Sojitz Starts Importing Medium-Heavy Rare Earth from Australia's Lynas

The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment in Vietnam has issued Consolidated Document No. 21/VBHN-BNNMT, detailing a number of provisions, including regulations on the management of rare earth elements. Specifically, in addition to complying with regulations on strategic and important minerals, the surveying, exploration, exploitation, processing, and use of rare earths must follow the national rare earth usage strategy. Activities related must ensure the principles of resource protection, environmental protection, and sustainable development; link extraction and processing with deep processing to increase added value and ensure technological self-reliance; not export rare earth minerals that have not met the required deep-processing standards; and only export deeply processed products.

[SMM Rare Earth Flash] Australian exploration and development company VHM announced on March 23 that it had approved the transition of its Goschen rare earth and mineral sands project in Victoria to full-scale development, abandoning its previous phased advancement strategy and directly launching large-scale operations with annual processing capacity of 5 million mt. The project was granted major project status by the Australian federal government in 2021 and had completed pre-feasibility and definitive feasibility studies, with development conditions fully in place. This move will accelerate the release of the project's resource potential and support the development of Australia's rare earth supply chain.

On the 25th, it was confirmed that the South Korean government will exempt tariffs of 3–8% on critical minerals such as lithium, graphite, and rare earth elements when domestically owned companies directly produce and import them from overseas. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy has pre-announced a new regulation outlining tariff exemptions for overseas resource development projects. Under the policy, a total of 14 critical minerals—including lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, manganese, copper, zinc, and rare earth elements such as lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, and scandium—will be eligible for duty exemption when brought into the country. The regulation is set to take effect on April 3.