market, a capacious budget for supporting preferred industries, and a technocratic government facing no organized domestic opposition, means China’s trading partners face a unique environment where the strategies and tactics of the past are no longer as relevant. Australia, with considerable identified reserves, is a much smaller but politically important supplier of rare earth concentrate such as Hastings-WA and Arafura-NT (Lynas-NT is already 100% exported to Malaysia). Rare Earths have also been found in the Kimberley, see section 4.7. Australia’s current advantage is due to its ability to rapidly and transparently bring resource extraction on stream. Europe is arguably the most vulnerable trading bloc so there is an opportunity for a substantial deal 4.5 Rare Earth Permanent Magnets Permanent magnets are the key technology in modern wind turbines as they eliminate the need for gearboxes and allow the turbine to produce electricity at lower rotational speeds. Also, permanent magnet wind turbines do not require an external electricity source to power the induction generator used by previous generations of wind turbine. In 2016, 61% of the global permanent magnet production by value was in “NdFeB” rare earth magnets.
between WA and the EU to the mutual benefit of both. Japan has been instrumental in developing WA over the last fifty years and is one of WA’s closest and most important trading partners and investors. Japan is also highly vulnerable to strategic supply of resources incentivising Japanese companies to relocate production facilities to WA, building upon the long and mutually beneficial relationship. Finally, it has recently been reported that the United States and Australia have agreed to work together on strategic minerals exploration, extraction, processing and research and development of rare earths and high-performance metals to sustain the jobs of today and develop the jobs of tomorrow. 27 Approximately 90,000 tonnes of NdFeB magnets were produced globally, 28 containing around 27,000 tonnes of REE. Driving investment in this industry is both the increased demand for magnets, as well as the value-add to be captured by producing magnets from source materials. Using recent prices, the per kilo cost of typical NdFeB magnet raw materials is around $22.50 (Table 3).
27 Gottliebsen, Robert (2018), “Trump seeks Australia help to loosen China’s grip on rare earths”, The Australian, 27 February 2018, https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/robert-gottliebsen/trump-seeks-australian-help-to- loosen-chinas-grip-on-rare-earths/news-story/f459c0140aed356c806ece0f69b41c97 . (Accessed: 01 May 2018) 28 Benecki, Walter (2017), More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About the Permanent Magnet Industry! , January 2017, http://www.waltbenecki.com/uploads/more_than_you_ever_wanted_to_know.pdf . (Accessed: 01 May 2018)
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