Sweden rare earth discovery

Sweden has found what appears to be approximately one million tons of rare earth metals (rare earth elements include Neodymium, Gadolinium, Lanthanum, Cerium and others, and they are critical in the production of many modern devices).

The positive aspect to this is the “friendly country” location – whether we like it or not, there’s no getting away from the massive demand for smartphones and the like, and relying on China (the largest source of rare earth metals) is politically problematic.

The negative aspect to this is of course the mining impact.

However, if mining of rare earths is to happen anywhere, you’d expect standards to be high in a country like Sweden. If mining does proceed, we would hope they operate the works as safely as possible and taking as many steps as possible to minimise environmental damage.