Rare Earths and Other Critical Metals – Lara Smith

Mineweb reported an interview with Lara Smith of Core Consultants on the challenges in the rare earth and cobalt sectors.

The market news is quoted as saying:

Firstly the majority of the reserves are situated China so therefore the production was always in China.  Also rare earths is used in small quantities, but with the advent of mobile devices and now with impending advent of hybrid electric vehicles, we’re trying to use more and more and that is why they’ve suddenly come to the fore.  There will be in China for the next while and that is because we’ve now seen Mount Weld – they went into production in August.  Molycorp is at least another six months behind and it’s going to take a long time for those companies to ramp up production to full capacity.

To read the full market news, click here.