scte long read
Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose and Recover
$3.5trn - Value of the global electronics industry – all electronics contain rare earths $3.5bn - Value of the global rare earth component industry $15bn - Actual value of rare earth themselves per annum $3bn - Value of the rare earth mining industry 50x that of global reserves of economically recoverable Rare Earths 394,000 tons a year of mixed rare earth concentrates Source: The Mineral Hub 2025
Every year that passes words and phrases seep into the general consciousness, amplified by the media, and before long become part of general usage. In the 90s it was ‘multimedia’, ‘Britpop’ and ‘ozone layer’, for example. ‘Bird Flu’ and ‘Credit crunch’ were coined in the 2000s and never really left us. ‘Brexit’ joined the lexicon not long after that, along with ‘Remainers’, ‘Remoaners’ and ‘Trumpism’. ‘Covid’ was an uninvited guest and we all remember people suddenly very opinionated – even expert - on the apparent pros and cons of the WHO, a body few of us had given much thought to before 2020. Carbon literacy and net-zero shouldn’t be recent additions but are, but the big climber of 2025, straight in at number one is Rare Earth Minerals, also known as Rare Earth Elements. Fortunately, this area is niche enough that your Auntie Doris probably doesn’t have strong feelings about Neodymium. You needn’t delve too deeply into the news at present to realise that rare earth minerals are, along with bees, water and sunshine, fairly critical to the future of human life as we know it. What is alarming is the seeming abandon with which these are being employed, the finite nature of rare earths and more alarming still, what is and isn’t being done about it. This article investigates why.
in Ukraine, and that the motivations from the Trump administration are more likely politically driven, a cynical face-saving exercise possibly and an attempt at dominating the region. “A business case means you’re going to make a profit. A return on your investment, in a reasonable time. A better return than making an investment on a secure asset like gold bullion. There’s no business case for Ukraine; I don’t even want to talk about it, it’s so ridiculous,” he told Investor Coffee in a recent webinar. Ukraine is eliminated then. There are mineral deposits scattered all over the planet. Most have been identified as either economically recoverable or not, and these can be due to the sheer difficulties presented by the physical landscape, climate and geopolitics again. China dominates the rare earths market, but only part of that is due to the fact most of the reserves are found and mined in China. China also dominates the processing, manufacture and distribution of the world’s electronics market, and this is no accident. “$3.5trn is the value of the global electronics market. All electronics have rare earths in them. Of that 3.5 trillion, the actual rare earth metals processed are only worth $15 billion. It isn’t worth that much. And that, by the way, is one of the major reasons we don’t do it. And why China does.”
[At this point a disclaimer: a quarterly publication such as Broadband Journal can’t possibly hope to compete with incredibly fast-moving world events and 24-hour rolling news; any political observations will be obsolete before we even go to print. This article seeks to understand the unavoidable geopolitics of this topic from a distance and trusts your own judgement to fill in the blanks - Ed.] Where is it most dominant? “If we stay on the road we’re on right now, in less than 10 years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it or not … They have come to dominate the critical-mineral industry supplies throughout the world.” Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, USA You could be forgiven for thinking rare earths are most present in Ukraine and Greenland if recent headlines are to be believed, but China absolutely dominates, followed by Vietnam, Brazil, Russia, India and Australia. Ukraine and Greenland don’t even feature in the top 20 of the World Population Review’s assessment of Rare Earth Reserves. Rare earths have played a significant part in the US peace/arms deal being inked currently with Ukraine as part of the ongoing peace process, though rare earth minerals expert Jack Lifton maintains there are none of any importance even
May 2025 Volume 47 No.2
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