A New Rare-Earths Plant in Europe Shows How Tough Breaking China's Grip Will Be — WSJ

By Kim Mackrael

Europe is trying to get itself on the global rare-earths map, and a new facility on Russia's border is its opening bid.

The city of Narva in Estonia, once a textiles hub for the Russian Empire, is now host to Europe's biggest production plant for the kinds of rare-earth magnets needed in electric cars and wind turbines. It is part of Europe's push to secure a foothold in a global supply chain dominated at every step by China. Built by Canada's Neo Performance Materials and financed in part by the European Union, the factory is expected to begin commercial deliveries to companies including the German car-parts supplier Robert Bosch next year.

The problem: Even at the new factory's initial planned capacity of 2,000 metric tons of permanent magnet material, the plant will produce a fraction of what analysts estimate European manufacturers need.

Neo plans eventually to scale up production to 5,000 metric tons, but that is still a long way from being enough to break Europe's dependence on China. Total European demand is forecast to reach about 45,000 metric tons by 2030, according to data from Adamas Intelligence, which tracks the industry.

The U.S. has much more in the pipeline. Companies are currently planning to build more than 40,000 metric tons of capacity in the U.S. by 2030, according to Adamas.

After China imposed new export restrictions for rare earths in April, the Trump administration stepped up subsidies and other measures to support the industry, spurring a race to build out American mining, processing and manufacturing capacity. Rare earths are also essential to manufacturing many defense systems.

"The U.S. has come out with a very big wallet, a very aggressive plan and a very supportive plan to build capacity," Neo Chief Executive Rahim Suleman said.

European auto suppliers were already eager to diversify their permanent magnet sources before China's move, Suleman said, and the April restrictions prompted more interest from customers in other industries.

Suleman said he doesn't think Europe needs to source all of its rare-earth magnets domestically. But in Europe, "We have a long way to go just to meet a portion of the existing demand," he said.

Europe prospered over recent decades in a global trading system that allowed it to import cheap gas from Russia and rare earths from China, powering its industrial base. But Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and China's move this year to restrict rare-earth exports showed how dependent the continent had become on those countries.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last month that the EU is working on a critical-materials plan that will take lessons from the bloc's previous effort to cut its reliance on Russian gas. The plan, due to be announced this year, could include joint purchasing, stockpiling and more money for European projects, she said.

The EU already established targets for reducing its dependence on imports and is determined to act faster and more strategically, a commission spokesperson said.

The rapid growth of the U.S.'s rare-earth industry could help fill a gap, said Ryan Castilloux, managing director of Adamas Intelligence, which is based in Toronto. But Europe might be hesitant to rely too heavily on the U.S., he said.

"I think Europe also recognizes that the U.S. is not afraid to be adversarial in its policies at the moment," Castilloux said.

Higher American subsidies could lure some European companies to set up on the other side of the Atlantic.

The U.K.-based rare-earth company Pensana, which is developing a mine in Angola, said recently that it was scrapping plans to build a U.K. processing facility and turning its focus to the U.S. The Export-Import Bank of the United States offered $160 million in debt financing for the mine, Pensana Chairman Paul Atherley said, compared with a U.K. grant for the processing facility that would have been worth about $6.6 million.

"The level of support from the U.K. government fell well short of what is required," Atherley said. "The U.S. government asked us how much we needed."

Neo secured about $16.9 million in funding from the EU. Recent government support in the U.S. far exceeds that level. In July, the U.S. government said it would take a 15% stake in the rare-earth company MP Materials and establish a price floor for its products.

Suleman said he thinks Neo would choose Europe again if it was making a decision about its Narva factory today because customer demand is much higher in Europe than it is in the U.S. and because Neo already had a rare-earth separation facility near Narva. After rare earths are mined, they must be separated and refined before they can be used to manufacture magnets.

Europe has some rare-earth processing and recycling facilities but no active rare-earth mining.

Estonia embraced Neo's plans. The city of Narva granted a building permit for the facility in 4 1/2 months, a speed that Mayor Katri Raik said was the fastest possible under the country's laws. She said she worked the phones to make sure the municipality kept up with the tight timeline, pressing her colleagues to have documents ready as soon as they could.

"We supported their idea, their plan, as intensively as we could," Raik said.

In a sign of the symbolic importance of the Narva factory for European officials, the European Commission's von der Leyen brought a permanent magnet from the factory to the Group of Seven industrialized countries' gathering in Canada earlier this year to show to her fellow leaders.

For now, EU producers are relying on customers being willing to pay a premium to avoid dealing with China's restrictions, said Ben Davies, chief executive at the Global Rare Earth Industry Association, which counts Neo among its members.

He added that the association's members would be glad to see the EU increase its support, as the U.S. has, to help close the price gap between Chinese and Western products.

Write to Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com