How did a U.S. magnet maker source rare earths outside China?
Core argument: Samarium processed outside China costs five to eight times as much, and Solvay stopped separating rare-earth elements at its French factory two decades ago because the work had become "uneconomical," according to a company spokeswoman.
Arnold Magnetic Technologies, a Rochester, N.Y.-based manufacturer of samarium-cobalt magnets turned to Grant Smith, the chairman of Less Common Metals near Liverpool, England, one of the last remaining manufacturers of rare-earth metals in the Western world. Mr. Smith had already spent years hunting for alternatives to Chinese samarium. He found one: a decades-old cache of samarium nitrate in a factory in France. The material was owned by Solvay, a Belgian chemical company with a factory in France that was once one of the world’s largest producers of rare-earth oxides. Turning rock into magnets requires separating the 17 rare-earth elements from one another using massive vats of solvents, a process Solvay helped pioneer. Solvay had stopped separating rare-earth elements in France two decades ago, according to a spokeswoman, who said it had become “uneconomical.” Samarium processed outside China is five to eight times as expensive. But Solvay kept its stock of semifinished materials and still had the know-how and equipment to refine it into a form that Mr. Smith could use. And Less Common Metals happened to have an old furnace that could handle the job.