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Price Briefing August 2010

July 27, 2010 - 00:00 GMT

KEYWORDS: China , rare earths , fluorspar , barytes

Future clouded by Chinese restrictions

This is a reaction to the announcement by the Chinese authorities on quotas will consolidate these gains and prices look set to rise further in the second half of the year, the big question is by how much.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce is cutting the export quota for rare earths by 72% in the second half of 2010, compared with the same period in 2009. It brings the total rare earths available for export in 2010 down to 30,529 tonnes which represents a 40% drop over the 2009 total of 50,145 tonnes (IM 09 July 2010 China slashes rare earth exports).

This tightening of supply from China will come as no surprise, although the severity of the cut in quotas is more than expected, and will spur the development of rare earth projects outside China.

Fifteen years ago, China supplied 35% of global demand, now this figure...

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