Baotou upgrades rare earths tech

The city of Baotou in Inner Mongolia, where the only national level rare earths high-tech zone is located, is making itself a center for higher value-added rare earths processing by introducing more investment and research and development capacity, according to a top official of the high-tech zone.

"We need to turn from the old way of selling just the primary product or even unprocessed rare earths to deeper processing," said Miao Yuliang, director of the management committee of the Baotou Rare-Earths High-tech Zone, which was established in 1992 as the only rare earths high-tech zone among the 117 national level high-tech zones in China.

The rare earths reserve in Baotou has 43.5 million metric tons, accounting for 83 percent of the total reserve in China and 30 percent of the world reserve.

Yet for a long time, the rare earths industry has been troubled by low-end, low-price products, unregulated small exploiters, and serious environmental pollution, according to Jia Yinsong, director of the rare earths office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Last year, the central government designated Baotou as a pilot region for upgrading rare earths products and technology.

A 4 billion yuan ($597 million) investment fund for rare earths upgrading has been established. So far, 600 million yuan has been allocated to the city to support more than 30 projects related to rare earths.

According to Miao, the rare earths industry in Baotou is going to focus on permanent magnets, catalysts, alloys, hydrogen storage, polishing and luminescence.

"A number of research centers have been established together with leading research institutes, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, to build an innovation platform to create strong momentum for future development," said Miao.

The processed rare-earths products output in the city has been on the rise. The most noticeable growth is in rare earth for alloys - their output grew to 166,200 tons in 2015, a 220 percent increase over 2014.