The European country that can send China into ‘bankruptcy’

We live in a time when critical moves are being made on the geopolitical chessboard. The Russia-Ukraine war has created new, transnational alliances, with countries such as China, Iran, India and Saudi Arabia, proposing themselves as allies of Russia or the West, or even trying to influence some developments, autonomously .

In this unpredictable chessboard, China plays a very important role. It is perhaps the most important iron ore producing (and exporting) power in the world.

Why are iron ores relevant to us?

First of all, because 90% of the iron ore used in European industry comes from China. But what do we make with the specific ores? To answer this question, we will use some simple examples.

In our daily life, we use wireless headphones to listen to music. These are made of neodymium. The screens of our smart devices, on which we watch videos or scroll through social media, have lanthanum, gytrium, gadolinium. Modern screens are made with these metals, which display the video files we are looking for, while saving the battery of our device.

The fiber optic cable with which we are connecting online to write this article is made of erbium. Going out on the street, we will possibly call a taxi, which can be an electronic car. Its machine converts electricity into motion, through magnets made of neodymium.

The modern airplanes in which we travel around the world are made of aluminum-scandium alloy. When we take out a banknote (not to buy an airplane, but for a thousand other reasons), we see a watermark of authenticity on it. This is made of europium.

Somewhere here we will stop with the examples, underlining that war submarines and tanks are also made of rare metals. F35 type airships, among others, need at least 420 kg of rare metals.

Welcome Per Jaeger, Kiruna

A new, huge, underground “storage” of iron ore has been discovered in the Per Jaeger area, in the city of Kiruna. In particular, the Per Jaeger mine, according to relevant data, has over one million unexploited tons of rare earth minerals.

To make the comparisons, today in the existing mines of Kiruna, which have been mining since 1898, annually 300-400 million tons of metals are extracted which satisfy about 10% of our continent’s needs for iron ores, including phosphorus.

The Per Jaeger mine is estimated to yield five times that. Phosphorus is one of the most important elements for the production of mineral fertilizers, which are particularly important for food production.

How will we “bankrupt” China?

LKAB, the metal mining company established by the Swedish government, in cooperation with the Norwegian company REEtec, is developing new technologies for the separation of rare metals from the earth and the extraction of phosphorus.

The production line that will be created by this partnership, in an industrial park in the Lulea area, aims to multiply the mining of rare metals throughout the Kiruna area (and Per Gegier) so that by the end of the 2020s, the Europe to have come close to the goal of independence, in terms of importing ores from China.

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