The Update on The Magnet Industry 2024/06

Highlight of the Month   ◎ Jerry Yang, COO

In the previous month, the upward trend of rare earth mineral prices failed to continue, and the prices fell slightly but remained stable this month. This can be interpreted as a correction to the balance of supply and demand in the market. Demand has not grown explosively, and the supply side can only control the supply and passively maintain prices. However, this slight decline has still brought the demand side back to a more conservative wait-and-see attitude, observing whether there is a better time to place orders.

This month's news focuses on the topic of "materials", and I will continue to analyze it based on actor-network theory from last month. "Material" as an actor must have a fixed materiality, but this materiality must be connected to other actors in the network in order for the agency of the material to be represented. Specifically, in the permanent magnet industry, "materials" can be simply divided into "products" and "raw materials". The "product" is the permanent magnet itself, and the "raw material" contains a variety of elements, but the most critical element in high-performance magnets is the "rare earth element". As mentioned in the analysis of "technology" last month, the technology of extracting "raw materials" from "minerals" has a highly polluting nature, thus creating the green energy paradox.

The rarity of "rare earth" raw materials is not because of their extremely low overall reserves, but because their “mineral grade” in the earth's crust is extremely low. In other words, the content of ore (rare earth elements) in a unit of mineral is extremely low. However, this rarity becomes the agency of the "material" because it needs to be extracted to become the "raw material" that can be made into the "product". In simple words, rare earth ore is rare because it needs to be separated, not rare so it needs to be refined. It is also because it needs to be separated that makes its industry a highly polluting industry.

With such agency of rare earth ore as a raw material for permanent magnets, the United Nations' Global E-Waste Monitor and the joint research laboratory of the Korean auto industry and universities have focused on the recycling rate and technology of rare earth elements. By embedding this "raw material" in another network and establishing different network with it, it is hoped that the agency of this material can be transformed and the continuous occurrence of the green energy paradox can be prevented. Interestingly, the recycling technology of rare earth elements faces the same predicament as in nature, that is, the low "mineral grade" of this raw material in "urban mines", which are all kinds of electrical and electronic products. This hinders the development of rare earth recycling technology. The two paths from "mineral" to "ore" and from "product" to "raw material" actually establish the agency of rare earth elements – "rarity".

Whether in the application facet of technology or in the actor network, the high complexity of the “rarity” of "raw materials" exerts pressure and transformation power on the "product", which is generally considered as high-performance neodymium magnets. On the one hand, the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act intends to strengthen the autonomy and resilience of the supply chains of various raw materials related to green energy and digital transformation, which absolutely include rare earth elements.

The EU's series of actions, including accelerating the project of processing, recycling and mining of raw materials, can be seen as risk control for the “rarity” of raw materials. Here, “rarity” has more implications of international trade and politic. On the other hand, in the research and development of "products", MagNEO project in EU and Materials Nexus, the startup company in UK are using additive manufacturing technology and artificial intelligence to try to manufacture high-performance magnets without rare earth elements. Under the premise of maintaining the existing agency of the "product", that is, the characteristics of high remanence and high coercivity, they try to break free from the constraints of the “rarity”.

Discussing the agency of "materials" in actor-network theory may violate our experience of the material world and the objective reality. However, this perspective allows us to re-deconstruct the technologies we use daily and the industrial structures we are in. Actors can only exist as nodes of the network, and materials truly have materiality only under the manipulation of technology that is both concealed and revealed. In this way, the analysis of "rare earth elements" as actors gives us the agency to imagine innovation.

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