(MENAFN- ProactiveInvestors - Australia) China has issued a white paper on the country's rare earths industry.
China accounts for 23 per cent of the world's rare earths reserves and in 2011 met more than 90 per cent of world demand for rare earths.
One of China's concerns is that there is a significant divergence between price and value for rare earths â€" the report has a chart showing that while prices for rare earths went up 2.5 times between 2000 and 2010, prices for gold, copper and iron ore rose 4.4 times, 4.1 times and 4.8 times respectively.
China also intends to crack down on smuggling of rare earths from China, with significant tonnages having been escaping through these illegal channels.
In introducing better controls over production, China also wants to ensure it is setting quotas that satisfy normal international demand.
The biggest customers for China's rare earths output are Japan (56 per cent) and the United States (14 per cent).
Over the next few years there will be increasing world demand for rare earths, with Australia's Alkane Resources (ASX: ALK) expecting to begin production towards end 2014 from its Dubbo (central west NSW) zirconia and rare earths project.
Over the next two years Alkane will be spending nearly A$1 billion to develop the Dubbo project, creating nearly 800 jobs in the process.
Of total output from Alkane's project, some 21 per cent of revenue will be from light rare earths and 18 per cent from heavy rare earths, making Alkane one of the bigger heavy rare earths producers globally outside China in the next few years, and a major contributor to the strategically important production of dysprosium, terbium, yttrium and neodymium.
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