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Beijing’s dominance of rare earths crucial to industries from automotive to electronics has sparked a rush among buyers to source the metals elsewhere, with more than 30 projects set for production this decade.

There are 33 “advanced” projects on track to start operating
in parts of the world including Europe, Africa and Australia within five years, according to Adamas Intelligence. The advisory firm, which tracks more than 300 rare earths projects globally, said there was a “large influx of public and private funding going into the rare earth space”.

China dominates the production of rare earths that go into the permanent magnets used in industries crucial to the energy transition, such as wind turbines and electric vehicles, putting the metals at the centre of trade tensions with the US. But building new mines is hugely expensive, risky and time consuming.

Adamas said it expected demand for neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets — the strongest type of permanent magnets that are used in cars and robotics — to rise fivefold in the US alone over the decade to 2035.

The race to secure supplies intensified last year after Beijing imposed restrictions on the exports of some rare earths, with the Trump administration in the US ratcheting up its own efforts, including by acquiring a stake in Nevada-based MP Materials. The US has also struck supply deals with other nations.

“This [2025] has been a massive year for rare earths,” said George Bennett, chief executive of London-listed miner Rainbow Rare Earths, which is developing a mine in South Africa and targeting its first production this decade.

“It took Trump and the trade wars to really focus the west’s attention on them [rare earths]” and to realise that “you can’t have one country dominating such a critical mineral”, he said.

Efforts to bring in new supplies will bear fruit, according to minerals consultancy Project Blue. It estimates that by 2030 Beijing’s share of rare earths refining will fall from almost 90 per cent to less than 80 per cent of global supply. The consultancy expects China’s control of global mined supply to decline from almost 70 per cent to about 60 per cent.

Shortages of the materials “have focused minds in the C-suite and government on the fragility of our manufacturing supply chains”, said Caroline Messecar, from price reporting agency Fastmarkets. “We have moved from a world where you might have to pay a bit more, to one where you might not be able to get material at any price,” she added.

Northern Minerals and Arafura Rare Earths in Australia are among the companies hoping to bring rare earths projects online in the next few years. In November, Rainbow said the mine it is developing in South Africa would be able to produce yttrium — a heavy rare earth element that has been subject to China’s export controls.

“Within a week, I got a phone call from one of the biggest aerospace manufacturers in the world”, which wanted to discuss a potential sale and “price floor”, or a guaranteed minimum price, said Bennett.