Iniciado por nosoupforyou

¿Y es una exclusividad geográfica, o es que son los únicos que se han puesto a ello?
¿Hay países que están sentados sobre yacimientos sin explotar (estilo EEUU y el petróleo)?

Iniciado por Abraham

Pueden, pero existe el problema de que su demanda interna está a bastante (tengo entendido) de absorber todo lo que pretende producir.

Si provocan un technological crunch de esas características, no faltará quien empiece a poner trabas arancelarias o de otro tipo a las exportaciones de manufacturas chinas.

China fabrica la mierda del mundo. A lo mejor es un intento de que los fabricantes vayan a instalarse a China, y que sea la única opción para las fábricas de tecnología.

Quiero decir, si tú vives de fabricar ordenadores y fuera de China no hay neodimio, pues instalas la fábrica en China o dejas el negocio, ¿no?

Iniciado por andIfeelfine

Parece que las cosas se van a complicar en el futuro. No creo que occidente se quede cruzado de brazos ante algo así. Son dos formas muy distintas de entender el mundo y el futuro del planeta que al final chocarán.

China es muy grande y además está gobernada por una sola mano, a diferencia de Europa o USA. Todo hace pensar que tienen un plan a largo plazo para la dominación mundial, y es bastante probable que lo consigan.

Iniciado por P$0€

El problema es que le pueden pagar con la misma moneda. Por ejemplo, limitandole las ventas de crudo. Ademas, China no es el unico productor de neodimio.

Neodymium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Iniciado por Abraham

Pueden, pero existe el problema de que su demanda interna está a bastante (tengo entendido) de absorber todo lo que pretende producir.

Si provocan un technological crunch de esas características, no faltará quien empiece a poner trabas arancelarias o de otro tipo a las exportaciones de manufacturas chinas.

China fabrica la mierda del mundo. A lo mejor es un intento de que los fabricantes vayan a instalarse a China, y que sea la única opción para las fábricas de tecnología.

Quiero decir, si tú vives de fabricar ordenadores y fuera de China no hay neodimio, pues instalas la fábrica en China o dejas el negocio, ¿no?

China Tightens Grip on Rare Minerals

By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: August 31, 2009


HONG KONG — China is set to tighten its hammerlock on the market for some of the world’s most obscure but valuable minerals.

China currently accounts for 93 percent of production of so-called rare earth elements — and more than 99 percent of the output for two of these elements, dysprosium and terbium, vital for a wide range of green energy technologies and military applications like missiles.

Deng Xiaoping once observed that the Mideast had oil, but China had rare earth elements. As the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has done with oil, China is now starting to flex its muscle.

Even tighter limits on production and exports, part of a plan from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, would ensure China has the supply for its own technological and economic needs, and force more manufacturers to make their wares here in order to have access to the minerals.

In each of the last three years, China has reduced the amount of rare earths that can be exported. This year’s export quotas are on track to be the smallest yet. But what is really starting to alarm Western governments and multinationals alike is the possibility that exports will be further restricted.

Toyota’s Prius hybrids use several pounds of neodymium, a rare earth, in their electric motor

Chinese officials will almost certainly be pressed to address the issue at a conference Thursday in Beijing. What they say could influence whether Australian regulators next week approve a deal by a Chinese company to acquire a majority stake in Australia’s main rare-earth mine.

The detention of executives from the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto has already increased tensions.

They sell for up to $300 a kilogram, or up to about $150 a pound for material like terbium, which is in particularly short supply. Dysprosium is $110 a kilo, or about $50 a pound. Less scare rare earth like neodymium sells for only a fraction of that.

(They are considerably less expensive than precious metals because despite the names, they are found in much higher quantities and much greater concentrations than precious metal.)

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has drafted a six-year plan for rare earth production and submitted it to the State Council, the equivalent of the cabinet, according to four mining industry officials who have discussed the plan with Chinese officials. A few, often contradictory, details of the plan have leaked out, but it appears to suggest tighter restrictions on exports, and strict curbs on environmentally damaging mines.

Beijing officials are forcing global manufacturers to move factories to China by limiting the availability of rare earths outside China. “Rare earth usage in China will be increasingly greater than exports,” said Zhang Peichen, the deputy director of the government-linked Baotou Rare Earth Research Institute.

Some of the minerals crucial to green technologies are extracted in China using methods that inflict serious damage on the local environment. China dominates global rare earth production partly because of its willingness until now to tolerate highly polluting, low-cost mining.

The ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment in the last eight days. Jia Yinsong, a director general at the ministry, is to speak about China’s intentions Thursday at the Minor Metals and Rare Earths 2009 conference in Beijing.

Until spring, it seemed that China’s stranglehold on production of rare earths might weaken in the next three years — two Australian mines are opening with combined production equal to a quarter of global output.

But both companies developing mines — Lynas Corporation and smaller rival, Arafura Resources — lost their financing last winter because of the global financial crisis. Buyers deserted Lynas’s planned bond issue and Arafura’s initial public offering.

Mining companies wholly owned by the Chinese government swooped in last spring with the cash needed to finish the construction of both companies’ mines and ore processing factories. The Chinese companies reached agreements to buy 51.7 percent of Lynas and 25 percent of Arafura.

The Arafura deal has already been approved by Australian regulators and is subject to final approval by shareholders on Sept. 17. The regulators have postponed twice a decision on Lynas, and now face a deadline of next Monday to act.

Matthew James, an executive vice president of Lynas, said that the company’s would-be acquirer had agreed not to direct the day-to-day operations of the company, but would have four seats on an eight-member board.

Expectations of tightening Chinese restrictions have produced a surge in the last two weeks in the share prices of the few non-Chinese producers that are publicly traded. In addition to the two Australian mines, Avalon Rare Metals of Toronto is trying to open a mine in northwest Canada, and Molycorp Minerals is trying to reopen a mine in Mountain Pass, Calif.

Unocal used to own the Mountain Pass mine, which suspended mining in 2002 because of weak demand and a delay in an environmental review. State-owned Cnooc of China almost acquired the mine in 2005 with its unsuccessful bid for Unocal, which was bought instead by Chevron; Chinese buyers tried to persuade Chevron to sell the mine to them in 2007, but Chevron sold it to Molycorp Minerals, a private American group.

A single mine in Baotou, in China’s Inner Mongolia, produces half of the world’s rare earths. Much of the rest — particularly some of the rarest elements most needed for products from wind turbines to Prius cars — comes from small, often unlicensed mines in southern China.

China produces over 99 percent of dysprosium and terbium and 95 percent of neodymium. These are vital to many green energy technologies, including high-strength, lightweight magnets used in wind turbines, as well as military applications.

To get at the materials, powerful acid is pumped down bore holes. There it dissolves some of the rare earths, and the slurry is then pumped into leaky artificial ponds with earthen dams, according to mining specialists.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has cut the country’s target output from rare earth mines by 8.1 percent this year and is forcing mergers of mining companies in a bid to improve technical standards, according to the government-controlled China Mining Association, a government-led trade group.

General Motors and the United States Air Force played leading roles in the development of rare-earth magnets. The magnets are still used in the electric motors that control the guidance vanes on the sides of missiles, said Jack Lifton, a chemist who helped develop some of the early magnets.

But demand is surging now because of wind turbines and hybrid vehicles.

The electric motor in a Prius requires 2 to 4 pounds of neodymium, said Dudley Kingsnorth, a consultant in Perth, Australia, whose compilations of rare earth mining and trade are the industry’s benchmark.

Mr. Lifton said that Toyota officials had expressed strong worry to him on Sunday about the availability of rare earths.

Toyota and General Motors, which plans to introduce the Chevrolet Volt next year with an electric motor that uses rare earths, both declined on Monday to comment.

Rick A. Lowden, a senior materials analyst at the Defense Department, told a Congressional subcommittee in July that his office was reviewing a growing number of questions about the availability of rare earths.

China is increasingly manufacturing high-performance electric motors, not just the magnets.

“The people who are making these products outside China are at a huge disadvantage, and that is why more and more of that manufacturing is moving to China," Mr. Kingsnorth said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 4, 2009
An article on Tuesday about China’s tightening control over the production of rare earth minerals misidentified the country in which Avalon Rare Metals, a non-Chinese producer, was trying to open a new mine. It is Canada, in the northwest area, not Australia.

Iniciado por F.Alonso21

Su gobierno esta dando muy buenos pasos para que suban de ranking mundial, entre la restriccion a la natalidad y fomentar nuevas tecnologias y cada vez instalar mas y mas empresas.

China es, desde 1996, el primer productor mundial de acero y el principal consumidor del planeta

Iniciado por andIfeelfine

También puede ser un bulo para subir los metales, pero no creo, son prácticamente los únicos productores de esos metales y pueden poner el precio que les salga. Veo plausible que de verdad vayan a restringir exportaciones.

ROCAS ORNAMENTALES

España, con más de 5 millones de toneladas de producción, es el tercer productor mundial, tras China e Italia. La producción nacional de Piedra Natural en 1999 fue de 5,5 Mt, de los cuales casi un 32% correspondió a granito, un 52% al mármol, más del 8,4% a la pizarra y el resto a otras rocas ornamentales. El valor de la producción a pie de cantera fue de unos 140 250 millones de pesetas, de los que el 30% correspondió al granito, un 39% a las rocas marmóreas, el 27% a la pizarra y el 3,2% restante a piedra de cantería, tal y como refleja la tabla incluida a continuación.