ANALYSIS
Lynas Posts Record Profit. The Bill for Breaking Free From China Just Went Up 63%
In 2014, Amanda Lacaze took over a company on life support. Lynas Rare Earths had poured everything into a mine in Western Australia and a processing plant in Malaysia. Prices had crashed. The stock sat near zero. Debt ran into the hundreds of millions.
Lacaze kept spending. She expanded the mine at Mt Weld and upgraded the plant in Kuantan, Malaysia. She signed supply deals with Japan when nobody else was buying. And she waited for the rest of the world to figure out what she already knew — someday, someone would need rare earths that didn't come from China.
Last week, the bet paid off. Lynas posted record revenue of A$977.9 million, up 76%, with net profit jumping from A$8 million to A$222.4 million. NdPr production rose 11% to 7,260 tonnes, with a record average selling price of A$80.7 per kilogram across all rare earth products. Both the US and Japanese governments locked in floor-price deals — $110/kg from Washington, a 12-year supply agreement from Tokyo for 5,000 tonnes a year.
And then came the catch.
Lynas is building a heavy rare earth separation plant at its Malaysian facility — the only one outside China. It was budgeted at A$180 million. The new estimate: A$294 million, up 63%. The reason is the part most coverage missed: certain equipment needed to separate dysprosium and terbium is only manufactured in China. Sourcing it from elsewhere costs more, takes longer, and needs extra work to hit the purity specs buyers demand.
Lynas produced its first samarium in March and plans to start gadolinium by mid-2027. But dysprosium and terbium — the two heavy rare earths that keep magnets from failing in extreme heat — are the real prize. They command the highest prices on the rare earth table. And the machines that refine them to commercial grade barely exist outside China.
The stock fell 6.6% on the day of the results.
Not because the numbers were bad. Because the overrun shows what record profits alone can't fix. Lynas has A$1.2 billion in cash, a renewed 10-year license, and guaranteed floor prices from two governments. It's the best-positioned company outside China. And it still needs Chinese-made machines to do the hardest part.
Lacaze retired at the end of June after 12 years as CEO. Interim CEO Pol Le Roux now owns the question she spent a decade answering: how do you build a supply chain when every critical piece runs through Beijing? He has the cash and the contracts. What he doesn't have is time. Seventy days from now, on November 10, China's suspended export controls snap back.
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| Source: Strategic Metals Invest · Updated Aug 28, 2026 · USD/kg |
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ALSO THIS WEEK
RECYCLING
Cyclic Materials Raises $75M to Pull Rare Earths From Old Magnets
Toronto-based Cyclic Materials closed a $75 million raise to build a rare earth recycling campus in McBee, South Carolina. Groundbreaking is set for Q4 2026. An Arizona magnet separation plant should start running by Q3. Total equity funding now sits at $237 million, backed by Microsoft, Amazon, BMW i Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover, and Hitachi. The South Carolina campus will handle 2,000 tonnes of magnet material per year — pulled not from mines but from old EV motors, wind turbines, and hard drives. Cyclic's model is hub-and-spoke: regional collection sites feed magnets to central plants. The raw material is already sitting in scrapyards across America.
POLICY
Governments Move From Lender to Deal Partner in Critical Minerals
Governments aren't just writing checks anymore. A Mining.com report this week described the shift. The US and allied governments now sit at the deal table as direct counterparties — buying equity stakes, signing offtake deals, and setting price floors. From January 2025 to June 2026, the US government put $10 billion into critical minerals, per a Council on Foreign Relations tracker. That money came with strings: ownership stakes, guaranteed purchase commitments, and long-term supply contracts. The era of hands-off grants is over.
DEALS
India Wants to Make Its Own Rare Earth Magnets — With Help From Japan and South Korea
India's state-owned miner IREL is talking to Japanese and South Korean companies about making rare earth magnets on Indian soil. The shift is recent. Earlier this year, India's commerce minister told IREL to stop exporting rare earths — mainly neodymium — to Japan under a deal that had run for 13 years. Now IREL wants those same countries to bring magnet-making technology to India instead. The pitch is simple: IREL supplies the oxide, the partner brings the know-how, and the finished magnets stay in India. It's a bet that owning the finished product matters more than selling raw ore to someone else.
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AROUND THE MARKET
Maglut Heavy Industries Emerges From Stealth With Rare Earth Separation Tech
California startup Maglut Heavy Industries unveiled ARC-1, a chromatography-based system that separates rare earths into individual oxides at 99.9%+ purity using water instead of acid. The company raised $3.1 million in pre-seed funding and showed the system at pilot scale at its Long Beach headquarters. Commercial economics are unproven.
IEA: Top Rare Earth Refiner's Market Share Fell From 90% to 85%
The IEA's Global Critical Minerals Outlook came out in July. It found that new US projects and rising Malaysian output cut China's share of rare earth refining from over 90% in 2023 to 85% in 2025. That's progress — but the report warned it could stall without more money going in.
Critical Minerals Expo Heads to Atlanta in October
North America's Critical Minerals Expo, Battery Recycling Expo, and E-Waste World Expo will run October 28–29 at the Cobb Galleria Centre with more than 60 speakers confirmed. REEx and the Critical Minerals Institute will both attend.
St George Signs MOU With Brazilian Firm for Rare Earth Processing
Australia's St George Mining signed a deal with Brazil's Lima & Pergher to explore building a rare earth processing center. Brazil has become a growing hub for rare earth development, with 268 exploration applications filed in the first half of 2026.
