Govt, industry working to address rare earth magnet issues: Meity official

Business Standard

4 days ago

The government, industry and academia are working to resolve the issues concerning rare earth magnets, which are used in the automobile sector and other devices, a senior Meity official said on Friday.
The technology exists to make rare earth magnets but to produce them at a commercially competitive rate is a challenge, Ministry of Electronics and IT, Additional Secretary, Amitesh Sinha said.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Tec-Verse event showcasing PSU technology research, Sinha said that to solve the issues concerning rare earth, all three partners - government, industry and academia - are doing their work.
"Technology is there, but we have to see how commercially we can do it at a competitive price. So that is the main challenge. The government will surely work because these things are now becoming strategic and important," Sinha said.
The Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET), a research unit under Meity, at the event signed a transfer of technology agreement with Ahmedabad-based firm Somal Magnets for the production of rare earth magnets.
Sinha said the work on the technology development has been going on for some years as the government realises the importance of material technologies.
"It is an effort of the last few years. So they (C-MET) have already been working on it, but suddenly the focus has come on this rare earth material. For such things, first we will have to develop a capability which, at the time of crisis, can be easily scaled. So that kind of infrastructure or capability we are aiming for now," Sinha said.
He, however, said Meity is not directly engaged in the production of rare earth magnets but only in some technologies that are important for their production.
In April 2024, China implemented strict export licensing on rare earth elements like terbium and dysprosium - key inputs for high-level performance NdFeB (Neodymium-Iron-Boron) magnets used in consumer electronics.
The country's oldest electronics industry body, Elcina, said that the move has disrupted global supply chains, hitting India's fast-growing hearables and wearables sector hard, and the device makers are switching to import fully assembled speaker modules from China.
Elcina estimates that the rare earth metal-based magnets account for around 5-7 per cent of the Bill of Materials, and India imports nearly 100 per cent of its NdFeB magnet requirement, with China accounting for 90 per cent of the total imports.
The industry body said prices of China-origin magnets have increased due to tightened supply and administrative bottlenecks, and alternate sources, such as Japan, the European Union and the US, are 2-3 times more expensive and also lack sufficient capacity to meet India's rising demand.
Rare earth magnets include neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB). It is used for high-performance automotive applications such as traction motors in electric vehicles (two-wheelers and passenger vehicles) and power steering motors (in passenger vehicles) in both electric vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles.
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