Russia to Increase Mining Volume of Rare Earths

Russia plans to substantially increase the mining volume of rare metals and rare earths in the next few years, according to the Russian satellite news agency Moscow report cited a roadmap report formulated by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The document stipulates that the output of rare metals and rare earth metals should increase to about 20,000 tons by 2024, and exceed 70,000 tons by 2030. The implementation of this plan will enable Russia to become the world's largest exporter of rare metals and rare earth metals.

According to the plan, Russia will extract 11,800 tons of rare metals and 7,000 tons of rare earth metals each year by 2024, and by 2030 it will be 43,400 tons and 30,000 tons respectively.

As of June 2019, Russia held the fourth largest reserves of rare earth minerals in the world at 12 million tons. That puts it way above Australia and the United States. Those nations hold 3.4m tons and 1.4m tons respectively. Russia rates reserves differently to the US, whose Geological Survey produced the most recent global data.

Rare earth elements are a group of seventeen chemical elements that occur together in the periodic table. The group consists of yttrium and the 15 lanthanide elements (lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, and lutetium). Scandium is found in most rare earth element deposits and is sometimes classified as a rare earth element. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry includes scandium in their rare earth element definition.

The rare earth elements are all metals, and the group is often referred to as the "rare earth metals." These metals have many similar properties, and that often causes them to be found together in geologic deposits. They are also referred to as "rare earth oxides" because many of them are typically sold as oxide compounds.

The largest planned development for rare earths in Russian is run by TriArk Mining Co., a joint venture owned by industrial conglomerate Rostec and billionaire Alexander Nesis.

TriArk is currently developing the Tomtor rare earths deposit in Russia, where it hopes to produce 14,000 tons of ferroniobium and 16,000 tons of rare earth metal oxides annually. According to Rostec spokesperson Andjey Krasutsky, Tomtor alone would account for 10% of global production.

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