Lynas Essay

Lynas Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. (Lynas) is described as a business plan that is wholly-owned subsidiary of Lynas Corporation Ltd of Australia. The main business of Lynas is said to be focused on the production and sale of rare earth and related byproducts (Earths, 2011). This company is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and the Singapore Stock Exchange, and has over 20 years of experience in the mining industry and 6 years of experience in the rare earth elements industry (Environ, 2008).

In addition, rare earths are defined as elements that are found to be relatively plentiful in earth’s crust. However, it is very difficult to mine and extract rare earth elements compared to many other metals due to the chemical properties and geographical dispersion of rare earth element that makes them relatively more expensive to be extracted (Earths, 2011). Furthermore, rare earth elements are usually used in the process of manufacturing of a wide variety of products, for example, catalytic converters, wind turbines, hybrid car batteries, disk drives, mobile phones, and flat screen displays (Lee, 2012).Therefore, the demand for rare earths is increasing rapidly in worldwide and is expected to outstrip supply in the future.

With this, global rare earth elements processors have relocated their production plants to China resulting in China becoming the dominant supplier of the rare earth elements oxide as well as the dominant processor and user of refined rare earth elements compounds (Environ, 2008). However, with the recent implementation of more stringent regulatory controls imposed by the government, the quantity of rare earth elements extracted from China is expected to