The Malaysian Government announced plans to ban the export of rare earth concentrates and maintain value-added activities within the country.

The Malaysian government has announced its intention to ban exports of rare earth materials in a bid to stop shipments of unprocessed or crude material largely to China and maintain value-added stages of the supply chain in-country. While no specifics on what will be considered as ‘rare earth materials’ were reported, Project Blue believe it most likely represents unprocessed rare earth ores and mixed compounds, similar to those exported from Myanmar and Laos to the Chinese market during 2023. 

Rare earth production in Malaysia is dominated by output from the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) which processes monazite mineral concentrates from the Mt Weld mine in Australia and undertakes refining and separation to produce separated rare earth products such as Nd-Pr, La and Ce. The introduction of this legislation is not expected to impact Lynas’ operations, particularly as they transfer the cracking and leaching stages of the LAMP plant to their new facility in Kalgoorlie, Australia. Instead, this legislation is targeted at suspending the export of unprocessed rare earth ores to China from artisanal and unlicensed mines in Kelantan. While comparatively small scale, these operations have raised environmental protection and corruption concerns within Malaysia, which the Malaysian government will likely be keen to address.