The Ministry of Economic Affairs aims to be self-sufficient in half of domestic rare earth demand by 2030. An inspection team went to the United States to strengthen the non-red supply chain.

Xu Minghong, director of the Geology and Minerals Center. (Photo by reporter Lin Jinghua)

[Reporter Lin Jinghua/Taipei Report] In order to strengthen the "non-red supply chain", the Ministry of Economic Affairs has set a goal of achieving self-sufficiency and localization of half of domestic rare earth demand by 2030. The rare earth inspection team of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Center for Geology and Mineral Resources visited Australia in May this year and will go to Colorado and Washington in the United States at the end of October. The next stage will focus on Canada, focusing on domestic demand for heavy rare earths.

The Center of Geology and Mineral Resources held a press conference in the morning on "Central and local governments work together to conduct soil liquefaction observations and potential map updates to jointly promote homeland security utilization." After the conference, concerns were raised about the progress of the rare earth inspection team.

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Xu Minghong, director of the Center of Geology and Mineral Resources, said that the location of the inspection trip to the United States has been changed. The original plan was to go to Texas, Wyoming and California to assess whether the local mining conditions, vein distribution and grade meet the needs of the domestic industry. However, considering that the itinerary was only eight days and the time was tight, Colorado and Washington were changed to focus.

Xu Minghong explained that miners are concentrated in Colorado, and many rare earth developers are headquartered in Denver. They are scheduled to visit four miners. As for Washington, because it is the seat of the federal government, they will learn more about regulations, production processes, etc., and hope to communicate with federal government units. The inspection team will initially collect information, including the production volume of miners, etc. In the future, they may go to the mines to take samples, and collect the information and provide it to relevant domestic agencies for reference.

Xu Minghong explained that rare earths can be divided into light rare earths and heavy rare earths. The United States belongs to the former, while Taiwan needs heavy rare earths for high-tech fields, and Australia and Canada mostly produce the latter.

He also added that in May this year, the Geological and Mineral Center went to Perth, Australia to visit three miners to learn about Australia's capacity. However, Australia has also signed contracts with many countries, and the next phase of the inspection team will also focus on Canada.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs has announced that it hopes to achieve the target of 50% local independent supply and processing capacity of rare earths by 2030. It plans to build a trial mass production line by the Industrial Research Institute within three years to reduce its high dependence on China's rare earth raw materials.

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