Six central environmental protection inspection teams were sent out to ten major steelmaking provinces across China end of May. This is described as central environmental protection inspectors “look back”. According to the announcement of Ministry of Ecology and Environmental, the “surface rectification” and “false rectification” was found in different places. The teams will spend one month to continuously monitor the environmental controls.

As the key suppliers of rare earth resources, both Inner Mongolia and Jiangxi Province are among the ten provinces in this new round of inspection. Some rare earth separation enterprises in Baotou and Ganzhou will cut/stop production for a month due to inspection. Therefore, the supply of rare earth raw materials become critical. Downstream Neodymium magnet manufacturers only stocked materials for the foreign orders in the upcoming July. As a result, the price of rare earth product is expected to continue to increase over the next month.

As yet it is not known when central environmental protection inspector “look back” will be launched in the main magnet producing provinces, but it’s very possible that magnet product’s delivery time will be also affected by this inspection again.