RE: Article in telegraph (part 1)2 May 2021 12:30
The pandemic has focused Government minds on the dangers of just-in-time supply chains in recent months, industry insiders say.
A roundtable earlier this year organised by Mr Stafford included representatives from the Foreign Office, Department for International Trade, Defence and Defra.
“The penny has started to drop,” said Simon Moores, the managing director of analysts Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “There’s understanding certainly within the EU, China and the US, that this is a fight for the future of the automotive industry, and the energy industry.”
He said “the next three months will decide” whether the UK Government has a coherent strategy ahead of the G7.
“The UK is taking its place in the queue,” said Ian Higgins, the managing director of Less Common Metals, the only rare earth magnet alloy producer outside China and Japan.
The company is being funded by the Government to investigate the potential for a UK supply chain. “The challenge we have is that the most attractive option for these people is simply to sell to China.”
The Government is reaching out to countries with which it has particularly good relations, including Australia, which has the only rare earths facility outside of China, as well as deposits as a byproduct of other mining industries.
The Government is also reaching out to several African countries in the Commonwealth, and has deployed its embassy in Malawi, where London-listed Mkango is developing a rare earths mine.
The company is considering the UK as the site for its processing facility, seen as crucial to keeping critical materials within the domestic supply chain.
The UK is also understood to be looking to Tanzania, which is in the process of approving its first rare earths mine. Its new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, has a good relationship with the UK, having studied at Manchester University in the 1990s.
Outside the Commonwealth, mining company Pensana is planning to open a rare earths processing plant in Hull, though there are concerns over Chinese control of its mine in Angola.
Andrew Bloodworth, the policy director of the British Geological Society, said the Government could use its expertise in mining and finance to provide support for countries looking to counter China’s grip on the supply chain.
“It's not just about the materials, it's about all the goods and services you can sell around those materials,” he said. “We're really good at that stuff.”
The topic could become a source of tension with the EU, which has very few of its own potential resources for rare earths.
But Mr Higgins cautioned: “At the moment the threat is not Europe to the UK, or UK to Europe, the threat is China to all of us.”
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