Rare earth metals ban by China could impact hard disk drive production

China has been the single largest supplier country for rare earth metals such as terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, lutetium, neodymium, europium, cerium and lanthanum.  China is contemplating a ban of some of these metals and restrictions on supply on many others.  Many vital technologies are dependent upon rare earth metals such as motors, hard disk drives, electronics and illumination.  There are deposits of rare earth ores in the North America, South Africa, and Australia but it may take years to bring these online.

In late August China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology indicated that is considering a total ban on exports of heavy rare earths:  terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium and lutetium. It is considering limiting export of light rare earths such as neodymium, europium, cerium and lanthanum. The ban of heavy or light rare earths could have a devastating impact of worldwide production of magnets, motors, hard disk drives, many electronic devices and illumination technologies. Currently China supplies over 95% of the worlds rare earth elements.

 

China is contemplating the ban and restrictions in order to maintain enough domestic supply of these elements to support internal manufacturing needs. In the early 1990’s China forced other producers of rare earths out of business with low prices.  This resulted in  mines closing in many countries including the US. There are closed mines and minable mineral deposits of rare earth ores in North America, South Africa and Australia but in many cases it could take years to bring these sources online.

 

If the supply of rare earths such as neodymium is restricted this could impact the supply of the magnets used in hard disk drive actuators. These magnets currently use iron-neodymium alloys with very high magnetic moments. At the very least these magnets might be available only to hard disk drives produced in China. This could force even more movement of hard disk drive production to China from other Asian countries. Presumably the ban will only be on raw materials and not finished good from China using rare earths.