Heavy rare earth price rise is rebound or inflection point

In recent weeks, the domestic rare earth market as a whole heat higher, all kinds of product prices on the whole.In particular, heavy rare earth increase significantly, the price of praseodymium oxide products increased significantly.

Since March 2020, the price of praseodymium oxide has risen from 267,500 yuan/ton to 398,500 yuan/ton, with an increase of 49%. The main factor behind the price rise is the continuous high growth of demand end, which is less affected by policy factors and is also the biggest difference between this uptrend cycle and the previous one.

Another reason for this round of rare earth price rises is the serious shortage of spot supplies.In terms of downstream demand, the rare earth permanent magnet industry is the main demand end of rare earth. The global production of ndfeb has increased from 120,000 tons 10 years ago to 250,000 tons now.

The rapid rise of heavy rare earth prices has stimulated the expansion of the downstream stocking efforts, but also led to the downstream cost of sudden high pressure.On the one hand, the rigid demand for magnetic material factory production rises, and most of them are long single customers; on the other hand, magnetic material enterprises and end customers encounter strong conflict in re-negotiation, and the pressure of rare earth industry chain is mainly reflected in the magnetic material link.

In recent years, with the development of new energy vehicles, the magnetic material demand of new energy vehicle motor has become the main growth point of high-end Neodymium iron boron magnetic material demand, namely the rapid increase of demand for praseodymium oxide.Therefore, the new energy vehicle field high-performance Neodymium iron boron market space is broad.Industry insiders predict that the demand for high-performance Neodymium iron boron in the field of new energy vehicles will reach 20,000 tons in 2022, double that of 2020.

In fact, China has included heavy rare earths in the strategic mineral catalog, which is an important measure to enhance the strategic value of heavy rare earths.On the one hand, it is an important opportunity for the development of the rare earth industry. On the other hand, it puts forward higher requirements for the rare earth industry.With the advent of the era of intelligence, new energy vehicles, 5G smart phones, smart robots, and smart home appliances will be popularized continuously, and the demand for heavy rare earths will also increase further in the future.

Relatively speaking, a certain amount of light rare earth production capacity has been formed in the overseas market, but heavy rare earth smelting capacity is insufficient, and heavy rare earth has irreplaceable strategic value as an additive in the high-tech field.In the past 10 years, China's rare earth industrial chain has been further upgraded, and the international market share and product quality of rare earth permanent magnets have been significantly improved, changing the mode of mainly exporting primary raw materials.

So, this heavy rare earth price rise is short-term rebound or inflection point?In fact, the rise in the price of heavy rare earths is only a short-term rebound, did not reach an inflection point.The heavy rare earth market has created an atmosphere of rising prices. The demand side may increase the purchase, which is bound to have the possibility of further rising.It remains to be seen whether this round of price rises will lead to an inflection point in prices.

But one thing must be sure, in the face of the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry, economic development entered the new era background, key strategic materials will become the key of the new stage, the new display material, rare earth magnetic materials, aerospace equipment materials become a "difference" focal objects, industrialization and localization are sped up, due to the superposition of inflationary expectations supporting policy, thus completely the possibility of heavy rare earth prices continue to rise.