Frequent Asked Questions

Despite their name, rare earths are not actually rare. Despite their importance for many modern technologies, the value of rare earths is much lower than that of gold. As of August 2026, magnetic rare earths trade at $120 (Nd) to $1,000 (Tb) per kilo, whereas gold trades at over $130,000 per kilo. At the same time, extracting rare earths is much more complex and costly than extracting gold.

Strategic or critical minerals are minerals that a country considers essential to its economy, technology, or national security. Each country has its own list of strategic minerals, and its own classification criteria. The fact that a mineral is considered strategic by one or several countries doesn’t mean that this mineral is more valuable or more economically viable than others. On the contrary, strategic minerals used for new technologies, such as cobalt, rare earths, graphite or lithium often have unpredictable markets making economic viability more challenging.

The possibility of doing value addition in the country a mineral is mined depends on numerous parameters. First, advanced steps of value addition must be done close to the end-user market, due to logistics reasons, and this end-user market does not necessarily exist in the country a mineral is mined. Second, other parameters must be taken into consideration such as logistics infrastructure, access to water and energy, and access to other raw materials and reagents necessary for transformation. In short, the amount of value addition which can be done in a mineral producing country must be carefully studied and assessed to ensure its viability.