Bottlenecks

[Martin Mantâlvanos]

The real bottleneck isn’t critical minerals. It’s critical materials.
Most of the geopolitical debate focuses on mining, lithium, rare earths, gallium. Who controls deposits. Who can extract more.
But mining is not the constraint.
The constraint sits higher up the stack, in the qualification gateway between material and deployment.
Rare earth oxide is not a magnet.
Lithium brine is not a battery.
Concentrate is not an EV motor.
Materials must pass OEM approval gates before they scale. And those gates are fragmented, buyer-specific, poorly documented, sequential, and easily reset. A minor change can trigger years of requalification.
You can build a refinery.
You can fund a processor.
You can subsidise extraction.
But if qualification takes 3–5 years per buyer, supply never synchronises with demand.
When qualification is opaque, investment hesitates, recyclers struggle to compete, substitution slows, and OEMs remain exposed to geopolitical shocks.
The issue is not scarcity. It’s invisibility.
Critical minerals are political.
Critical materials are systemic.

 

[John]

Hi @Martin Mantâlvanos

You are correct. An OEM typically works closely with its magnet manufacturer to design and qualify a magnet for a specific application. The magnet manufacturer then sources the rare earth materials that meet the required performance specifications. Because this process involves significant engineering, testing, and qualification effort, supply arrangements are usually locked in for long periods (often 7–10 years). As a result, the rare earth supplier must deliver highly consistent and reliable product over time.

That said, magnet manufacturers are effectively designing their processes around the rare earth materials they can reliably access. The broader and more secure their access to qualified rare earth supply, the greater their flexibility in optimisation, cost control, and risk management.

This is also why a REE producer, doesn't want to be locked into one client. They want to diversify.