Ucore Rare Metals Advances Western Rare Earth Independence Amid Chinese Export Controls

China's Ministry of Commerce announced expanded export controls over key rare-earth elements and related processing equipment, marking a strategic tightening of Beijing's dominance (https://ibn.fm/uyRJa). This development comes as China produces more than 90% of the world's processed rare earths and rare-earth magnets, with the regime now barring exports to overseas defense users and applying stricter review for semiconductor-linked users. The new rules place five additional rare-earth elements—holmium, erbium, thulium, europium and ytterbium—under license controls while restricting dozens of pieces of processing equipment and technologies used in rare earth mining and refining.

The immediate impact has been significant, with Chinese customs data revealing exports in September decreased by roughly 31% compared with August (https://ibn.fm/V8EXt). This export reduction signals serious disruption to global supply chains for electric vehicles, wind turbines and defense systems, causing shares of rare-earth-mining companies to jump on market concerns about potential bottlenecks. The export-license changes are tied directly to global geopolitics, with Beijing leveraging its control over critical minerals as part of broader negotiations with Washington (https://ibn.fm/UlEgQ). This strategic move underscores the vulnerability of Western nations that have been almost entirely reliant on Chinese imports for rare earths, particularly for downstream processing.

Ucore Rare Metals is positioning itself as a key enabler of Western supply-chain sovereignty through its U.S.-based capabilities. In May 2025, the company announced an $18.4 million funding agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense to scale its RapidSX rare-earth separation technology toward commercial production at its Strategic Metals Complex in Alexandria, Louisiana (https://ibn.fm/4StCi). RapidSX represents a modular, feed-stock-agnostic separation platform designed to outperform conventional solvent-extraction methods in speed, footprint and cost. The strategic importance of this technology was further emphasized when Ucore obtained Defense Priorities & Allocations System DO-B8 rating for its U.S. project, prioritizing industrial supply-chain deliveries under the Defense Production Act (https://ibn.fm/Bvdr9).

The company has taken significant steps to secure feedstock and expand partnerships, recognizing that refining capacity—not just mining—represents the critical choke point in the rare-earth value chain. In August, Ucore executed a 10-year nonbinding letter of intent with Critical Metals Corp. of Greenland to secure heavy rare-earth concentrate feedstock for the Strategic Metals Complex. The company then entered a binding strategic partnership with Metallium Limited to integrate flash-joule-heating feed-stock upgrades with RapidSX downstream refining, creating a complete feed-stock-to-oxide corridor (https://ibn.fm/DIdSM). This integrated approach addresses the fundamental challenge in rare earth supply chains where China controls approximately 90% of global processing capacity and up to 85% of magnet manufacturing according to market analysts (https://ibn.fm/gjtvS).

Rare-earth elements such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium power the magnets used in electric-vehicle motors, wind-turbine generators, missile guidance systems and aerospace actuators. Without a domestic pathway from mining through refining to magnet production, the United States and its allies remain exposed to supply shocks, regulatory choke points and strategic manipulation. Ucore's approach directly addresses this exposure by bringing modular separation capacity to North America and creating the infrastructure that has been missing, particularly in the refining and separation layer downstream of mining. The company has specifically designed its supply chain to avoid reliance on Chinese-origin components, a crucial step that helps insulate the project from Beijing's latest export-control regime (https://ibn.fm/vJHhq).