HONG KONG - One of the world's last processors of rare earth metals outside China is buying mining rights in Greenland to reduce dependence on Russian ore and stabilise prices, in the latest move by Western companies to diversify supply chains afterRare earth metals are essential for the manufacture of a broad range of modern products, including electric car motors, offshore wind turbines and smart bombs. Demand has soared as carmakers switch more of their production to electric vehicles.
Neo said on Monday that it was acquiring rare earth mining rights in Greenland from Hudson Resources, a tiny mining company based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The acquisition is the first move into rare earth mining by Neo, whose Magnequench division is the corporate descendant of a former General Motors subsidiary that pioneered many modern magnetic applications of rare earth metals in the 1980s.
Neo is also preparing to start building this winter a factory in Estonia that will turn processed rare earths into magnets for electric car motors. Mr Don Hains, a Canadian geologist who has advised Hudson Resources in Greenland and will now become a consultant to Neo, said the deposit in Sarfartoq being acquired by Neo had 97 per cent less radioactive material per tonne than the deposit at the southern tip of Greenland.