After hearing what Miyagawa Masa said, Nagatomo Nagaji did not look relaxed at all. He bowed slightly to Miyagawa Masa and said: "Mr. Miyagawa, this time is really different. I don't think we can use the inventory.
, we also need to take advantage of the low prices to increase reserves significantly."
"The price is low?" Miyagawa was stunned, "Nagatomo-kun, didn't you just say that the price has tripled?"
"Yes, it has increased three times. But according to my discussions with some market analysts, they believe that the price of heavy rare earths is likely to rise even more in the future, to more than 10 times the current level. It is not
Impossible." Nagatomo Nagaji said.
"Why?" Miyagawa Masa couldn't understand. In fact, he is not a bureaucrat. He has always been very concerned about the company's operating conditions and external environment. It's just that the rare earth affairs are changing so fast that he can't keep up.
.
Nagatomo Nagatsuki said: "This reason sounds very complicated, but there is a simple fact. Once I tell it, everyone will understand. This time, the person responsible for the remediation of heavy rare earths in southern China is China Daqin Group. The Chinese government has already
The operating rights were taken back from the three major foreign trade companies and fully awarded to Daqin Group."
"Daqin Group!" Technical Director Sadao Hirano almost jumped up, "Are you talking about the Daqin Group whose chairman is named Qin Hai?"
"Exactly, our purchasing personnel in Yunjiang Province, China, saw with their own eyes Qin Hai leading soldiers to the mine to seal it." Nagatomo Nagaji said in a calm tone. He believed that Hirano Sadao could understand the mystery.
.
"So!" Hirano Sadao gasped. He turned his head to Miyagawa Masaru and said, "Mr. Miyagawa, I now understand why Qin Hai wants to use the dysprosium terbium ferroalloy patent in exchange for our neodymium iron boron patent.
."
When Qin Hai gave a sample of the dysprosium-terbium-iron alloy to Sadao Hirano in the capital, he immediately rushed back to Japan and conducted comprehensive physical and chemical tests on the sample. The test results showed that, first of all, the composition of this alloy did contain
The content of a large amount of dysprosium and terbium, neodymium, samarium and other elements is much lower than that of neodymium iron boron and samarium cobalt alloy. In other words, this is indeed a new type of rare earth magnetic material, not an upgraded version of traditional materials. Secondly, dysprosium and terbium
The residual magnetic induction intensity, coercive force, maximum magnetic energy product, Curie temperature and other important indicators of ferroalloy are all better than those of neodymium iron boron, so it is obviously a very promising material.
As for the price of dysprosium and terbium elements used in dysprosium-terbium ferroalloys is higher than that of neodymium, this problem does not bother Hirano Sadao too much, because compared with the price of finished magnetic materials, the cost of dysprosium and terbium in raw materials is affordable, of course.
, which is below the current rare earth price levels.
Based on this understanding, Chunshan Company quickly reached a patent exchange agreement with Daqin Group, using NdFeB patents to exchange the other party's dysprosium-terbium-iron alloy patents. Patent exchange means that both parties can produce the other party's patents separately, and can use the other party's patents to produce the other party's patents.
Further development will be carried out on the basis of the patent. In the view of Chunshan Company, the advent of dysprosium-terbium-iron alloy will significantly reduce the market value of NdFeB. It is very cost-effective to exchange a backward patent for a promising patent.
of.
But Chunshan Company guessed the beginning, but not the end. Just before the ink on the patent exchange agreement was dry, Daqin Group actually obtained the exclusive rights to operate rare earths from the Chinese government, and on the grounds of rectification, restricted the rights to include dysprosium and
The export of heavy rare earths, including terbium, has caused the price of heavy rare earths to continue to rise.
If this situation continues, although Spring Mountain Company has the patent for dysprosium and terbium ferroalloy, what tricks can it play if it cannot get dysprosium and terbium? In addition, if the prices of dysprosium and terbium really increase by 10 times
Compared with NdFeB, dysprosium-terbium-iron alloy has no advantage in cost performance. Downstream manufacturers also have to consider the cost when choosing permanent magnet materials. Who can afford such an expensive thing?
If it were another person or company to regulate rare earths, Chunshan Company could believe that this was just a temporary move and would not last long. But they learned that it was Daqin Company that did this, and Qin Hai, with the dignity of a chairman,
He actually went shirtless and went to seal the mines in person. If there was no conspiracy, no one would believe it. Hirano Sadao could bet his head that the cause of Qin Hai's remediation of heavy rare earths in southern China was the dysprosium-terbium ferroalloy.
“Qin Hai is so dishonest!” Sadao Hirano said angrily, “He clearly dug a trap for us to jump into, and defrauded us of neodymium with a hopeless dysprosium-terbium-iron alloy patent.
Iron and boron patent."
"The dysprosium-terbium ferroalloy is not without a future, it just has no future for us, but in the hands of Qin Hai, it has a great future. He has a monopoly on the production of dysprosium and terbium, which means that he is the only one in the world who has the ability to produce dysprosium and terbium.
We can provide sufficient and cheap dysprosium and terbium ferroalloy materials." Miyagawa said with a frown.
"In this way, our NdFeB material will also be suppressed. It can lower the price of dysprosium-terbium-iron alloy so low that there will be no market for NdFeB. And we cannot obtain dysprosium and terbium, so we cannot compete with it at all.
"Sales Director Saburo Okazaki analyzed angrily. The same method has been used by Chunshan Company countless times on others, and no one expected that this time someone else would actually plot it against themselves.
"Can we get dysprosium oxide and terbium oxide from Turkey?" Miyagawa asked Nagatomo Nagaji.
Nagatomo Nagaji helplessly shook his head and said: "It's impossible. Both xenotime mines in Turkey have been closed. It will take at least a year to resume production, and they cannot remain profitable by relying solely on orders for dysprosium oxide and terbium oxide.
, so they will not be willing to restore it.”
"Damn Chinese!" Saburo Okazaki cursed viciously.
Nagatomo Nagaji looked at Miyagawa Masaru, and swallowed his words again. There are some things that cannot be regretted, and now that things have happened, any more words are just a waste of words.
In fact, the two xenotime mines in Turkey did not need to be closed. When international rare earth prices plummeted, they called Spring Mountain Company and other rare earth users, hoping that these companies could help raise rare earth prices so that they could
Stop losses. Their reason at the time was that the world could not rely on China alone to provide rare earths. This would be extremely detrimental to the stability of the rare earth market.
However, as a buyer, how could Spring Mountain Company accept such a suggestion? They even adopted some means to induce the price of Chinese rare earths to fall further. As a result, the two Turkish xenotime mines suffered huge losses, and in the end they had no choice but to
Declared bankrupt. Due to the low international rare earth prices, no one was willing to take over, and these two mines were abandoned.
The main products of these two mines in Turkey are rare earth yttrium, lanthanum, and cerium. They can also produce small amounts of dysprosium and terbium, but only as by-products.
There are 17 kinds of rare earth elements in total. These 17 elements have a unified name because they belong to the same group on the periodic table of elements and can be associated with mineralization. Most rare earth mines can produce a variety of rare earths.
It’s just that the specific gravity of each rare earth is different. Light rare earth mines can also produce heavy rare earths, but their content is not as high as that of heavy rare earth mines. Therefore, it is impossible to specifically produce heavy rare earths. Instead, light rare earths can only be used as the main products, and heavy rare earths can be used as the main products.
By-products exist.
The insidious thing about Qin Hai is that he keeps the price of light rare earths at a low level, forcing the rare earth mines in other countries whose main business is light rare earths to go bankrupt. In this way, the supply of heavy rare earths on the market will also be interrupted.
, we can only rely on the unique ion adsorption type heavy rare earth minerals in southern China to provide products.
Nowadays, due to Qin Hai's manipulation, the prices of heavy rare earths such as dysprosium oxide and terbium oxide have indeed risen, but it is still impossible to resume production of rare earth mines in Turkey, Brazil, the United States and other places. They are huge.
Mines can't be reopened just to produce some by-products, right? If these mines were not closed originally and are now maintaining production, it would be okay. But the cost of restoring production to closed mines is too high. The most terrible thing is
, if you spend a lot of money to resume production, and the Chinese drop the price of heavy rare earths back, who are you going to talk to?
A kilogram of dysprosium oxide costs US$50 or even US$500, which is a heavy burden for Spring Mountain Company, but for a mine that mainly focuses on light rare earths, it is a small business that is not worth doing. Spring Mountain Company’s
The embarrassment lies in this.
Miyagawa Masaru also thought about these issues. He originally did not believe that the Chinese government could completely control rare earths, especially when China was in urgent need of a large amount of foreign exchange. Rare earth exports could not be restricted. Unexpectedly, out of nowhere, something happened
A person like Qin Hai has emerged. He has enough capital to integrate rare earth resources, and at the same time has core technology to realize the deep processing of rare earths. In this way, he can turn the export of rare earth raw materials into the export of rare earth deep processing products and resolve the problem.
Pressure to earn foreign exchange through exports.
Faced with such an opponent, Chunshan Company can no longer take any chances. If it wants to maintain its existence in the field of dysprosium-terbium ferroalloy, it must, as Nagatomo Nagaji said, hurry up and increase the price before the price reaches the top.
Instead of reducing reserves, we will have to rely on this inventory to compete with Qin Hai for the permanent magnet material market in the future.
"Mr. Hirano, how far has your research on dysprosium-terbium-ferroalloys progressed? How much dysprosium oxide and terbium oxide do you estimate the company will need to consume in the next few years?" Miyagawa asked Hirano Sadao.
"We have developed three new dysprosium-terbium-iron alloy technologies based on Chinese patents. Their performance far exceeds that of neodymium-iron-boron, and they are fully expected to be used in disk drives, automobile motors, etc. According to our
It is estimated that in the next three years, our company will need at least 600 tons of dysprosium oxide and 100 tons of terbium oxide to produce dysprosium-terbium ferroalloy." Hirano Sadao replied seriously. r1152