The digest
Every Monday: 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 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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