The digest
Every Sunday: what actually changed in rare-earth magnets and the supply chains behind them, what only looked like it changed, and what nobody will put a number on.
I run a set of crawlers over company newsrooms, exchange filings, ministry documents and trade press in several languages, and read what they bring back. Most weeks most of it is noise. The part that is not goes here, with every source named and dated, in two layers: a short brief you can read standing up, and the full log underneath for anyone who wants to check my working.
Below you can see what is in each issue. Reading one takes an email address — that is the entire price, there is no payment step and no trial, and I would rather tell you that plainly here than spring it on you three paragraphs into an article. If enough people read it I may eventually charge for it, and if that happens you will hear it from me before it happens rather than after.
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Issues
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Issue 010 · 25 October 2026
Two thousand metric tons looking for a customer
General Motors, Reuters reports, has walked away from the Sumter magnet plant built around its order, and Phoenix Tailings has sited a separation plant whose oxide still needs a metal plant nobody has named.
- GM walked away from Sumter, and the paperwork says the capacity was going unused
- Rochester will separate the oxides; the metal is still somewhere else
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Issue 009 · 18 October 2026
After 1 January, a waiver comes with a plan
An executive order from July turns the January waiver into one contractor’s plan with a deadline attached, and the 48,000 metric tons traveling with it is the whole economy’s demand rather than the defense gap.
- After 1 January, a waiver comes with a plan and a deadline
- Thirteen machines in Pohang, and a starting point the annual report doesn’t carry
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Issue 008 · 12 October 2026
A$968 million, depending on which day you ask
Lynas agrees to buy Meteoric, and the price depends on the averaging window; a South African monazite plant opens with offtake in place and no tonnage; Greenland approves Tanbreez’s plans through 2050 while construction still waits; and Ucore’s 3,600 metric tons turns out to be two machines with different jobs.
- A$968 million, or A$876 million, depending on which day you ask
- A plant is open, offtake is in place, and nobody has said how much of anything
- Approved through 2050, and not yet allowed to start building
- Seven oxides and 3,600 metric tons, but not from the same equipment
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Issue 007 · 4 October 2026
What I learned in Toronto
Three days at the ex-China rare earth industry’s own summit, and the most useful document produced by it is the program: twenty upstream panel seats against the four on the magnet makers’ panel, no Japanese magnet maker at all, and one tier-one supplier standing in for the entire end-user tier. Then the rule that starts asking where the iron was mined.
- What I learned in Toronto
- What changes on 1 January 2027, and the clause that lets it not
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Issue 006 · 28 September 2026
The deal is a statement, not a document
Two presidents met about rare earths and published nothing; a Bloomberg comparison works only against magnet blanks; a Texas deposit is both worse and better than its critics say; and an Army award announced as a sole selection appears to be shared.
- The deal is a statement, not a document
- Japan has been building its way out of this since 2011, and the heavy half is eleven months old
- Rare earths are all over a chip fab. Dysprosium is in the cooling fans.
- About a third of what, exactly?
- and 5 more, plus the log — 4 companies and themes, one at a time
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Issue 005 · 21 September 2026
Japan has been buying magnet capacity in Southeast Asia
The first issue written in the week it covers, and it is mostly Japan — not because Japan had a busy week, but because a pass through the Japanese-language record turned up a funding program that English-language coverage has never once mentioned.
- Japan's magnet subsidies have been paying for Thai, Philippine and Vietnamese capacity
- METI has published what it considers a serious magnet plant, and it is smaller than you would guess
- METI puts Japan's heavy rare-earth import dependence on China at 100 percent
- Japanese trading houses are rationing rare earths, and the trade has named a month
- and 6 more, plus the log — 14 companies and themes, one at a time
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Issue 004 · 14 September 2026
Six thousand four hundred metric tons, not ten thousand
A US$1.2 billion magnet plant broke ground this week, and almost every account of it carries a capacity figure the company did not claim. The difference is one unbuilt expansion in another state — and with it, whether this is the biggest thing announced in America or the second biggest.
- USA Rare Earth breaks ground at Blacksburg — and the 10,000 figure is not this plant
- Solvay confirms the OneIM talks in three sentences and no numbers
- Cyclic opens America's first automated magnet recovery line, and 25,000 metric tons is the input
- BNDES money for Viridis, and it is not project finance for the mine
- and 4 more, plus the log — 5 companies and themes, one at a time
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Issue 003 · 7 September 2026
A magnet maker bought a mine, and nobody published the assay
USA Rare Earth closed on Serra Verde this week, which makes it the second American magnet company with a mine of its own — and the first whose mine is neither domestic nor bastnaesite. The completion release gives a tonnage for total rare earth oxide and no split at all, and the split is the entire question.
- USA Rare Earth completes the Serra Verde combination
- Chinese suppliers have started refusing US shipments, and no ministry has announced anything
- US$750 million of interest in a Louisiana plant of unstated size
- Meteoric's half-year, and a Caldeira number that is wrong by a factor of twenty-three
- and 4 more, plus the log — 3 companies and themes, one at a time
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Issue 002 · 31 August 2026
Lynas got ten years, and that is the number that matters
Everyone led with record revenue. The durable fact in Lynas's full year is a ten-year Malaysian operating license, and the most useful number is a 63 percent cost overrun on the one thing nobody else can build.
- The license is the news, not the tonnages
- Heavy separation costs 63 percent more than budgeted, because the equipment is only made in China
- Energy Fuels closes on 1,300 metric tons a year of alloy in Korea, going to 3,600
- Neo and Carester close a loop between Europe's only heavy separation plant and its only new magnet plant
- and 4 more, plus the log — 5 companies and themes, one at a time
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Issue 001 · 24 August 2026
Somebody finally put a floor under dysprosium
A US government vehicle closed this week carrying what the company says are the first price floors ever put under dysprosium and terbium — except that the floors themselves are not published. That shape, a real thing with the load-bearing number withheld, is most of this week.
- The first price floors on dysprosium and terbium, and nobody will say what they are
- Iluka's numbers are in the slide deck and not in the announcement
- Energy Fuels gets terbium through the gate that stops everyone
- Ucore runs the same columns on two completely different ores
- and 4 more, plus the log — 4 companies and themes, one at a time
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