Wind turbines, smartphones, graphics cards and many other electrical devices on this planet depend on rare earths to function at all. A Swedish state company has now found an enormous deposit of these resources.
What really makes the rare earths so “rare” is the fact that they are currently almost exclusively exported from China. The country thus has control over who is provided with the coveted resources.
You can find out more about China’s importance in the rare earth trade in the article by Alex, who told you about a similar find in Turkey last summer, where around 694,000 tons of the resources were found:
Colossal amounts of the world’s most important hardware resources have just been discovered
Largest rare earth oxide deposit in Europe discovered
(Image: LKAB)
State-run by Sweden Mining company LKAB says it has discovered a rare earth occurrence containing one million tons of the coveted resource. It is located in the Kiruna area, in the very north-east of Sweden, and has not yet been fully explored. It is therefore possible that even more minerals will be found.
The LKAB writes in a statement that the demand for rare earths is increasing enormously. In Europe, however, no deposits are currently being mined. The find is of great benefit to Europe.
»This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate. It could become an important building block for manufacturing the critical raw materials that are absolutely crucial to the green transition.”
Jan Mostrom, Managing Director LKAB
(Image: LKAB)
According to LKAB, however, there is still a lot of work to be done before the raw materials can be mined. The Company anticipates further discovery work and intends to apply for a mining permit in 2023. However, it will be many years before the resources can actually be mined.
In view of the bureaucratic processes in the industry to date, LKAB Managing Director Jan Moström assumes that dismantling will not begin for 10 to 15 years at the earliest.
Maybe by then there will even be an alternative for rare earths that is suitable for the mass market. There are already approaches for this, as colleague Alex tells you here:
A cheap alternative may soon be available for some of the world’s most important resources
What do you think of the long time until Sweden can actually mine the resources? What do you think of the fact that Europe now also has such an enormous deposit of rare earths? Write it to us in the comments!
