Rare earths praseodymium and neodymium are back as call for e-cars increases
London — All commodity markets are prone to boom and bust cycles, but few have been as spectacular as that experienced by rare earths at the turn of the decade. Prices of such exotic components of the periodic table as dysprosium and terbium increased by multiples over 2010-11, before collapsing just as quickly. Five subsequent years of low-scale range-trading have seen rare earths slip off the collective investment radar, their place taken by new "hot" metals such as lithium and cobalt. But now they’re back. Or at least a couple of them are. The prices of neodymium and praseodymium oxide are going stratospheric again, up more than 80% since the start of 2017. As ever with rare earths, this is all about what is happening in China, the world’s dominant producer of these critical materials. It is also, though, a story of a specific supply chain adapting to a fast-changing demand picture — because these two particular rare earths are part of the same green technology revolution that is...
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