May 1978. Kolwezi, Zaire.

Rebel soldiers crossed the border from Angola and seized a small mining town called Kolwezi. It sat in the middle of Shaba province — the copper-cobalt belt that supplied the world.

Zaire produced more than half the world's cobalt. The metal went into jet engines, missile parts, and cutting tools — the kind of hardware a military cannot build without. When the rebels took the mines, prices didn't just rise. They detonated. Cobalt jumped from $6 a pound to more than $40. A 600% spike in months.

The Pentagon scrambled. The national stockpile was dangerously low. Congress threw money at rebuilding it, but the damage was already done. The lesson was simple: when one country controls a critical metal and the supply gets cut, there is no grace period.

There is a phone call. And then a price you can't afford.

This week, National Defense Magazine reported that the U.S. defense industry is down to a two-to-three-year supply of samarium — a rare earth that goes into high-temperature magnets inside missiles, fighter jets, guidance systems, radar arrays, and satellites. And that entire supply came from one place: a decades-old cache sitting in a Solvay chemical plant in La Rochelle, France.

Solvay stopped refining rare earths at that plant twenty years ago. It wasn't worth the money. But they kept the leftover stock. That stock is now the only sizeable samarium supply among U.S. allies.

Permag, based in Illinois, is the only American maker of samarium-cobalt magnets. CEO Joseph Stupfel told the magazine that China locked down samarium exports last spring along with gadolinium, terbium, and dysprosium. Working with Solvay, Arnold Magnetic Technologies in Rochester, New York, and UK-based Less Common Metals, Permag secured the French cache. It is the only deal of its kind.

But it's finite. Two to three years of material. After that, the options thin out fast. MP Materials has samarium at Mountain Pass in California, but doesn't separate it yet. A few Australian mines could help down the road. Nothing is ready now.

And the clock is running. New Pentagon rules — DFARS 252.225-7052 — take effect January 1, 2027. After that date, the Defense Department cannot buy weapons systems that use magnets sourced from China. That is six months away. The only company in America making these magnets is running on a stockpile pulled from a factory that gave up on rare earths a generation ago.

China mines about 70% of the world's rare earths and refines close to 90% of the material used in magnets. The West let that happen over thirty years. Rebuilding takes time the Pentagon may not have. The Solvay cache bought a window. The question is what gets built before it closes.

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Arafura Rare Earths cleared its biggest hurdle yesterday. Shareholders voted to approve all resolutions at the July 2 meeting in Perth, most by more than 90%. The vote clears the way for a A$1.6 billion funding package — share issues to Export Finance Australia and Germany's KfW, plus convertible notes from Australia's National Reconstruction Fund. Construction starts in September, with remaining conditions expected to close by December 1, and first NdPr oxide ships by mid-2029. Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting now holds 17.5%. Arafura also signed a 500-tonne-per-year India offtake deal this week, putting 86% of output under contract before a single shovel hits dirt.

Cove Kaz Capital Group and Kazakhstan's national geology company Qazgeology completed 77 drill holes at the Akbulak rare earth project — about 3,700 meters of core across priority targets. The site holds a historical resource of 380,000 tons of rare earth oxides, including neodymium, praseodymium, and yttrium. Drilling started in April and results are expected by August. Kazakhstan is better known for oil and uranium, but the government is making a serious push into rare earths. The deposit sits at the crossroads of Chinese and Western interest — and both sides are paying attention.

China's Rare Earth Industry Association reported its price index at 265.2 on June 30 — near multi-year highs. NdPr oxide and terbium oxide posted gains while dysprosium edged lower. On the surface, the market looks stable. Below it, the price split between China and the rest of the world keeps widening. NdPr oxide runs about $110/kg inside China but $160 outside. Dysprosium costs $210 inside and $300 outside. That gap is the cost of having no refining of your own. Private offtake deals outside China — like Serra Verde's reported floor of $575/kg for dysprosium oxide — show what buyers will pay for supply they can count on. And with China's export-control suspension set to expire on November 10, the next four months could push those numbers further apart.

Joseph Stupfel, CEO of Permag, National Defense Magazine
July 1 , 2026

It holds a record no other element on the periodic table can touch: the strongest magnetic moment of any atom in nature. That property makes holmium essential for creating the most powerful static magnetic fields in physics — the kind used in MRI machines and particle accelerators. Surgeons know it too. The holmium YAG laser is the standard tool for breaking up kidney stones and treating enlarged prostates. In nuclear reactors, it absorbs neutrons to help control the chain reaction. Holmium is a heavy rare earth, mined alongside dysprosium and terbium. When those supply lines tighten — as they have this year — holmium tightens with them. Current oxide price inside China: roughly $77/kg. Outside China, expect to pay more. Sometimes much more.

REalloys announced it will receive dysprosium and terbium oxides for qualification as early as Q4 2026, targeting the DFARS 252.225-7052 deadline on January 1, 2027. After that date, the Pentagon cannot buy weapons systems with Chinese-sourced magnets.

— Globe and Mail

A new CSIS report found that Washington often learns a mining project is up for sale only after China has already made an offer. The U.S. has no real-time database of mineral assets worldwide. That gap costs it deals.

— CSIS

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology typically releases its second-half rare earth mining and smelting quotas in August. The number will set the supply direction for the rest of 2026 and could move prices in either direction.

— rare-earth-mining.com

MP Materials produced 917 metric tons of NdPr in Q1 2026, up 63% year over year. Sales hit a record 1,006 metric tons. Revenue rose 49% to $90.6 million as both the materials and magnetics segments posted gains.

— MP Materials