The Minor Metals Trade Association (MMTA) has published its latest issue of The Crucible, covering a wide range of developments across critical metals markets, defence procurement, supply chain realignment and trade policy shifts that are reshaping the global minor metals landscape. One of the most significant themes in this issue concerns the ongoing restructuring of rare earth magnet supply chains, as US entities accelerate their efforts to decouple from Chinese dominance. Earlier this year, US Rare Earth acquired Less Common Metals in the United Kingdom and took a stake in France's Carester, with plans to expand rare earth oxide refining in France and build an integrated chain extending through to finished magnets and recycling.
In late June, Energy Fuels, a major US uranium producer, announced an agreement to acquire Vacuumschmelze GmbH & Co. (VAC), a long-established German manufacturer of both permanent magnets, including neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) alloys, and soft magnetic materials such as amorphous and nanocrystalline alloys, cobalt-iron and nickel-iron products. Energy Fuels has also acquired Australian Strategic Minerals' rare earth refining plant in South Korea and signed a memorandum of understanding with Posco, signalling its ambition to build a vertically integrated, globally spanning supply chain from upstream raw materials to downstream magnet production. The company stated it would be "uniquely positioned to serve rapidly growing demand across various sectors including automotive, aerospace, defense, hyperscale data centers, robotics, semiconductors and beyond." The MMTA raises the question of whether these aggressive US moves into European rare earth infrastructure may unsettle Europe's own ambitions to secure an independent magnet supply chain.
A closely related supply chain concern highlighted in the issue involves yttrium, a heavy rare earth element that China has designated as a dual-use material, restricting its exports. Yttrium is a critical input for yttria-stabilised zirconium (YSZ) coatings applied to jet turbine blades and other high-temperature aerospace components. According to analysis presented at the recent Project Blue Critical Materials Conference on Aerospace and Defence in Washington DC, each major jet engine original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is estimated to consume between 100 and 150 tonnes of yttrium per year across its engine programmes.
US imports of yttrium materials, which had totalled approximately 600 tonnes between April 2024 and April 2025, fell sharply to around 80 tonnes in the subsequent twelve months following the imposition of Chinese export restrictions, though the MMTA reports that the US domestic supply chain responded rapidly to address the shortfall. Myanmar has emerged as a significant supplier of heavy rare earth concentrates, of which yttrium is one, but these concentrates continue to be separated and refined in China, underscoring the structural depth of Chinese influence over the rare earth processing chain. The issue also devotes considerable attention to titanium supply chain vulnerabilities facing the United States.
The disruption of the historic Soviet-era titanium supply chain spanning Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan, combined with the western shift away from Russian titanium, has created complex realignments. Kazakhstan's titanium supply has redirected westward, while China has become Russia's primary importer of the metal and is simultaneously emerging as a major supplier of aerospace-grade titanium from its own production, partly enabled by Ukrainian technology. The MMTA notes that the US currently lacks domestic titanium sponge production capacity and is heavily reliant on imports, primarily from Japan, at a time when it is simultaneously decoupling from Russian supply.
The qualification of new titanium sources is a lengthy process, making the US aerospace and defence titanium supply chain a potential strategic vulnerability, according to the publication. In the field of advanced materials, the issue introduces readers to high entropy alloys (HEAs), a rapidly developing technology area that is attracting significant interest from both the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and aerospace institutions. NASA, in conjunction with Metal AM, presented a webinar in July on its GRX-810 high entropy alloy, developed for applications such as fuel injector nozzles in rocket and supersonic jet engines, where operating temperatures exceed 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,093 degrees Celsius).
The alloy is principally composed of nickel, cobalt and chromium, with the addition of rhenium at 1.5% and other trace elements. Using laser powder bed fusion and coating each powder grain with yttrium oxide prior to three-dimensional printing, NASA has produced an oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloy without mechanical alloying that demonstrates greater workability and strength than conventional single crystal alloys such as CMSX-4. The MMTA describes HEAs as a potential gamechanger for high-performance applications in aerospace and space exploration.
On the trade policy front, the US Office of the Trade Representative imposed Section 301 tariffs of between 10% and 12.5% on 60 trading partners in late July, citing in most cases a failure to prohibit and enforce restrictions on goods produced with forced labour. The tariffs applicable to the European Union and the United Kingdom are set at 10%. EU officials publicly contested the characterisation of the region's forced labour regulations as inadequate, but ultimately accepted the tariffs following assurances that US duties on EU goods would not exceed 15%.
As the issue went to press, a coalition of 25 US Democrat-led states had launched a legal challenge at the US Court of International Trade, alleging that forced labour provisions were used as a pretext for the tariff measures. Separately, the European Union has launched a consultation, open until 30 September, on its revised steel import quota regime that came into force in July. The new quota has been set at 18.3 million tonnes, with a 50% duty on volumes above this threshold, representing a reduction of almost half compared to the previous arrangement.
Ukraine, despite EU political support, saw its export quota cut by 58.5% to 1.05 million tonnes after it exported more than 2.5 million tonnes to the EU in the prior year. The MMTA Crucible also previewed upcoming industry events, including the MMTA-Project Blue Critical Materials Forum and the MMTA 53rd Anniversary Dinner, both scheduled for 20 October during LME Week, as well as a joint MMTA-LME training seminar on LME Futures and Risk Hedging to be held on 13 November at the Barbican in London. Separately, the issue includes insights into the tungsten market following Chinese export controls, contributed by Fastmarkets, an analysis of hafnium price and supply fundamentals by OnG Commodities, and a summary of insights from the International Magnesium Association's annual industry gathering.
Source: MMTA, The Crucible, mmta.co.uk
Source: mmta.co.uk