contractors ask for a delay. Brazil and Australia are the winners.
The DFARS magnet ban kicks in January 2027. The West cannot meet it. The countries with rare earth production already underway just got more valuable.