rare metals
Rare earth crisis: Innovate, or be crushed by China
Laptops, cars, smartphones, TVs, MRI scanners, LCD displays, light bulbs, optical networks, jet engines, cameras, headphones, nuclear reactors. It might seem like a random selection of high-tech gizmos, but every single object on that list has one very important thing in common: Their manufacture requires one or more rare earth metals.
Rare earths — a block of seventeen elements in the middle of the Periodic Table — aren’t actually all that rare, but they tend to be very hard to obtain commercially. Generally, rare earth elements are only found in minute quantities in mineral deposits of clay, sand, and rock (earths!), which must then be processed to extract the rare metals — an expensive process, and also costly for the environment as billions of tons of ore must be mined and refined to yield just a few tons of usable rare earths.
Many rare earths are also geochemically rare — they can only be mined in a handful of countries. This is simply down to Mother Nature being a tempestuous so-and-so: Some countries have deposits of rare earths, and some don’t. This results in massively skewed production (China famously produces 97% of the world’s rare earth metals), and, as you can imagine, a lot of national security and geopolitical troubles, too.
It doesn’t stop with rare earths, either: Many other important elements, such as platinum, are only available from one or two mines in the entire world. If South Africa sustained a huge earthquake — or was on the receiving end of a thermonuclear bomb, perhaps — the world’s supply of platinum would literally dry up over night. The continued existence of technologies that rely on platinum, like car exhaust catalytic converters and fuel cells, would be unlikely.
If geochemistry and politics weren’t enough, though, we even have to factor in ethical concerns: Just like blood/conflict diamonds — diamonds that originate from war-torn African nations, where forced labor is used and the proceeds go towards buying more weapons for the warlord — some rare metals could be considered “blood metals.” Tantalum, an element that’s used to make the capacitors found in almost every modern computer, is extracted from coltan — and the world’s second largest producer of coltan is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the home of the bloodiest wars since World War II. Not only do the proceeds from coltan exports get spent on weapons, but the main focus of the wars were the stretches of land rich in diamonds and coltan.
Also along the same humanist vein, it’s important to note that extracting these rare elements is usually a very expensive and disruptive activity. Indium, probably the single most important element for the manufacture of LCDs and touchscreens, is recovered in minute quantities as a byproduct of zinc extraction. You can’t just set up an indium plant; you have to produce zinc in huge quantities, find buyers and arrange transport for that zinc, and then go to town on producing indium. In short, extracting rare elements is generally a very intensive task that is likely to disrupt or destroy existing settlements and businesses.
The rare earth apocalypse
The doomsday event that everyone is praying will never come to pass, but which every Western nation is currently planning for, is the eventual cut-off of Chinese rare earth exports. Last year, 97% of the world’s rare earth metals were produced in China — but over the last few years, the Chinese government has been shutting down mines, ostensibly to save what resources it has, and also reducing the amount of rare earth that can be exported. Last year, China produced some 130,000 tons of rare earths, but export restrictions meant that only 35,000 tons were sent to other countries. As a result, demand outside China now outstrips supply by some 40,000 tons per year, and — as expected — many countries are now stockpiling the reserves that they have.
Almost every Western country is now digging around in their backyard for rare earth-rich mud and sand, but it’ll probably be too little too late — and anyway, due to geochemistry, there’s no guarantee that explorers and assayers will find what they’re looking for. The price of rare earths are already going up, and so are the non-Chinese-made gadgets and gizmos that use them. Exacerbating the issue yet further, as technology grows more advanced, our reliance on the strange and magical properties of rare earths increases — and China, with the world’s largest workforce and a fire hose of rare earths, is perfectly poised to become the only real producer of solar power photovoltaic cells, computer chips, and more.
In short, China has the world by the short hairs, and when combined with a hotting-up cyber front, it’s not hard to see how this situation might devolve into World War III. The alternate, ecological point of view, is that we’re simply living beyond the planet’s means. Either way, strategic and logistic planning to make the most of scarce metals and minerals is now one of the most important tasks that face governments and corporations. Even if large rare earth deposits are found soon, or we start recycling our gadgets in a big way, the only real solution is to somehow lessen our reliance on a finite resource. Just like oil and energy, this will probably require drastic technological leaps. Instead of reducing the amount of tantalum used in capacitors, or indium in LCD displays, we will probably have to discover completely different ways of storing energy or displaying images. My money’s on graphene.
By Sebastian Anthony
Source: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/111029-rare-earth-crisis-innovate-or-be-crushed-by-china
Why Buy and Store Metals Offshore
Today more than ever it is important for a person to diversify the location of their assets. If you are one of my readers there is a good chance that you believe in Precious and Rare Metals as a form of protection against inflation, and governmental shenanigans. Metals give a person piece of mind like very few other investments can.
Some of the benefits of Metals include.
- Paper assets can depreciate to zero, Metals will not.
- Metals are a hard asset that can be handled, free of third party interference.
- Metals are a store of value.
- Metals are both a form of money and used in industry.
- Metals are highly liquid.
Why take your metals offshore? Inflation according to the US government is running close to 3% and banks are paying a paltry 1-2% for interest. People are increasingly worried about government seizure of their paper assets and hard assets. Recently Portugal decided to take over its pension funds until the financial crisis passes. As we know once a government takes over something they rarely give it back. How long do you think until nations like the USA, UK, Germany, Canada and Australia start invading their pension funds? In 1933 the US government under the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt required US citizens to turn their Gold in for currency. Do you think that the governments of today are any less bold?
The four main benefits of offshore investing include.
- Asset Protection
- Confidentiality
- Tax Sheltering
- Diversification
There are many different ways a person can buy and store metals internationally. A client could buy and store in their personal name. They could store their metals in an offshore IRA. They could purchase their metals through a company that they control. They could use a Trust or an offshore structure that they control. This opens up a wide range of opportunities for the savvy metals buyer.
In the spring of 2012 we are tentatively scheduled to open our latest storage facility in Panama. We have had many clients asking us if we knew of an option for them to store their metals closer to home. Our waiting list of clients looking to take advantage of this opportunity continues to grow. It will be located in the Panama Pacifico Free Zone which is the old Howard Air Force Base in the Canal Zone. Currently we have our facility in Zurich, Switzerland in the Swiss Free Zone. If you would like more information to buy Metals or to be added to our Panama storage wait list please feel free to contact myself or the team at Swiss Metal Assets.
Customers ask, How would I transport the Metals to Panama? Brinks is the logical choice for me. They offer door to door service for the client. You can learn more on their website.
The financial situations are getting more and more complicated for nations throughout the world. Don´t you think it is time that you protected your assets?
By: Randy Hilarski - The Rare Metals Guy
What Are Technology Metals?
So, just what are “technology metals’? As a relatively new term, coined by Jack Lifton in 2007 and now widely used in the industry, there are probably a number of alternative definitions out there. Here at TMR, we say that the technology metals are those generally-rare metals that are essential for the production of ‘high tech’ devices and engineered systems, such as:
- The mass production of miniaturized electronics and associated devices;
- Advanced weapons systems and platforms for national defense;
- The generation of electricity using ‘alternative’ sources such as solar panels and wind turbines;
- The storage of electricity using cells and batteries.
There are of course numerous other uses and applications of these metals.
Almost all technology metals are byproducts of the production of base metals, with the exception of the rare earth metals, as a group, and lithium.
Prior to World War II, there were many metals for which there were no practical uses. They were literally laboratory curiosities available only in small quantities, obtained at high costs in both time and money. For this reason, they were called the ‘minor metals’; they simply had no major uses in contrast to the base metals and even to the precious metals. It didn’t matter how abundant a metal actually was in nature; if it had no practical uses it simply wouldn’t be produced. Nickel, for example, was a ‘minor metal’ before the commercial development of stainless steel in 1919, when economical methods of mass producing and using stainless steel were undertaken in earnest. Nickel after that rapidly became a high volume production metal.
In the first few years of the 20th Century, malleable tungsten was developed at General Electric and it rapidly displaced all other materials for use as filaments in incandescent light bulbs. Tungsten production increased, and shortly thereafter tungsten steels were developed and used, at first for military armor and armor piercing projectiles. Tungsten carbide for cutting tools soon after that revolutionized precision machining, just in time to make mass produced engines a reality. Tungsten, a minor metal in 1900, became by 1918 an important industrial metal, and had the designation ‘technology metal’ existed in 1918, tungsten would surely have been recognized as such at that point.
As an example of a more well-known metal transitioning from ‘minor’ to ‘major’ status, look at the late 19th Century minor metal aluminum, which was used to cap the Washington Monument in 1886, as a symbol of America’s wealth. Aluminum was then more expensive than gold. Keep in mind that only a lunatic or a visionary would have predicted in 1886, that common people would cook with aluminum pots and pans less than a century later, and that even in 1919 the idea of nickel stainless steel kitchen appliances for the masses would have been considered fantasy nonsense.
World War II transformed a sleepy academic discipline, the study of the physical properties of all of the metals, into modern metallurgy with its emphasis on developing end uses for metals based not just on their properties as structural materials but even more important, on their newly categorized electrical, electronic, and magnetic properties for use in technology.
Fifty years ago, it was unclear which, if any of the then minor metals would be most useful for practical mass producible technologies. We were then only just discovering and, actually, determining which of the electronic and magnetic properties of the chemical elements were important to our civilization’s needs and desires. Prior to World War I, only the structural, decorative, simple electrical transmission and storage, and monetary metals were well known even to the metallurgists of the day. The last naturally occurring metal to be discovered was rhenium and that was only in 1924. What no one knew between the wars was that it would be important to know which, if any, of the little used minor metals could in fact be produced in significant volume at a significant yearly rate of production. There was no need for any such information, certainly not in academia, where most of these studies would be then undertaken. The equation was simple; no use equals no demand and therefore no attempt to supply in quantity.
World War II was the single most important driver for the transformation of the minor metals into the technology metals. Economics as a limitation to innovation was put aside and national security became the only driver for the development of the technologies for jet and rocket engines, radio and radar, electronic computing, and super weapons.
A glittering galaxy of physicists and innovative engineers, perhaps a once in a thousand years gathering of intellects, told the chemical engineers who specialized in metallurgy, which metals they critically needed in abundance and the world’s governments told all of them not to consider economics in their quest to produce them. The chemical engineers then began systematically to learn how to find, refine, and mass produce the formerly minor metals, now desperately needed for war technology. Among others this lead to the production for the first time, in every case, of large quantities of previously never-before-seen ultra pure silicon and germanium, as well as high purity gallium and indium, uranium and thorium, and mixed, and some individually separated, rare earth metals and, just after the war, of lithium.
After the hot part of World War II ended, a 50 year long Cold War immediately ensued, during which the postwar uneconomic overproduction of minor metals for the new technologies continued, and the increasingly surplus production was diverted to high volume civilian consumer uses, spun off from technologies developed for the military on a cost plus basis. This was the seeding of our modern ‘Age of Technology.’ Its original economics were synthetic; the critical materials for modern technologies were being produced from operations and sources the development of which had been fully subsidized, in an unprecedented open-ended hand out by the war economy, both cold and hot.
So, at the same time, today, that we have become totally dependent on the technology metals for the mass production of necessary consumer goods such as miniaturized electronics, large scale television and cinema displays, electronic data processing, and personal communications,. i.e., our way of life, we are also critically dependent on technology metals for our national security in the form of secure communications, weapons guidance, surveillance, and battlefield superiority. The problem is that the bulk of the technology metals is now used for civilian production and the military instead of catalyzing the supply and taking a priority position, is now simply another customer.
In the table below we list those metals that we define as ‘rare’, by defining rare as ‘produced annually in a quantity of 25,000 metric tonnes or less.’ Only the most obscure of these rare metals, such as the rare earths holmium, ytterbium, and lutetium, can still be defined as minor metals, because even today they only have minor uses since they are and will remain too rare ever to be available in sufficient quantity for mass production of a technology.
Metal | Production [tonnes] |
---|---|
Cobalt | 62,000 |
Uranium | 35,332 |
Lanthanum | 32,860 |
Silver | 21,332 |
Neodymium | 19,096 |
Cadmium | 18,000 |
Lithium | 18,000 |
Yttrium | 8,900 |
Bismuth | 7,300 |
Praseodymium | 6,150 |
Gold | 2,350 |
Dysprosium | 2,000 |
Selenium | 1,500 |
Samarium | 1,364 |
Zirconium | 1,230 |
Gadolinium | 744 |
Indium | 600 |
Terbium | 450 |
Europium | 272 |
Palladium | 195 |
Platinum | 178 |
Germanium | 140 |
Gallium | 78 |
Rhenium | 52 |
Rhodium | 30 |
Hafnium | 25 |
Tantalum | 0 |
Erbium | UNKNOWN |
Holmium | UNKNOWN |
Lutetium | UNKNOWN |
Scandium | UNKNOWN |
Tellurium | UNKNOWN |
Thorium | UNKNOWN |
Thulium | UNKNOWN |
Ytterbium | UNKNOWN |
The technology metals are almost all rare metals, and they are almost all produced as byproducts of base or common metals.
The problem with the technology metals is that our supply of them, or more specifically our maximum rates of production of them, is critically dependent mostly upon our production of base metals. In the case of the rare earth metals, mined as a group, the key supply issue is the complex metallurgy of the separation of the individual rare earths from each other; for the case of lithium, a key issue is the length of time that primary concentration takes. The rare earths as a group are actually not rare, based on the admittedly arbitrary definition above, though individual rare earths certainly are.
The rare earths and lithium are today the subject of much discussion, because they have become the most visible technology metals. The definition of a rare metal is somewhat fluid; a few of today’s rare metals may not always be so. Lithium, for example, is on the cusp of being struck from the list of rare metals, because of its use in electrical storage. But it has turned out that once a minor metal becomes a technology metal, it will never again be a minor metal.
Source: http://www.techmetalsresearch.com/what-are-technology-metals/
China Now Controls the Solar Industry
Recently American solar companies like Solyndra, Evergreen Solar and Spectrawatt have filed for bankruptcy. These events may lead investors to believe that Solar is finished.
The US solar industry was hit hard by announcements out of Europe that some nations, like Italy, were scaling back their expenditures on solar due to their debt crisis. At the same time we have nations like India announcing a US $19 billion plan to produce 20GW of solar power by the year 2020.
Where will the solar panels for this market be manufactured?
India does not have sufficient rare industrial metal inventories or rare earth metal production to meet the demands of the government plan.
China has positioned itself as the country with 97% control over the majority of rare industrial metals and rare earth metals needed to produce high efficiency solar panels.
What does this mean for companies producing solar panels?
Among many other reasons for restricting exports of rare metals, China wants companies to produce the products in China to keep its workforce employed. If companies want to import metals from China in to produce the panels in other nations they will have to pay much higher prices for the metals due to taxes, shipping, export costs and other import costs. Accordingly, The US manufacturers will have a difficult time competing with the manufacturers in China.
The other issue that the companies do not want to talk about is government subsidies and tax breaks. Jason Burack the co-author of the, ¨Dragon Metals Report¨, and owner of www.wallstformainst.com recently said, ¨Message to all CEOs in solar, “Switch immediately to the best Solar panel technology using materials like rare earths, rare industrial metals and graphene and stop relying on the government for subsidies to produce inferior technology panels the market does not want, also a successful long term business model for any company should not be to rely on getting all of your revenue and contracts from the government, which is what many solar companies have done¨.
There are three, ¨Thin-Film PV¨ kinds of solar panels.
1. CdTe or Cadmium Telluride with an efficiency of 6%-11%.
2. a-Si or Amorphous Silicon with an efficiency of 6%-12%
3. CIGS or Copper Indium Gallium Selenide with an efficiency of 10%-20%
CIGS Advantages:
A. Highest energy yield
B. No environmentally hazardous materials
C. You can mold the panels to fit many applications
D. They can possibly bring the cost of solar energy panels down to below $1 per watt.
The other technology on the horizon is graphene composite solar panels. They are made of copper, molybdenum and graphite. Molybdenum and graphite have both been deemed highly critical to national security for many nations. Once again China has a powerful position because they control over 80% of the graphite market. So once again China has the foresight to see the technologies on the horizon and has positioned itself to prosper.
Currently 89% of the total installed solar panels worldwide are located in Germany, Japan and the USA. In the coming years we will see a growing demand from China for its own solar needs. Between China and India the demand for solar panels will far exceed our current ability to produce the panels. The costs of solar are coming down and the closer we are to grid parity, the more use of solar we will see. Since many of the metals used to produce these panels have been deemed critical to many nations national security, the prices of these metals are bound to stay elevated. China has shown that it will continue to restrict the exports of the rare industrial and rare earth metals further tightening the supply chains.
By: Randy Hilarski - The Rare Metals Guy
U.S. Preparing for the Coming Shortages in Metals and Minerals
Many if not most metals, rare earth minerals and other elements used to make everything from photovoltaic panels and cellphone displays to the permanent magnets in cutting edge new wind generators and motors will become limited in availability. Geologists are warning of shortages and bottlenecks of some metals due to an insatiable demand for consumer products.
2010 saw China restrict the export of neodymium, which is used in wind generators and motors. The move was said to direct the supplies toward a massive wind generation project within China. What happened was a two-tiered price for neodymium formed, one inside China and another, higher price, for the rest of the world.
Dr. Gawen Jenkin, of the Department of Geology, University of Leicester, and the lead convenor of the Fermor Meeting of the Geological Society of London that met to discuss this issue is reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, highlighting the dangers in the inexorable surge in demand for metals.
Dr Jenkin said: “Mobile phones contain copper, nickel, silver and zinc, aluminum, gold, lead, manganese, palladium, platinum and tin. More than a billion people will buy a mobile in a year — so that’s quite a lot of metal. And then there’s the neodymium in your laptop, the iron in your car, the aluminum in that soft drinks can — the list goes on…”
Jenkin continues, “With ever-greater use of these metals, are we running out? That was one of the questions we addressed at our meeting. It is reassuring that there’s no immediate danger of ‘peak metal’ as there’s quite a lot in the ground, still — but there will be shortages and bottlenecks of some metals like indium due to increased demand. That means that exploration for metal commodities is now a key skill. It’s never been a better time to become an economic geologist, working with a mining company. It’s one of the better-kept secrets of employment in a recession-hit world.”
There’s a “can’t be missed” clue on education and employment prospects. “And a key factor in turning young people away from the large mining companies — their reputation for environmental unfriendliness — is being turned around as they make ever-greater efforts to integrate with local communities for their mutual benefit,” said Jenkin.
Among the basics that need to be grasped to understand the current state of affairs are how rare many metals, minerals and elements really are. Some are plentiful, but only found in rare places or are difficult to extract. Indium, for instance, is a byproduct of zinc mining and extraction.
Economics professor Roderick Eggert of the Colorado School of Mines explains at the U.S. Geological Survey meeting indium is not economically viable to extract unless zinc is being sought in the same ore. Others are just plain scarce, like rhenium and tellurium, which only exist in very small amounts in Earth’s crust.
There are two fundamental responses to this kind of situation: use less of these minerals or improve the extraction of them from other ores in other parts of the world. The improved extraction methods seem to be where most people are heading.
Kathleen Benedetto of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. House of Representatives explains the Congress’ position for now by saying in a report abstract, “China’s efforts to restrict exports of mineral commodities garnered the attention of Congress and highlighted the need for the United States to assess the state of the Nation’s mineral policies and examine opportunities to produce rare earths and other strategic and critical minerals domestically. Nine bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to address supply disruptions of rare earths and other important mineral commodities.”
Another prominent session presenter Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey adds in her report abstract, “Deposits of rare earth elements and other critical minerals occur throughout the Nation.” That information puts the current events in the larger historical perspective of mineral resource management, which has been the U.S. Geological Survey’s job for more than 130 years. McNutt points out something interested citizens should be aware of, “The definition of ‘a critical mineral or material’ is extremely time dependent, as advances in materials science yield new products and the adoption of new technologies result in shifts in both supply and demand.”
The geopolitical implications of critical minerals have started bringing together scientists, economists and policy makers. Monday Oct 10th saw the professors presenting their research alongside high-level representatives from the U.S. Congress and Senate, the Office of the President of the U.S., the U.S. Geological Survey, in a session at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.
Those metals, rare earth minerals and elements are basic building materials for much of what makes energy efficiency, a growing economy, lots of employment and affordable technology possible. Its good to see some action, if it’s only talking for now. At least the people who should be keeping the system working are sensing the forthcoming problem.
Source: OilPrice.com
Nanoparticle Magnets Conserve Rare Earth Metals
Professor George Hadjipanayis. Source: University of Delaware.
Researchers at the University of Delaware and at General Electric Global Research are independently developing new magnets using nanoparticles to preserve the increasingly small supply of rare earth metals typically used in the strongest magnets made today. These new magnets are also stronger and lighter than traditional magnets and should increase efficiency as well as conserve the dwindling supply of neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium.
Demand for these metals is quickly outstripping their availability. This may be exacerbated by stricter export policies from China where most of the current supply is found. The Department of Energy has funded two independent projects looking to circumvent this scarcity by using nanoparticles to create magnets instead of large quantities of metals. Both projects are taking the same general approach to the problem - creating magnets from nanoparticles combining very small amounts of these rare metals with particles of iron and other more common metals. The small scale structure of these compounds greatly increases the magnetism found in the metal alone, requiring much less metal to achieve the same - or better - results found in normal magnets.
GE is being fairly tight lipped about the specific composites in its magnets and about their manufacturing process. They claim to have successfully produced thin films of magnets using their process and are working on making magnets large enough for practical use. The other research group - headed by the Chairman of the Physics Department George Hadjipanayis at the University of Delaware - is more open about its methods but is also having difficulty scaling their process up sufficiently for practical use.
The team at Delaware is using a combination of iron and cobalt with the standard rare metals in particles of around 20-30 nanometers to create its nanomagnetic material. They are trying to increase the magnetism of these particles and discover ways to assemble them into functional two and three dimensional arrays that act like traditional magnets. Their current research has general applications, but specific projects are focused on creating viable storage media and magnets for various types of medical research and technology.
TFOT has previously reported on other research into magnets and using magnets including superconductivity research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Magnet Lab and magnetic spaceshields that could protect spaceships from high speed particles and solar flares. TFOT has also reported on other nanoparticle research including a nanoparticle vaccine for Type 1 diabetes, silver nanoparticles for creating small electronics, and a way to encapsulate cancer treatments in nanoparticles.
Read more about the University of Delaware research into magnetic nanoparticles on the group website. Read more about the initial DOE grant funding this research in this University of Delaware
July 26, 2011 - Janice Karin
www.thefutureofthings.com
German Newspaper Talks About Industrial Metals
Translation from an article in the German Financial Times:
Most people are not aware of the demand and value of rare metals. For more information regarding these metals, their uses, and their values, Haines and Maassen, one of just a few traders, will be able to provide you with any needed information.
Scandium, Lanthanum, Ytterbium. These words are foreign to most people but amongst people in the know, they are words which cause a lot of excitement today. These are metals rare and otherwise which are starting to become scarce. These scarcities are a real threat to many industrial countries, because these metals are used for important current and future technologies such as batteries for electric cars, aircraft turbines, solar panels or TV and PC screens
Many rare metals are currently produced in countries with complicated political environments. Countries like Russia, Brazil, Congo and China. China produces over 90% of the rare metals in the world today. The problem is that China covets these metals as much as any one and is currently drastically reducing their export levels to other industrial countries in need of these metals. At this particular time, because of scarity, there are 14 metals that are considered rare.
An Established Network
Even before China’s export restrictions it was not easy to get these commodities. Although there is a stock exchange in Shanghai, foreigners are not allowed to buy rare metals there. In a village close to Bonn, Germany, is an inconspicuous looking warehouse of a family-owned business called Haines & Maassen. In this warehouse many coveted commodities can be found. The five-meter-high shelves accommodate approximately 850 different metals in boxes, barrels, glass containers or bags. In one of the lower compartments are eleven barrels, 50 inches high and wide containing the metal, Hafnium.
According to the owners, “Gunther Maassen stores about 5 percent of the annual global production of Hafnium in their warehouse.”
Long-standing relationships benefit the company
For the last 40 years, the 77 year old father and patriarch of the family-owned buisness visits the London Metal Exchange every year even when there are no coveted and rare earth metals being traded. His sons regularly travel the world in order to maintain contacts and establish new ones. The family has a particularly good relationship with the Chinese, from which the company gets a little more than half of its stock of raw materials. The Maassens are currently benefitting from long-standing well-established, nurtured buisness relationship
The warehouse is not large but contains a fortune in metals.
More than 60 years ago the father of this family started in the metal business, and today both of his sons help run the company. Their specialty is the niche product of rare metals. “The important factor is that we built an established network, that allows us to bring the few producers and consumers together,” said Maassen. In the case of Hafnium there only three large manufacturers in the world and one of those is currently not in production.
Long-standing relationships benefit the company
For the last 40 years, the 77 year old father and patriarch of the family-owned buisness visits the London Metal Exchange every year even when there are no coveted and rare earth metals being traded. His sons regularly travel the world in order to maintain contacts and establish new ones. The family has a particularly good relationship with the Chinese, from which the company gets a little more than half of its stock of raw materials. The Maassens are currently benefitting from long-standing well-established, nurtured buisness relationships.
Deliverys are made to research institutions, industry and investors.
Bildunterschrift:
Thanks to their good name, they are also praised by foreign companies which wish to sell their metals. And even if someone is looking for a very specific commodity, it is Maassen’s pleasure to help. “We have a gentleman sitting in China, acting as a scout who recieves directions from us,” said Maassen. “He is highly-effective and instrumental in providing us with new clients and new contacts. “
Rare earth metals as an investment
Special requests come mostly from research institutes. As a matter of fact, eighty percent of the Haines and Maassen contracts, are with research institutes. But the family business sells the bulk of their metals to industry as research institutes only require small quantities.
Most recently, buisnesses and individuals outside of industry are beginning to buy substantial quantities of rare metals as a tangible asset used to combat the negative effects of inflation and the devaluing of currency.
It was because of this increasing scarcity within the commodity markets that the Maassen’s decided to bring the investors and the industry together, “In four or five years at the peak of the shortage if reached, the investors will be able to provide those materials to the industry. In return, the industry could contribute to the storage costs and receive advance rights for those rare metals.” , said Maassen.
A family that appreciates minerals
Apart from all his business activities Gunther Maassen is also a big fan of metals and rare products. He has collected large blocks of different materials, which are worth a fortune as they come directly from the the mines. If you visit Maassen it is not unusual to get a piece of a meteor placed in your hands to be surprised with its heavy weight. “We also have a deep-sea manganese nodule. That is the material which is in small chunks at three to four thousand meters depth on the ocean floor,” according to Gunther.
This enthusiasm for rare metals has spread to his sons who subsequently joined the company. The Maassen’s would never sell these particular pieces but they do lend them for exhibitions on occasions. These are family treasures to be passed down from generation to generation in the years to come.
Author: Insa Wrede
Editor: Rolf Wenkel
How electronics boom is creating surge in demand for rare metals
Everything from iPods to Toyota Priuses to wind turbines are made using rare metals.
By Andy Bloxham 7:45AM GMT 11 Feb 2011
For example, the silver-grey metal tantalum is used in mobiles as a powder which helps regulate voltage, which would otherwise drop as temperatures rose. Its abilities have been vital to reducing the size of mobiles.
Hafnium is a key ingredient of Intel’s computer chips.
However, China produces around 97% of the world’s supplies, much of it coming from small mines operated by criminal gangs.
In the middle of last year, when the world market for rare earths was only £870m a year, China capped production levels and imposed a moratorium on all new mining licences until June this year.
Then, in December, it cut exports of the metals by over a third, prompting protests from Japan and the US.
With demand for iPhones and iPods soaring (Apple sold a total of 23m of the gadgets in the last three months of 2010 alone) and China keeping a tight rein on supply, the price is only likely to rise strongly.
So-called “rare earth” metals are named as such because when mining boomed in the 18th century, they were particularly hard to extract.
There are 17 of them but they are necessary building materials for navigation systems, radar, night vision goggles and, more importantly, mobile phones.
They include cerium (symbolised by Ce), lanthanum (La), neodymium (Nd), dysprosium (Dy), terbium (Tb) and europium (Eu).
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