UPDATE ON THE GLOBAL RARE EARTH INDUSTRY: Prospect for Magnetic Rare Earth Materials

摘要

AMR Technologies, with its subsidiary, Advanced Magnetic Materials (AMM), is a vertically integrated producer of rapidly solidified NdFeB powders. With two majority-owned joint venture plants in China producing value-added high purity rare earths and zirconium, a plant in Thailand producing NdFeB powders and a marketing organization covering all major geographic markets in the world, AMR is uniquely positioned in the global rare earth and magnetics industries. Since AMR's formation in the early 1990's, the rare earth industry has gone through a remarkable transformation. Rare earths used by the magnet industry, in particular, have gone through serious supply/demand imbalances reflected by wild price fluctuations. Since the beginning of 2001, the rare earth industry has been in an environment of continuous price declines as demand is only now recovering from the bubble days of Y2K, the dot com economy and the resulting overall economic slowdown. Some of the smaller and less viable separation plants have closed since 2001 and the rest of the industry has not operated at full capacity, while inventories have been worked down. The beginning of 2004, however, seems to be bringing a "perfect storm" in terms of supply/demand for the rare earths in growing demand by the display, magnetics and electronic industries. Prices for Pr, Nd, Tb and Dy have risen sharply as demand is currently outstripping supply. Shortages are likely to persist for a number of quarters as the rare earth industry is trying to catch up with demand and achieve balance.