Comment | A gigantic discovery in Sweden puts the country in the race for raw materials, which are estimated to soon be more important than oil and gas

This one the week’s biggest little news came from the western neighbor. The Swedish mining company LKAB said on Thursday that it had found an exceptional deposit of earth metals in northern Sweden.

According to the company, the deposit contains more than one million tons of rare earth metals.

Read more: The mining company says it has found Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth metals in Kiruna

The demand for rare earth metals is growing rapidly. Rare earth metals such as praseodymium or neodymium do not mean much to the average consumer, but they are critically important in countless industrial processes. Rare earth metals are used, for example, in electric motors, wind turbines, lasers, consumer electronics and the military industry.

The discovery made by the Swedish state-owned mining company LKAB is timely, because free cross-border trade cannot be trusted as it used to be. That’s why numerous countries and federations are currently thinking about their self-sufficiency.

Rare earth metals are particularly hard to find.

China is very dependent on the rest of the world for raw materials, but rare earth metals are an exception. In their production, China is number one in the world. According to the Wood Mackenzie consulting company, China produces more than 60 percent of the world’s rare earth metals. Europe’s share of production is vanishingly small, 0.2 percent.

“

According to the commissioner, rare earth metals will soon be more important than oil and gas.

Trade policy relations between China and the West have cooled, which has raised concerns in the West about the availability of critical raw materials.

China is well aware of its position and the country has already used raw materials as a trade policy weapon. For example in 2011 China temporarily suspended the export of rare earth metals to Japan due to a diplomatic row between the countries. In 2019, China threatened the United States with the same type of export ban.

Among others, the United States and Australia are currently actively looking for deposits of rare earth metals on their own soil. Canada, on the other hand, ordered at the end of last year that Chinese companies must give up their holdings in several in Canadian mining companies.

The situation seriousness is also understood in Europe. For example, the commissioner responsible for the EU internal market Thierry Breton emphasized last fall in his blog, that the EU should achieve self-sufficiency in rare earth metals.

According to the commissioner, the world is in a race for the availability of critical raw materials, and the EU cannot remain a bystander in the race. According to him, rare earth metals will soon be “more important than oil and gas”.

“Demand for rare earth metals will increase fivefold by 2030,” Breton writes.

The discovery made by LKAB does not promise quick help for Europe’s dependence on imported raw materials. LKAB estimates that it will take at least 10–15 years to start mining at the site.