The current global furor over rare earth supply chains wasn’t a surprise for Amanda Lacaze. In fact, the CEO of Australian mining company Lynas Rare Earths had long bet on it.
Although rare earths are essential for myriad industries, from EVs to washing machines and fighter jets, China’s longstanding stranglehold over 90% of the supply chain has deliberately kept prices low to stave off competition. It meant that when Lacaze green-lighted her “Lynas 2025” expansion project in 2019, prices of the benchmark light rare earth alloy Neodymium-Praseodymium (NdPr) were just $35/kg, leading many naysayers to scoff the $1.5 billion investment would pay off.
But fast forward seven years and recent politically motivated export controls on rare earths by Beijing have spurred a flurry of state investment into the industry by Washington and many other governments. Lynas recently agreed a $110/kg price floor for its four-year offtake agreement for NdPr with the Department of War, which had also agreed to provide $258 million for a Lynas heavy rare earth refinement facility in Seadrift, Tx. (The Pentagon has also agreed price floors with Las Vegas-based rare earth firm MP Materials.)
In recent months, Lynas has also inked a 10-year price floor of $110/kg of NdPr with Japan and partnered with two South Korean companies to build rare earth alloy and magnet plants in Vietnam and Malaysia respectively. It’s a flurry of activity that has propelled the Perth-based company’s value to soar 30 times over the past decade to $15 billion today.
“We are evidence that with the right assets and the right level of determination, you can actually be successful in this market,” says Lacaze, who steps down after 12 years as CEO at the end of June.
TIME sat down with Lacaze at Lynas’s rare earth processing plant in Kuantan, Malaysia, to discuss the current state of the rare earths industry.
(This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)
The Trump Administration has introduced initiatives like FORGE and Project Vault to try to diversify the global supply chain. How important is the new emphasis the U.S. government is putting on this issue?
Well, bear in mind we’ve actually been producing and selling separated rare earths now for 12 years. We broke the Chinese monopoly on separated light rare earths in 2013 and heavy rare earths in 2025. So, yes, very recently we’ve had Project Vault and FORGE and a few other things. But we’ve actually been forged in fire over the past decade, as we have actually not just constructed but commissioned and ramped up our assets and competed successfully in the market.
Additional government policy support is a really good idea. There does seem to be a bit of a fashion at present to hope that if you throw enough money around that something will stick and come out of that. We typically advocate to governments that we would prefer policies that foster a successful industry, rather than trying to pick winners. And so, we do want there to be a larger, more robust outside-China industry, but we think that that must be as a result of government setting policies that allow companies to be successful, rather than trying to underwrite companies to be successful.
What do I mean by that? I mean not just supply-side policies, but demand-side policies. We see real change in the market where governments put into effect policies that change demand behavior—so customers’ purchasing behavior, whether it’s direct or indirect. We see this particularly somewhere like Japan, [which] out of anywhere in the world can weather Chinese strategies quite well.
Regarding picking winners, some would argue that the recent price floor awarded to Lynas and MP Materials is exactly that. What do you say to critics who worry that this jeopardizes the diversification of a broader industry by giving a preferential treatment to two companies?
I might say that you cannot provide price support to people who don’t produce. There are only two companies that produce NdPr outside of China: Lynas and MP [Materials]. Ultimately, the aim is that the whole market moves to what is a sustainable price level, whereas when it’s sitting at $50 a kilo, this is not a sustainable price level for any but the most efficient operators like Lynas. So by putting it at a sustainable price level, it means other economic projects can come to market. And indeed, that has been really the tactic of the Chinese for many years: keep the price low enough that there’s no incentive for development outside China
Is the current rare earths crunch something that you foresaw many years ago and planning to eventually exploit?
If you operate in the market with price cycles, every day when the price wasn’t going up felt like a day of torture; another fingernail was pulled out when the prices were very, very low. But prices do change over time, and our philosophy has always been that we should be ready when the price goes up, because it’s no use to then say, ‘Oops, we better make an investment now.’ It’s a risk-based decision to make an investment when the price is low. When you look at a lot of companies, particularly in mining, they tend to get fat when the price is high, and then they have to go on a diet—and that hurts, whereas we aim to hold our competitiveness right through the cycle.
The Trump Administration has been trying to build a coalition of partners to diversify the rare earths supply chain. But at the same time, there’s been a lot of aggressive rhetoric from President Trump, recently telling allies worried about energy disruption from the Iran war to ‘go get your own oil!’ Are you confident that partnering with the U.S. government is reliable?
We are a publicly listed company. We operate our own business. We have an off-take agreement [with the U.S. government] over a four-year period. The U.S. off-take agreement is important, but it doesn’t rise to even one of our top five contracts. We don’t ‘partner’ with the U.S. government; the U.S. government policy is a customer, essentially.
China has restricted the export of rare earths but also the technology and talent for this industry. How challenging has that been to deal with?
China has invested heavily in rare earths over decades. For a long time, they had a monopoly and they weren’t going to be the first monopolist in history to happily give it up. I remember being at a conference where there was a Chinese CEO of a magnet factory and he said, ‘So you guys think we’re just going to let you come and take our business? You’re crazy.’ In the last year, the Chinese have shown their hand very much. For a long time, price has been the lever that they’ve used to control the market, but they demonstrated last year that they were prepared to withhold supply, particularly for [heavy rare earths]. Chinese engineers and chemists who’ve been working outside China are no longer working outside. When we built Kalgoorlie [processing plant in Western Australia], we made a deliberate decision not to source any equipment from China.
This Kuantan plant has expanded by 50% in recent years, I understand. What is your goal and time frame for expansion going forward?
We’re looking at a variety of different configurations in the business. But where we are today, the number one task is actually to ramp up our current nameplate, which is 10,500 tonnes a year of NdPr [compared with 6,558 tonnes for the 2025 financial year]. Second objective is to put in the new heavy rare earths separation circuit here in Malaysia, and then we will start to think about any further capacity uplift at that stage
While there’s a great deal of activity to ramp up rare earth refining, is the next bottleneck going to be production of the rare earth magnets and how is that issue solved?
Lynas advocates tax credits for magnet buyers. Like I said, we advocate for governments to put [favorable] policies in place. In Australia, for example, we’ve advocated for a long time about upgrading infrastructure. One of the things that’s fabulous about being here in this location in Malaysia is we’re in a heavy industrial park where we have reliable gas, reliable water, reliable electricity. And we have access to reagents. We have like-minded companies with whom we can work when things need to be addressed. Creating that sort of environment allows manufacturing businesses to be much more successful than if it’s just bilateral.
What’s the timeline on the proposed plant in Seadrift, Tx., given that you’re expanding so much here?
There is significant uncertainty as to whether the plant in Texas will proceed, and if so, in what form.
This Lynas plant in Kuantan has been subjected to protests in the past regarding social and environmental impact on the community. Are you confident that won’t be a concern going forward?
Lynas became the cause célèbre for the opposition political party at the time. We were just unlucky to be the ones who were picked as a political football. We have an extraordinarily high level of support from our local communities. There is a small group of activists, absolutely, who seem almost to be just operating these days on muscle memory. And there is a significant question over where they gain their funding. Our relationship with our local communities is really strong. We have never, not once, been involved in a public health or safety or environmental event. Our operations here are safe. We voluntarily adopt international best practice. We do not have a community problem.
The post Lynas Rare Earths CEO Amanda Lacaze on Having the Guts to Invest During a Price Slump appeared first on TIME.
