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.
What is in this issue
9 items in the brief, 28 sources named and dated, 9 with a fact check against the supply chain atlas.
- Policy · TradeThe deal is a statement, not a document
- Policy · TradeJapan has been building its way out of this since 2011, and the heavy half is eleven months old
- Materials · Headline checkRare earths are all over a chip fab. Dysprosium is in the cooling fans.
- Company · CapacityAbout a third of what, exactly?
- Company · FinanceFive hundred parts per million, and a semiconductor statute
- Company · DefenseCompetitively selected, jointly
- Capacity · JapanSomebody finally published a number for Japanese magnet capacity
- Company · CapacityA capacity figure with a decimal point, and two years of tables that do not match
- Policy · RecyclingFifteen metric tons a year, and the number underneath it
- Plus the full log — 4 companies and themes gone through one at a time — and 6 leads checked and dismissed.
Read it
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Your address, the date and which page you came from. Nothing else, no tracking pixel in the email, one click cancels for good, and it is never sold, rented or shared. Mondays, when the mailing is switched on — I am not going to pretend it already is, and this line changes the day it does. Until then new issues appear here and in the feed. Prefer to give no address at all? The feed carries the same summary you are reading and tells me nothing.
New on the site
Four things went up on peculiarmaterials.com this week. The atlas took most of it.
- Where the material actually goes — a flow map of the magnet supply chain
Who supplies whom, drawn as a Sankey rather than a list. It is the first view on this site that shows the chain as connections instead of rows, which makes the chokepoints visible in a way a table never does.
- Seven more organizations on the supply chain atlas, including Malawi and Kazakhstan
Evolution Metals in Pohang, American Rare Earths at Halleck Creek, Solcoa, Gadolyn, Radify Metals, and Lindian at Kangankunde and Stepnogorsk — two countries the atlas had not reached before. Every organization now also carries a maturity stage, so an early-stage name is no longer drawn next to a running plant as though they were the same kind of thing.
- A correction on Phoenix Tailings, and what it used to say
This atlas had read a reported 200 kg a year as the company's total output. In the source it follows a passage about samarium and reads as samarium capacity. The changelog records what the page used to say, which is the point of having one.
- How I judge a magnet company, six checks at a time
The companion to the headline-check page: what to look at when a project has been making announcements for a few years and you want to know whether anything is actually moving.
Work with Peculiar Materials
I do technical and commercial diligence on magnets, magnet manufacturing and rare-earth supply chains — the same reading that produces this digest, pointed at one question you actually need answered. Get in touch, or start with the supply chain atlas this digest maintains.