India to post multi-fold rise in neodymium production by FY27 end: IREL

IREL, which comes under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), currently handles mining and initial processing of these rare earth elements (REEs)

The crisis of rare earth globally has fast-tracked India’s ambitions in the sector, and the country is expected to clock a multifold rise in production of neodymium by the end of the financial year 2027, said a top official from the state-owned entity, Indian Rare Earths Limited (IREL). 

Neodymium is considered the backbone of the rare-earth magnet industry, and India produced around 40 tonnes of this last year when the rare-earth crisis was at its peak.

 

IREL, which comes under the Department of Atomic Energy, currently handles mining and initial processing of these rare earth elements.

 

“We are working overnight to ramp up the production of neodymium and praseodymium, very much required by the industry now. We will double our production within a year,” said V Chandrasekar, general manager and head of the rare-earth division, IREL.

 

IREL has an extraction plant of rare earths in Odisha and a refining unit in Kerala. Rare earths are crucial components in electric vehicles, electronics, clean-energy technologies such as wind turbines and electric vehicles (EVs), defence systems, medical equipment (MRI), and various industrial applications.

 

Out of 17 rare earths, eight are already being produced in the Kerala unit -- lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, praseodymium, gadolinium, samarium, europium, and dysprosium. It has also set up pilot plants for terbium and europium.

 

“China has around 44 per cent of the total rare-earth business in the world, while India has around 5-6 per cent. However, China is number one in production, controlling about 90 per cent of it, while we are third in the world. We are also sixth in terms of reserves,” added Chandrasekar.

 

IREL has already set up a rare-earth permanent magnet (REPM) plant for indigenous production of samarium-cobalt magnets exclusively for use in the defence and atomic energy sectors.

 

This comes at a time when the central government, in January this year, through the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM), proposed an expenditure of ₹16,300 crore and an expected investment of ₹18,000 crore by public sector undertakings (PSUs) and other stakeholders, over a period of seven years starting from FY25 to FY31. The NCMM aims to secure a long-term sustainable supply of critical minerals and strengthen India’s critical mineral value chains encompassing all stages from mineral exploration and mining to beneficiation, processing, and recovery from end-of-life products.

 

“No country can depend on the external supply chain anymore. India is targeting to strengthen our domestic supply chain and localisation of technology, in which southern states have a major role to play,” said Hans Raj Verma, director general of COSIDICI. Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh hold the maximum rare-earth resources in India, primarily in beach sands. India is dependent on monazite for extraction of rare earths. IREL has also started producing ytterbium and has the capability to produce dysprosium too.