Sub-system
Rare-earth elements are not geologically rare. What is scarce is the capacity to separate them from one another and turn them into magnets — a chemically difficult, environmentally demanding process concentrated in one country, which is why these materials appear in every supply-risk analysis.
In one sentence
Rare-earth permanent magnets are neodymium-iron-boron magnets, usually with dysprosium or terbium added for high-temperature performance, used in traction motors, wind turbine generators and many other applications.
The chain runs mining, separation, metal and alloy production, then magnet manufacture. Mining is diverse. Separation is not: the elements are chemically similar and separating them requires many stages of solvent extraction, generating substantial waste — a process that is concentrated overwhelmingly in one country, which also dominates the magnet-making step that follows.
The heavy rare earths added for heat resistance are scarcer still, and are exactly what a traction motor needs, since it operates hot. Reducing their content while retaining performance has been a sustained engineering effort, and it is a genuine reduction rather than a substitution.
Split by step, because separating the elements and making the magnet are different companies.
Rare-earth elements have nearly identical chemistry, so separating them requires many repeated extraction stages. The process is capital intensive, generates waste streams that are hard to permit, and requires operating knowledge accumulated over decades. Building capacity elsewhere means solving all three, not just funding a plant.
Traction motors are one use among many. Direct-drive wind turbine generators use large quantities, and so do industrial motors, robotics, hard drives, speakers and medical equipment. Demand from all of these draws on the same constrained supply, which is why vehicle demand alone does not explain price movements.
Recovering magnets from end-of-life motors and drives is technically possible and commercially small, held back by collection and disassembly costs. The larger effect so far has come from using less heavy rare earth per magnet through grain-boundary techniques that place the scarce element only where it is needed.
1 of these is marked as a chokepoint: a handful of qualified suppliers, a multi-year lead time, or a single geography.
Restrictions on rare-earth processing technology and products make this a policy risk as well as an industrial one.
Other pages in this map that name Rare-earth magnets as something they cannot do without.
What each company supplies at this step, and — where a public figure exists — its share of this specific market — with what that share measures, the period it covers and who published it. Some rows also show the company’s own reported revenue for the segment covering this step, which is a different thing: it says how much this business matters to that company, not how much of the market it holds. Not a ranking and not a recommendation.
Mines rare earths and is building separation and magnet manufacturing capacity in the US.
Mines and separates rare earths outside the dominant region.
Contracts domestic magnet supply for its electric vehicle programmes.
Buys magnets for the motors and drive modules it supplies.
Whether separation and magnet capacity outside the dominant region reaches commercial scale.
Whether heavy rare-earth content per magnet keeps falling.
Whether export controls extend further along the chain.
Each page explains one technology in plain language, states what it depends on, and names companies by what they supply at that step. Company roles are described qualitatively and deliberately carry no market shares, revenue figures or rankings — those change faster than an explainer can, and a stale number is worse than none. Ticker links point at company pages on this site and are provided for reference only.
Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or a forecast. A company named on a page about a technology is not thereby a good investment, and the chokepoints described are structural facts about supply chains rather than predictions about prices. Technology moves; where a page describes something as unresolved or in development, that was true when it was written.
Plutux is not an investment adviser. Market data and AI-generated analysis are for information and education only, not investment advice. Disclaimer