The price of rare earths has continued to rise in recent days, with the spot price of SMM praseodymium and neodymium oxide averaging 735000 yuan / ton on November 3, up 22.7% in the past month. At the 79th special auction of rare earths in the north of Baotou rare Earth Exchange, which ended yesterday, 20 tons of metal praseodymium and neodymium were all sold at an alarm price of 890000 yuan per ton, which shows the hot degree of the rare earth market.
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The price of rare earths has risen sharply in the past two weeks, especially for light rare earth products. Last Friday, the rare earth market actually appeared a high correction, judging from this, the current round of rare earth market may be more affected by market sentiment. " Yang Wenhua, a rare earth industry analyst at SMM, said, "fundamentally, market sentiment stems from the panic of power cuts, the holding end of locking goods and the continued tightening of the supply side."
Yang Wenhua said, "for some time, upstream companies have high expectations for the price of rare earths, resulting in people who are now in stock not shipping." Of course, due to the shortage of supply, the spot is also very scarce. " According to her, the current lock-up enterprises are mainly from Sichuan, Fujian, Jiangxi and Inner Mongolia.
In October, the northern rare earths held 16 special bids (a total of 64 bidders) and sold 250 tons of metal praseodymium and neodymium, with a total turnover of 194.817 million yuan. during this period, the starting bidding price rose all the way from 725800 yuan / ton to 854500 yuan / ton.
Rare earths are a group of typical metal elements, known as "industrial vitamins". Because of their unique electronic layer structure and heat resistance, rare earths have been widely used in petroleum, chemical industry, gold, textile, ceramics, glass, new permanent magnet materials and other fields. Among the global downstream applications of rare earths, magnetic materials account for up to 25%, followed by catalytic materials for traditional rare earth applications such as petroleum vulcanization and cracking, and metallurgical materials (including hydrogen storage alloys) and polishing materials account for 18% and 14%, respectively. Generally speaking, rare earths have become extremely important strategic resources, known as the "omnipotent land".
On the supply side, the tight supply situation is likely to continue with the orderly release of rare earth quotas, after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Natural Resources issued a notice saying that the total control targets for rare earth mining and smelting separation in 2021 were 168000 tons and 162000 tons, respectively. The above indicators all contain the first batch of targets issued. Zhongtai Securities pointed out that the total growth of indicators is in line with expectations, medium and heavy rare earths continue to be strictly controlled, light rare earths are liberalized in an orderly manner, and the structural index distribution is more inclined to the northern rare earths. It is expected that the index distribution of light rare earths will continue to tilt to the northern rare earths in the future.
In late September, Minmetals and rare earths also announced that the company had been informed by the actual controller, China Minmetals Group Co., Ltd., that Chinalco, China Minmetals Group Co., Ltd., and the people's Government of Ganzhou City were planning a strategic restructuring of relevant rare earth assets. The relevant plan has not yet been finalized and needs to be approved by the relevant competent authorities. Thus it can be seen that China continues to strengthen the management of rare earths and actively promote the development of rare earth industry. Galaxy Securities pointed out that under the new situation of tense global situation, upstream resource prices entering a rising cycle, and countries tightening control over scarce resources, rare earths, as rare resources that China rarely has dominance in the world, may become effective strategic weapons for external checks and balances, and long-term high prices of rare earths will be in the best interests of the country.
Cinda Securities pointed out that the peak consumer season brings, high-end NdFeB price transmission capacity is strong, the sensitivity to the cost side is also relatively low. The price of metal praseodymium and neodymium was at a high of 70-750000 / ton in August-September, restraining the consumption of some middle and low-end NdFeB, and its output declined compared with that of the previous month. However, among the high-end products, the penetration of new energy vehicles is accelerated, and industrial motors are rapidly transformed to NdFeB motors driven by power shortage and energy efficiency, although the overall output of low-and middle-end NdFeB has declined, but the proportion of high-end NdFeB promotes the growth of total demand for rare earths. On the other hand, the supply side of rare earths is moderately improved, and the environmental protection and import constraints that restrict production in the early stage have not been substantially eliminated, so both sides of supply and demand support the upward price of rare earths, and NdFeB follows the rise driven by cost and demand.
According to data from Huaan Securities, the dual-carbon economy promotes high-performance NdFeB to become the main product to open up market space in the future. The demand for new energy vehicles, wind power and variable frequency air conditioners accounts for 48.8% of the consumption of high-performance NdFeB. It is expected to reach 59.6% in 2025. With the superposition of positive factors such as market demand, raw material supply, policies and regulations, the market space of rare earth permanent magnets in China is expected to be fully opened.
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