Since its founding in 2008, REEtec has been developing technology to separate rare earths from impurities and refine them into high-quality, high-purity materials, known as rare earth oxides, for use in products like electric vehicle motors and wind turbines.LKAB’s 400 million kroner ($40.3 million) investment will help REEtec finance a substantial portion of its rare earths separation factory in the Norwegian industrial peninsula of Herøya, where production is slated to begin in 2024.“This deal is significant because you now see a mineral prospect in Canada that for many years was seen as an orphan, and is now going into operation” and seeding the supply chain in Europe, said Kingsley Jones, CIO and founding partner at Jevons Global in Australia.The challenge: China’s monopoly and monopsony power Even if a non-Chinese firm is buying up Vital Metals’s raw rare earths, the next stage of the supply chain—companies who will buy the refined rare earths to use in manufacturing—is still likely entangled with and dependent on China.What’s unique about the rare earth industry is “the presence of China at every stage as both a monopoly and a monopsony...which makes it very difficult [for other countries] to significantly penetrate the supply chain,” said Andy Mok, a senior research fellow at the Beijing-based think tank Center for China and Globalization."