China's Inner Mongolia Increases Production of Rare Earth Magnets

The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in northern China is expected to increase its production capacity of rare earth magnetic materials in the next five years.The company plans to increase the production capacity of rare earth magnetic materials from the current 45,000 tons/year to 100,000 tons/year by 2025. This move is part of the region's long-term goal of building a "magnet capital" in China.

The downstream new energy vehicle (NEV), electric bicycle and wind turbine industries' demand for rare earth permanent magnets is expected to grow in the next few years.
According to estimates by market participants, China’s production of rare earth permanent magnets in 2020 will increase by more than 5% over last year, reaching 190,000 tons, and is expected to increase by 3-5% in 2021. Inner Mongolia is China's largest light rare earth production center on Earth, including praseodymium, neodymium, lanthanum and cerium. The region has been trying to expand its rare earth industry chain to higher value-added products, including rare earth permanent magnets.

Inner Mongolia also plans to accelerate the development of high-end rare earth functional materials, high-purity rare earth alloy materials and rare earth magnetic materials for high-end computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools during the period 2021-25. The Fourteenth Five-Year Economic Plan. The regional government will encourage technological innovation to increase the use of rare earth catalysts in the steel, cement, glass manufacturing, automobile, thermal power and petrochemical industries.

Inner Mongolia also plans to upgrade the Baotou Rare Earth Products Exchange to a national-level exchange to increase the region's influence in the global rare earth market. In 2019, exchange trading volume increased to 3,387 tons of rare earth products, including rare earth oxides, metals and alloys, an increase of 405% from approximately 670 tons a year ago. Participants in the Chinese rare earth industry have been trying to introduce financial instruments to cope with challenging market conditions and strengthen China's position in the global market. China accounts for nearly 90% of global rare earth production.