Lynas Rare Earths continues to take advantage of the buoyant rare earths market, generating record sales receipts in the second quarter of 2022.
The company achieved $351 million in sales receipts across the three months, highlighting the market’s sustained interest in Lynas’ product.
While revenue was slightly down from the quarter before ($294.5 million compared to $327.7 million), it was still Lynas’ second-best quarter ever.
This came as the company produced 3650 tonnes (t) of rare earth oxides (REOs) across the three months, down from the 4945t output of the quarter before. Neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) production was only slightly down in comparison (1579t from 1687t).
Lynas cited “ongoing” and “unpredictable” water supply disruptions at its Malaysia processing plant as a key contributor to the production drop.
“Over the past five years, Lynas has implemented several mitigating strategies to deal with the frequent interruptions to water supply including additional process water storage on site and use of other natural local water sources,” Lynas chief executive officer Amanda Lacaze said.
“However, the frequency and severity of the outages this quarter necessitated several partial or complete temporary production halts which affected production volumes.”
Lacaze said a process modification has been made to quell the disruptions as Lynas looks to reduce fresh-water consumption by 40 per cent at the Malaysia plant. This improvement is set to be implemented in the current quarter.
Lynas said China’s demand for rare earths in neodymium (NdFeB) magnets, a key market for the commodity group, weakened during the second quarter of 2022. This was due to COVID-19 lockdowns shutting down several industrial centres in China.
Despite this, the major miner said rare earths prices were “resilient”, especially NdPr which remained between 70–80 per cent higher than a year before across the quarter.
The outlook for rare earths continues to look strong, with Lynas suggesting global demand for NdFeB magnets is forecast to grow from 130,000t of NdFeB magnets consumed in 2020 to 265,000 tonnes in 2030.