Rare Earths Aren’t Rare… and Why That Framing Devalues the Material

“Rare earths aren’t actually rare. They’re a group of 17 elements that occur together in the Earth’s crust and are relatively abundant across the planet.”

That is how most mainstream articles on rare earths begin — a sentence so familiar that anyone who works in or invests in the sector can write it before the journalist has had their first coffee — and it is where the importance of the material is immediately diluted.

While many rare earth elements are geologically abundant, they are rarely found in economic concentrations, rarely separable without complex and capital-intensive processing, and rarely produced at scale in ways that are environmentally and politically acceptable. Mining is not the constraint; separation and refining are.

By focusing on crustal abundance, this framing subtly suggests that supply risk is overstated and that strategic concern is misplaced. In doing so, it devalues the industrial and strategic importance of rare earths, particularly the magnet metals that underpin electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics, advanced electronics, and defence systems.

Rare earths are chemically similar and typically occur together, historically requiring hundreds of sequential solvent-extraction stages to isolate individual elements. This is why control of processing capacity — not geology — has defined global supply.

That picture, however, is beginning to evolve. New separation approaches, including those being developed by ReElement Technologies, aim to reduce process complexity, lower environmental impact, and improve economic efficiency. These advances represent genuine technological progress and are an important part of the future rare earths landscape. However, they are still in the process of scaling, and conventional solvent extraction remains the dominant industrial standard today.

For now, control of proven, scalable processing capacity continues to define supply resilience — particularly when paired with high-quality resources and supportive infrastructure. Projects such as Pensana’s Longonjo development illustrate how resource quality, logistics, energy access, and processing strategy together determine whether rare earths move from geological presence to industrial reality.

The argument that rare earths “aren’t rare” is analogous to pointing out that the oceans contain millions of tonnes of gold. Technically true — economically meaningless. Without concentration, recoverability, and processing capability, abundance has little value.

So when those who work in or invest seriously in the sector push back on the phrase “rare earths aren’t rare,” it is not pedantry. It is frustration with a framing that trivialises complexity, understates risk, and obscures where real value — and vulnerability — reside.

Rare earths are geologically common and industrially scarce.

That distinction is not academic. It sits at the heart of the strategic minerals debate.