Rare earth oxides: Pr-Nd oxide FOB was quoted at $115-127/kg, Pr-Nd oxide CIF Rotterdam was quoted at $108-122/kg, cerium oxide FOB was quoted at $2,005-2,007/mt, cerium oxide CIF Rotterdam was quoted at $2,722-2,792/mt, holding steady for now, praseodymium oxide FOB was quoted at $126-130/kg, holding steady for now, neodymium oxide FOB was quoted at $141-143/kg, terbium oxide FOB was quoted at $1,194-1,282/kg, down $12/kg
Rare earth metals: Pr-Nd alloy FOB was quoted at $136-142/kg, Pr-Nd alloy CIF Rotterdam was quoted at $140-144/kg, lanthanum metal FOB was quoted at $3/kg, praseodymium metal FOB was quoted at $158-166/kg, neodymium metal FOB was quoted at $148-160/kg, holding steady for now, terbium metal FOB was quoted at $1,496-1,580/kg, down $12/kg.
Trading: Prices outside China held steady this week, as domestic prices remained stable and international demand was limited by licensing, with growth constrained and no significant price fluctuations.
Weekly review of overseas news
Legislation and resource-country positioning: This week, the Mining Committee of Argentina's Chamber of Deputies agreed to advance a bill that would add rare earths to Article 3 of the Mining Code and designate them as national strategic assets, covering key elements such as terbium, dysprosium, scandium, and yttrium used in permanent magnets, EVs, defense, and communications. All three proposals address legal status, but there is still disagreement over whether to include them in the RIGI large-investment incentive framework. The core tension is the balance between using tax and permitting incentives to attract exploration and smelting capital versus strengthening control over national strategic assets. While this is not yet final legislation in the short term, it has sent a clear policy signal for foreign investment in Argentina's rare earth exploration and refining. Brazil simultaneously advanced critical minerals legislation, with a congressional bill granting the government greater review authority over mining transactions, ownership changes, and export value-added commitments. This aligns with Lula's approach of not only exporting raw ore but also carrying out domestic separation and processing, meaning that future offtake, equity, and export pathways for producing assets such as Serra Verde and ionic clay projects such as Viridis will be subject to a national sovereignty review framework. For overseas buyers, South American supply is no longer simply a matter of having a mine; it must now be repriced amid government scrutiny, local processing obligations, and long-term offtake arrangements.
European magnet commercialization: Neo Performance Materials has entered the first commercial shipment phase for sintered magnets at its permanent magnet plant in Estonia. Its initial clients are in the EV traction motor sector, and it has secured multiple project nominations from three Tier 1 automakers. Phase 1A capacity is 2,000 mt/year, with Phase 1B designed to expand to approximately 5,000 mt/year, and its long-term global magnet roadmap points to 20,000 mt/year, corresponding to about 10%-15% of the market outside China. The plant's significance is not just capacity release; it marks the first time Europe has moved automotive-grade sintered NdFeB from qualification samples to volume delivery. Traction motor magnets carry the highest technical barriers, and if two to three projects are commercialized in parallel before year-end, it will ease the EU's heavy reliance on Chinese imports for EV magnet segments. However, raw materials still depend on external rare earth oxide and metal supply, and real cost reduction will depend on its global raw material mix and progress in non-Chinese separation. Against the backdrop of Europe's still-low overall magnet self-sufficiency, Neo's ramp-up pace will affect market pricing expectations more than its nominal capacity.
Middle East and South American resource development: Saudi Arabia's energy minister confirmed that the Jabal Sayid project in the Medina region has identified approximately 114 million mt of rare earth-uranium ore, with pilot work underway with Orano. Combined with Maaden's rare earth separation and processing cooperation with MP Materials, Tariq Al-Qahtani's $1.5 billion rare earth processing facility intention, and the July US-Saudi civil nuclear and uranium enrichment framework, Saudi Arabia is tying rare earths to uranium, nuclear power, and non-oil GDP targets, planning to raise mining's contribution to GDP from $17 billion to $75 billion by 2030. Its resource base supports integrated development of heavy rare earths, uranium by-products, and energy metals, but separation routes, environmental permits, and domestic magnet demand cultivation will still require several years. In South America, Viridis obtained a loan of approximately $15.2 million (77.5 million reais) from Brazil's development bank BNDES to build a research center and pilot plant in Minas Gerais, serving the Poços de Caldas ionic clay and Colossus projects. The pilot will produce mixed rare earth carbonates, targeting industrial construction in 2027 and operations in 2028. Combined with the earlier $120 million equity financing, this shows Brazil's ionic adsorption clay sector moving from resource announcements to process scale-up. However, under Brazil's new critical minerals law, whether future pilot products are exported as carbonates or undergo oxide separation domestically will be directly affected by government value-added obligations.
Defense separation and addressing medium-heavy rare earth shortfalls: Ucore received an additional $4.6 million from the US Department of Defense this week, raising Phase 2 funding for RapidSX samarium and gadolinium separation from $18.4 million to $23 million, with a total of $27 million including Phase 1. The funds will support the Kingston, Ontario demonstration facility and the first enhanced RapidSX unit at the Alexandria, Louisiana strategic metals facility. Samarium-cobalt magnets' high-temperature performance and gadolinium's neutron absorption correspond to defense aerospace and nuclear-related demand, respectively. Starting in 2027, US defense procurement will impose stricter non-Chinese mining, refining, and separation requirements for samarium-cobalt and NdFeB, giving domestic separators such as Ucore a clear substitution opportunity. On the offtake side, it has already connected with eVAC's South Carolina magnet plant and Sumitomo Americas for distribution in Japan, forming a small closed loop of oxide-alloy-magnet-defense and allied clients. Overall, this week's overseas theme is the shift from resource discovery to legislative rights confirmation, separation scale-up, and magnet delivery: Argentina, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia are addressing resource and policy attributes, Neo is addressing European automotive magnet shipments, Ucore is addressing military medium-heavy and specialty rare earth separation, and Viridis is addressing South American ionic clay piloting. In the short term, price elasticity remains driven by the availability of dysprosium oxide, terbium oxide, and samarium-cobalt raw materials. In the medium term, whether non-Chinese supply chains can reduce costs will depend on separation plant ramp-up rates rather than the number of mine announcements.
![Rare earth market prices continue to run in the doldrums, with limited actual transaction volume expansion [SMM Rare Earth Daily Review]](https://imgqn.smm.cn/usercenter/fpsaU20251217171745.jpeg)
![[SMM Rare Earth Morning Meeting Summary] Pr-Nd and terbium both stop falling and stabilize, dysprosium series remains stable, magnetic material scrap continues to wait and see](https://imgqn.smm.cn/usercenter/aKNUH20251217171744.jpg)
