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What are the best plan B sources for these materials?
Australia and the U.S. are the only near-term viable alternatives, with Lynas and MP Materials as the two operational anchors — but China still refines 85–92% of global supply, so every alternative involves years of lead time and higher cost.
Why it matters: The Busan truce bought one year; when it expires, the same chokepoint returns unless non-Chinese processing capacity is actually online.
- Lynas (Australia): Mt Weld mine feeds a Malaysia processing plant that became the only commercial producer of separated heavy rare earth oxides outside China as of May 2025; a new expansion targets 5,000 tpa feedstock with samarium output from April 2026.
- MP Materials (U.S.): Mountain Pass, California is the only integrated mine-to-separation facility in the Western Hemisphere; the Pentagon bought a 15% stake for $400M in June 2025 to lock in supply.
- Iluka Resources (Australia): Eneabba Rare Earths Refinery in Western Australia, backed by a A$1.25B government loan, is targeting 2026 commissioning and will produce separated neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium.
- Brazil: Serra Verde's Pela Ema ionic clay deposit began Phase 1 production in 2024 and targets 5,000 MT of rare earth oxide annually by 2026 — covering all four critical magnet elements.
- Canada and Greenland are longer bets: Canada has secured C$18B in mining investment deals with 12 countries; Greenland's Tanbreez deposit (one of the world's largest) just transferred to a U.S.-based firm, but production is years away.
- For heavy rare earths specifically (dysprosium, terbium), China controls 98–99% of refined supply — the alternatives above barely dent that share yet.
Room for disagreement
- Optimists (Lynas, MP Materials, DoD) argue processing capacity outside China is reaching commercial scale fast enough to matter within 2–3 years; skeptics, including many CSIS analysts, counter that heavy rare earth refining — the militarily critical category — remains a near-total Chinese monopoly that no allied project addresses at scale before the next leverage crisis.
AI-generated with web search — may be wrong. Check the linked sources.